Expanding Your Comfort Zone

Maybe bigger is better.

A pretty awesome woman made an equally awesome illustration at my last Ask Diana meetup. She was describing her comfort zone, and the way she’s managed to expand it. Thanks for the inspiration Dina Kamal.

Dina’s illustration showed her comfort zone, which started off as a fairly small circle. But then she decided to try something outside of this zone - it made her really nervous, and well, uncomfortable. But she liked it. And that small act of pushing outside the boundaries she’d set up, expanded her zone. Until she tried the next thing, which expanded it even more. And then she tried the next thing, and the next thing and now that tiny comfort zone that she once started out with, has grown exponentially into a much larger (and much more exciting) circle.How I see it, we’re always talking about how life happens outside of our comfort zones – and that’s definitely true. But I can’t help but love the idea of expanding our comfort zones and bringing them along for the ride. So instead of focusing so much on leaving that zone, what if we simply shifted our focus to its constant expansion? Since most of us seem to love our comfort zones so freakin much, would we maybe be more compelled to try new and seemingly uncomfortable things if we knew our comfort zones would keep us company, and eventually get on board too?

We all know that too much stress ain’t good for us; it reduces productivity and performance. But we also know that to maximize our performance, our stress level needs to be slightly higher than normal – “Optimal Anxiety”. Otherwise, we’ll just flat-line at whatever we’re doing.

Your comfort zone is a great place; it’s a place where you can lean into, when you want to feel less anxious or stressed. It’s a place where you can gather your thoughts before you try something new. But too much comfort leads to mediocrity…and nothing truly amazing gets created in a state of placid comfort.

Creativity happens when we get inspired, and inspiration happens when we open ourselves up to this wildly awesome world. So keep growing that zone baby.

Peace, love and comfort zone expanding,

Diana