Last week I spoke about adding more fun and games to life in order to revitalize both mind and body.

Today I invite you to inspect your life a little more specifically. How much time per day or month, do you spend in your comfort zone? Do you continuously go to the same stores and restaurants? Do you always meet the same people? Do you visit the same vacation spots? Do you, again and again, take the same roads or watch the same TV shows? The comfort zone is the area we know very well and in which we are comfortable and feel secure. However, it is also the area in which we stagnate and don’t develop further as we already know everything. We can compare it to our favourite lounge chair – we restfully sit in it, relax, the heart rate is low, alertness is reduced and we become sluggish and slower. A perfect place to relax but not a place to stay for longer or forever spend time in, because development, the learning and the challenge to actively participate in life and determine the future, is outside of our comfort zone!

Outside the comfort zone is where our alertness and attention is sharp, where we wake up our curiosity and creativity, there where we learn new things and grow beyond ourselves.

The most difficult thing about getting out of your comfort zone is the first step – as with so many things – however we can train that, just like a muscle. The more often we try new, unknown things, or takes on these challenges, the easier it is to do and the larger the comfort zone becomes. Start with it today! Here a few examples:

• try out a new restaurant
• specifically contact a new person, perhaps even a person from another culture
• learn a new language or start a new hobby
• read a book in a genre that you normally would not choose
• consciously go shopping in new stores … you will be surprised what is available, things you perhaps have never seen
• eat a dish that you have never tried
• try out new clothing styles and enjoy it
• take on a leadership role in a club or charity
• hold a public speech (a classical among courage tests)
• step up and try something new, impressive, challenging

How else could you test your own limits and exceed them with large steps? Take hold of courage and every day take one large step outside your comfort zone and feel the full impact of life … with all senses!

Movie

The Comfort Zone

PLAY

Quotes

Challenge is a dragon with a gift in its mouth…Tame the dragon and the gift is yours.

Noela Evans

Having a dream is what keeps you alive. Overcoming the challenges make life worth living.

Mary Tyler Moore

It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.

Alan Cohen