
Life Begins Outside Your Comfort Zone
We read it everywhere in memes and just straight text, Life Begins Outside Your Comfort Zone. But what does it really mean? Does anyone really implement this in their lives?
Staying with what you know feels safe and comfortable, but it doesn’t allow you to truly experience life at its fullest.
Moving past your comfort zone is scary as heck, but it can also be exhilarating and uplifting. Some folks never even have the desire to break out of their comfort zones. For one reason or another, they’re happy living the same day over and over.
This life isn’t exciting. It’s stagnant, leaving you no room for personal growth or advancement, and that’s fine if that’s what you’re looking for, but if you want to write a great story about your life, then it’s time to embrace stepping outside of your comfort zone!
Lucky for you, I’m here to step out with you! I’m ready if you are!

Why Life Begins Outside Your Comfort Zone
It’s human nature to be resistant to change, and yet, change comes along anyway. We can’t avoid it.
As you grow up, your life naturally changes. Your body changes. Your mind changes, and you hormones change. Once adulthood hits, your whole life changes. You might go to college or technical school, or you may just enter the job market and start your career.
But even that doesn’t usually stay the same. You work hard and get a promotion. Maybe at some point, you decide to change careers but if you’re too afraid to go for it, so you stay stuck right where you are.
You meet men and date a few. Those relationships ended in breakups, except maybe the one you’re in right now. Even that may or may not be the ideal relationship, but getting out of a bad relationship seems like more work than staying in, so many just stay.
There are opportunities for change every day and everywhere and we overlook many of them, usually out of fear.
Life Begins Where Boredom Ends
This is another way of saying life begins outside your comfort zone, but it’s a little clearer on what you’re escaping.
Have you ever awakened in the morning and felt low motivation to do anything? Putting your feet on the floor seems to be pointless.
This is caused by one of two things – either you’re bored with living the same day every day or you’re overwhelmed. Either way, stepping outside of your comfort zone can help.
Exiting your comfort zone brings a little discomfort with it because you’re trying something new, which is always scary.
But it’s that fear that you must bust through. It’s the fear that keeps you from exploring and living. It’s fear that keeps us stuck living the same day every day.
When you create a balance between living inside and outside your comfort zone, you’re not only busting through the fear, but you’re also adding excitement and diversity.

Time to Kick Some Routines to the Curb
There’s nothing wrong with having a routine, except that you aren’t stimulated. You wake up, take a shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, and wander out to your car to drive to work. How many times have you wondered if you locked the door, turned off the coffee pot, or closed the garage door?
This is the routine talking. Those things are so automatic that you don’t even remember doing them. Your mind wasn’t challenged in the slightest. You probably even take the same path to work every morning and come home the same way at night.
Now, think about the last time you drove in a new city. Were you on autopilot? Heck no! You were paying very close attention to where you were and what you needed to do next. Your mind was stimulated and on high alert!
While it might have been a little nerve wracking at the time, you have to admit it was a little exciting too.
Stepping outside of your comfort zone also means breaking some routines. Instead of taking the highway to work, go down some side streets. Instead of the same place for coffee or lunch, try someplace new.
What’s Comfortable?
Comfortable things that you do all of the time. They’re familiar and somewhat regular in your life.
Family dinners, traditions like apple picking or going out for special occasions are all comfortable. There’s nothing wrong with these activities, especially if you enjoy them.
These activities are safe. You know what to expect, at least to some degree, and you know what the expected outcome is likely to be.
What’s Outside Comfortable?
Outside of comfortable doesn’t have to be dangerous. As you read in the section about routines, it can be as simple as breaking your routine.
But it can also be more. Outside of comfortable can be facing a fear, like a fear of heights or of spiders. Do something that you’ve always had churning in the back of your mind but were too afraid to do, like skydiving or bungee jumping. Go kayaking or white-water rafting.
Why Should You Step Out of Your Comfort Zone?
Your current world might feel just fine, but what if your world could improve? What if it could be exciting again? What if facing your fears opens up new opportunities?
New Opportunities
Let’s imagine you’re afraid of heights but you decide to face this fear. You begin facing this fear by climbing higher in the bleachers to watch your nephews baseball game. After that feels comfortable, you decide to walk along the edge of the railing on the second story at the local mall.
Once that feels comfortable, you decide to really go for it, and you choose another elevated activity like ziplining or walking across a tall bridge. Each of these things is so darn scary but exhilarating at the same time. You feel proud of yourself for reaching what are literally new heights.
The higher you go, the more confident you feel and the more exciting your life becomes. Who knows, you might even get into something like sky diving and really enjoy it.
You recognize what you’re capable of and that you’re capable of even more.
Growth
Imagine an athlete who never tries to grow. He doesn’t visit the weight room, so he physically doesn’t grow like his teammates and competitors. He barely puts forth any effort in practice, so he stays a mediocre player.
I’m a football fan, so I’m going to use that for an example. When I watch football at the beginning of the season, it’s always exciting to see who the breakout players will be. There are always rookies, as well as players from years past.
These guys challenge themselves and one another to be better. Rookies have something to prove, and the returning players have positions to win, year after year.
If you live in the comfort zone of doing the same things you did year over year, you aren’t going to get better, and in the case of sports, you probably won’t hold your position.
Even in life outside of sports, this is true. You’ve been working in your job for several years, but a new person right out of college just got hired to join your department. She’s hungry and energetic. You can see it in her eyes – she wants to climb to the top! She’s going to leave no stone unturned as she strives to meet her goals.
And guess what, one of those stones she plans to turn over is you. She’s learned new technologies. She’s studied the most recent trends and tools for your line of work. She’s fresh and young and eager.
If you want to hold onto your job, you’re going to have to face change. You’ll need to learn those new technologies and tools. You’ll need to show that you still have the eagerness and energy to do your job, or one even higher up the food chain.
Problem Solving
Change often presents a problem, sometimes unforeseen. When you sit stagnant in your comfort zone, the solution might not be obvious to you. In fact, you might not feel that there’s any way out.
But if you reach beyond your comfort zone, you realize that there are solutions all around you. Your mind creatively seeks solutions that weren’t apparent.
Pushing past your comfort zone inspires this creative problem solving. You experience the world in new ways and see things from different perspectives. This opens your mind up to seeing things you wouldn’t have seen before.
To problem solve, you often need to reach beyond that comfort zone to learn new things, experience new things, and even live in new places. Sometimes, these things happen so quickly that you don’t even have time to think about how scary it is. You just go.
The Yerkes-Dodson Law
The Yerkes-Dodson Law states that performance increases as stress increases, and it decreases as stress decreases.
This law was developed by two scientists, Robert Yerkes and John Dillingham Dodson and it dates all the way back to 1908, but it’s age doesn’t decrease its validity.
What the law means is that when you’re living in your comfort zone, or with little stress, your performance is low, relatively speaking, but if you inject some stress or change, your performance increases.
I know a woman who challenged herself to run one race every month for a year. Her main goal was weight loss.
The problem is that she’d never been a runner before, so she had to start at zero and work her way up. Since her first race had to be in the first month of her training, she had no time to waste. She started running right away, even though the distances weren’t that long at first. Her first race was a small one and by race day, she’d run enough to finish.
To add to her success, she lost weight as well. Bonus! In the second month, she was planning to run a longer race, but she didn’t change her training very much, and by race day, she felt ill prepared.
She realized that to compete in the future races, she needed to push herself further – or in Yerkes-Dodson terms, apply stress. She ran farther and faster and by the third month’s race, she felt good about her chances.
By the end of the year, she’d hit her goal of one race per month and she lost one-hundred pounds, and she did it by continuously applying stress. She ran a full marathon by the end the year!

Rise to Above Average
Living an average life is okay, but it’s not fun or exciting. It’s average – mundane even. Who wants to be mundane?
People who are afraid, that’s who!
But you’re a woman who wants to either find a great guy or keep the great guy you have now. Average won’t do.
Why?
Men Like Mystery
Men crave mystery. That’s why a guy in a new relationship seems so excited. Yes, he’s attracted to you, but he’s also excited by the mystery of learning about you.
This is where many women go wrong early in relationships, or in online relationships. They tell too much too soon, and the mystery vanishes as quickly as it came about.
Instead of spilling your entire life story in the first three dates, or worse yet, before you actually meet, share bits of yourself each time you go out. If you’re still chatting online, spill very little. Give him tidbits until you figure out that he isn’t catfishing and until you meet him in person.
The truth is that if you have enough time in a date to spill that much about yourself it either means the date was too long or you talked too much, probably out of nerves.
When you meet a new guy and go out on dates, share little stories. Don’t try to impress him with outlandish stores that may or may not even be true. Try something like this, “Wow, that’s great that you love to travel. I’m trying to see how many stamps I can get in my passport.”
You didn’t outline every country you’ve been to or even how many stamps you may have now. You merely mentioned a challenge or goal you’ve made. He’s intrigued. It’s mystery.
Men Also Love Challenge
When I say challenge here, I don’t mean being difficult. You need to kick him out of his complacency and boredom by changing things up a bit.
Get back into the social life you gave up when you started dating this guy.
Revisit the hobbies you had before he came along.
Get back to being the woman he fell in love with. You challenged him then. You may have been harder to get a date with because you had other plans. This challenges a guy to do better for you, to be important enough to find time on your schedule.
In the movie, Last Holiday, Georgia Byrd, played by Queen Latifah, finds out she’s going to die, so she sets out to do as many things on her wish list as possible. Meanwhile, Sean Matthews, the guy she’s dreaming of, played by LL Cool J, decides to act on his attraction to her.
The key line in the movie, for this discussion anyway, is when he approaches her for a date, soon after she finds out she’s about to die. He says, “I know you’re a busy woman, so I wanted to get on your schedule as soon as I could.” Or something along those lines. This is a guy who knows he’s interested in a woman who’s busy. He’s working to get on her schedule.
You’re Writing a Great Story
When you are mysterious and challenging, you’re automatically writing your story. Your story is ongoing and filled with all of the things you do. Taking a trip adds a chapter to your story. Having hobbies adds to your story. Going back to college in your 40’s adds to your story.
Your goal should be to keep writing your story by experiencing new things, meeting new people, enjoying your hobbies, and so on.
Your story gives you interesting things to talk about on a date. It also keeps the mystery and challenge alive.
You Achieve Your Goals
Everyone dreams of a different life. Celebrities dream of going out with their kids and not having twenty people ask for autographs. Young people dream of having that life. Some people dream of not worrying about money every day. Other people dream of a new house or a new car.
It’s natural to dream, but why not turn those dreams into goals?
My funny story about reaching a goal
But reaching for and achieving goals requires you to recognize that life begins outside your comfort zone. If you did it all of the time, you wouldn’t need to set a goal for it.
How great would it feel to actually have some of your dreams come true?
You Build Confidence
When you challenge yourself by trying to live outside your comfort zone or achieving new goals, you automatically become more confident.
Your belief in yourself grows, and that’s the definition of confidence. Belief that you can do something.
The best part is that the guys you should want to date are the confident men, and those men only date confident women. Relationships sometimes fall apart when confidence falls away.
You’re More Resilient
Living beyond your comfort zone means living with some discomfort, but many people avoid this discomfort at all costs.
However, once you experience some discomfort and recognize that you can live with a feeling of discomfort, you become more resilient.
The next time something a little uncomfortable comes along, you aren’t as afraid because you know you’ve lived through it before and that you’re a better person for it.
You Feel More in Control of Your Life
Once you set and achieve goals, build your confidence, and become more resilient, you feel more in control of your life. You understand that more of your life is within your control than you ever imagined.
You understand that you’re steering the ship and your life can look more like what you’ve imagined all along. It’s empowering!

Why It’s Hard to Leave Your Comfort Zone
If this was easy, you wouldn’t be here. You’d be out busting the walls of your comfort zone.
Leaving your comfort zone requires applying that stress you read about above. It requires you to swallow some anxiety and push past fear.
Those aren’t easy things to do.
It also requires you to challenge the way you think and blow past limiting beliefs that are holding you back.
You must become mentally immune to fear and pain, recognize that they’re fleeing emotions, just like joy and happiness can be.
I like to equate negative emotions to leaves floating on a stream. They approach and you may or may not see them coming, then they come closer and get right in front of you. You can reach out and touch them, but they continue to float by, unless you pluck them out of the water and hold onto them. Once you let them go, they float away, as smoothly as they arrived.
The problem is when you pull them out of the water and keep them, instead of letting them float away, they begin to rot and decay instead of adding to your life.
How to Live Outside Your Comfort Zone
Sometimes a situation comes along that requires you to step outside of your comfort zone and you don’t have a choice.
But when you’re in the driver’s seat, what can you do?
Set Goals
You read about this above and I have a whole workbook you can buy for less than a cup of coffee.
Plan to Succeed
A goal is a written statement, an intention. But you need more. You need a plan. What are the steps you need to take to reach that goal?
What obstacles might you encounter? How can you overcome them?
By planning for success, you organize your thoughts and recognize any shifts necessary in the timeline of your goal.
ACT!
There is a space between wanting something and having it, and that space is filled with either action or the lack of action.
It’s that action or inaction that defines whether you launch yourself out of your comfort zone or remain in it.
Plans are great, but they’re nothing without acting.
Be Flexible
When things need adjustment, don’t give up. Adjust. If you need more time to reach a goal, extend your timeline. If you want to shoot a little higher, adjust the goal a little higher.
Many people give up on their goals once the first trip-up happens. You weigh in and you didn’t lose as much weight as you wanted in that timeframe, so you quit.
Instead of quitting, adjust. Do you need to exercise more? Are you eating as well as you can?
Don’t quit. Adjust.
Continue Making New Goals
Once you meet a goal, set a new one. Never stop. Having goals is an ongoing thing. Set one and meet it, then set another. Better yet, go after more than one at a time!
Challenge yourself and write that great story!
Remember, goals help you build confidence and high confidence gets you the best of the men out there!
Life Begins Outside Your Comfort Zone – That’s a Wrap!
Hopefully by now, you’re ready to launch out of your comfort zone. You see the wisdom of facing fears and staring them down. You understand the value of setting goals and reaching them.
The benefits of living outside of your comfort zone far outweigh staying inside that comfort zone.
There is so much life out there to live, so face those fears, set those goals, and get out there! The next chapter of your story is just waiting to be written, and a great guy is out there waiting to hear it!

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