How do people step out of their comfort zone? Job interviews, meeting new people and dating, flights and skydiving, large purchases and investments, starting a business, writing for public viewing, and karaoke night are all great examples of challenges to our comfort zones.
I can’t remember who said this to me: “Stepping out of your comfort zone is a step towards growth.” And I believe it. Many people don’t like change and get stuck in their ways. And they don’t make progress toward some of their goals.
Anxiety and fears prevent us from moving forward and play a big part in why we don’t leave our comfort zones. And for many, society has trained us to think the worst. We fear we’ll never be good enough or fail if we change our situation. In doing so, we fail to step out of our comfort zone. How many opportunities, relationships, or goals have you missed out on because you didn’t leave your comfort zone?
Meeting New People
How about we use meeting new people as an example. Growing up as kids on the playground, we didn’t care who our friends were. We would walk up to another kid and ask, “Do you want to do this?” or “Let’s go play on that!” Having fun was all that we cared about. And many of us didn’t care about our appearance. We let our parent’s figure that out for us.
As adults, why does it seem so hard to meet new people? At some point in life, we may get too busy and have no time to meet new people. And it evolves into this comfortable habit of having a small number of people to interact with day-to-day. Indeed, we all know someone who works ten to twelve-hour days, and we can only imagine how little time they get to spend with the people they don’t see at work. And maybe you’re one of them?
Maybe self-esteem issues play a role. Society can have a way of making people feel or care less about themselves. The opinions of one person can cause another to feel insecure about themself. And in doing so, that person may have a hard time taking a chance to interact with someone new.
So as adults, how do we step out of our comfort zone when meeting new people? Surprisingly, it can be as easy as opening with, “Hello, how’re you doing today?”. Or even complimenting someone on their appearance can be a good conversation starter.
And maybe you are too shy to start a conversation. However, like most things, your chance to meet someone is still zero if you choose not to take action. So, take action.
A Personal Example
Let me share a personal example of when I stepped out of my comfort zone. At the beginning of 2022, I took on the WordPress Bloganuary Challenge. The challenge consisted of writing a blog post about a daily prompt or topic.
Writing every day wasn’t something I was used to doing. In fact, I still don’t write every day. Writing has been a struggle for me. Yet here I am. Since the challenge, I have sent each post back to the draft form.
In addition, I want to look through each of those posts and select the ones that I think would be best suited for this blog. I feel like each new article I write challenges my writing comfort zone. And writing seems to be getting easier.
Furthermore, I lack confidence in my writing. Even as I write now at this very moment. And I don’t believe that I’m the only one. For instance, I could have written about my Ancestry journey instead of using my writing struggles as my example. Or my adventure through Basic Training. See, I tend to overthink things.
I believe that almost every blogger or website owner has moments where they worry about what their readers think about the content they upload or share. But for me, I believe that while my content may not be for everyone, somebody on this earth will see value in some of the content I share.
Leave Your Comfort Zone
Here are a few things you can do to leave your comfort zone at your own pace:
- Pick one thing to do outside of your comfort zone each day or maybe even each week. It doesn’t have to be anything crazy.
- Find someone or something to inspire you to leave your comfort zone.
- Create a list of things that challenge your comfort zone and attempt to order them from most likely to least likely to accomplish.
So, take a chance and step out of your comfort zone, and if you want, tell me how it went in the comments.