WHY YOU SHOULD STEP OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE.
What if I told you that you can dissipate that mental block everyone has every once-in-a-while or even amp up your creativity? You can. Have you ever heard of a comfort zone?
What are comfort zones?
A comfort zone is a boundary in which most people feel the safest. This may be a routine or behavior of you that partake in whether subconsciously or purposely in order to avoid risk or stress. An example of this is if you are afraid of heights and you take a hot-air-balloon ride. This is stepping outside of your comfort zone because you are not within your normal area of comfort, but placed in an area that raises stress levels.
Why you should step out of your comfort zone
Comfort zones are called comfort zones for a reason. They are where you feel the most comfortable, and humans are wired to find the most comfort to reach, ideally, minimal stress.
Regardless of all the bad effects stress reportedly has on the body, there is such thing as healthy stress.
“Being slightly uncomfortable, whether or not by choice, can push us to achieve goals we never thought we could. But it’s important to remember that we don’t need to challenge ourselves and be productive all the time. It’s good to step out of our comfort zone. But it’s also good to be able to go back in.” -Alina Tugend, New York Times
This stress raises your adrenaline and attention causing quick thinking. Eventually, you expose yourself to enough uncomfortable situations over an amount of time that your brain’s quick cognitive thinking improves.
Trying new things out of your normal boundaries can also promote creativity. By challenging yourself and taking risks, you will be more open to experience thus promoting interests in curiosity, emotion, fantasy, and imagination. This said, stepping out of your boundaries is what helps us grow. I’m quite sure that it wasn’t within Benjamin Franklin’s comfort zone to conduct the famous kite experiment. You can’t evolve your career of life if you stick the same habits and routines. Psychologist have found that anxiety helps us perform at our peak because our brains, when challenged, rise to the occasion.
Going overboard
Too much stress is a bad thing, yes. There was once a famous experiment performed on mice. The experiment found that, to an extent, stimulation (stress) improves performance. However, eventually the amount of pressure placed on the mice was too great and the performance rate dropped. Moreover, don’t overload yourself. Optimal stress reduces productivity and stifles creativity.
The point
All in all, a little stress goes a long way. Stepping outside your comfort zone stimulates your cognitive abilities and augments the way you react to stressful situations. Which, overall, is a great outcome. So, get out there! Step outside your comfort zone and enhance your performance in everything you do.
I loved that you turned a simple journal prompt for a blog into a fun magazine-type entry! You made it seem so easy to step out of your comfort zone in an informative way. I also think it was great that you added a quote from New York Times. Overall, I really, really loved your take on this, seriously, it was so good.
I like how you gave sort of a play by play of stepping our of your comfort zone. Like a self help or 5 step plan to better yourself. It was very creative and overall creative.
You used a lot of examples to reinforce the ideas you were writing about. They really helped me to understand and see what you were saying. Besides being quite informative, it was an overall nice read. Nice job, I really loved it.
I really love how you made it into almost a self help type of format. I also really appreciate the use of the quote to further along your point an how instead of just cementing the idea about comfort zones you also promoted stepping out of it and trying different things.