How to get out of your Comfort Zone without the Discomfort.

Your mind only has one job - to keep you safe. Sounds great right? Thank you mind for keeping me safe, I appreciate you. But here's the thing. What your mind considers to be "safe" is what it currently knows, where it feels in control, stable and secure. However the mind isn't subjective so there isn't a judgement about whether safe is good or bad or right or wrong, it's just safe or not safe.

But how can we break through our self-limiting beliefs and blow up those self-sabotaging behaviours when every time we try to our mind screams "Danger!!!" and retreats into safety again?

There's a lot written about how "Life begins at the end of your Comfort Zone..." and similar motivational quotes. In actual fact, what's at the end of your Comfort Zone is your Fear Zone, and it's this zone that keeps you running back to the safety of the Comfort Zone.

The comfort zone is a behavioural state within which a person operates in an anxiety-neutral condition, using a limited set of behaviours to deliver a steady level of performance, usually without a sense of risk.

Let's look at what life looks like in the Comfort Zone and why it's such a nice place to be. When you are in your Comfort Zone:

• You feel safe, secure and in control
• You can do most things with relative ease and are rarely challenged 
• You are comfortable in the routine and predictability of life
• You will experience low levels of stress and anxiety
• You can deliver a steady level of performance in the workplace

That all sounds pretty awesome, so what's the big deal then about stepping out of your Comfort Zone? Here are some of the downsides of staying stuck there:

• It’s like being stuck in a holding pattern - groundhog day over and over again
• You will have less opportunity to see how capable you truly are
• You won’t learn any new skills, and eventually be left behind as others around you learn and develop
• Your mind will use being stuck as yet more evidence to reinforce any negative views of yourself 

Why the Fear Zone is so scary and uncomfortable.

If stepping out of your Comfort Zone was that easy, we'd all be doing it all the time. Common theory says that to get to the Growth and Learning Zones we have to go through the Fear Zone first. What happens in the Fear Zone though that defeats us time and time again?

• We worry about what others will think of us, we may experience shame and fear
• We become risk averse
• We display low self-confidence, low self-worth and negative self talk
• We make excuses for not doing things

In the Fear Zone, the negative self talk can be overwhelming. The worry about what others will think of us can stop us before we even start. Fear of failure, fear of loss, fear of looking silly. The Inner Critic is taking centre stage in the Fear Zone, and often times Imposter Syndrome makes a cameo appearance too. "Who do you think you are to do that? What makes you think you'll be good at it? What makes you think people want to listen to you? " Often times we seek advice or support from others, only to have them talk us out of it and raise more fears - this is a reflection of their own insecurities and Comfort Zone boundaries.

As I started to coach people to step out of their Comfort Zone and saw them getting stuck, I began to wonder.... "What if instead of going through the Fear Zone, what if we stretched our Comfort Zone to be bigger instead? What if eventually the Comfort Zone overtook the Fear Zone and we got to Growth and Learning without needing to be afraid or uncomfortable?"

How to start stretching your Comfort Zone and avoid or minimise the Fear Zone

Getting out of your Comfort Zone doesn't have to be taking big bold risks, giant sweeping changes and new habits. By all means do so if you feel so emboldened, but remembering that your mind's job is to keep you safe is the reason why so many New Years Resolutions fail within 6 weeks, and we fall back into old patterns and old ways of thinking until eventually we give up altogether. Instead consider taking small incremental steps and your Comfort Zone will stretch a little each time with you.

Think of stretching your Comfort Zone like adding an extra resistance band or selecting the next level up one when you are working out. If you stay using the same level of resistance, it's gets easy and boring and you're not making any progress in building your muscle. Going one level harder strengthens and stretches your muscles without causing you injury.

1. Start Small. Take baby steps. Don’t try to do too much, too quickly. Allow yourself time. Breaking your goal down into small, achievable micro steps is the easiest way to affect lasting change.
2. Find your risk tolerance.  If you’ve been stuck in your Comfort Zone for a while, you’ve probably got a low risk appetite, so consider what small change could you make that stretches that risk security life-line but doesn’t break it.  Then make small changes within your risk tolerance.   The more often you stretch your risk life-line and your comfort zone the bigger it gets, until suddenly you’re moving through your Fear Zone and you didn’t even realise it!
3. Understand your mindset. Why do I say negative things to myself? Why am I afraid of what people might think or say? Why do I have that belief when it doesn't even make sense to me? Understand your mindset and the subconscious thoughts and beliefs that are driving you and you are on your way to mastering your life.
4. Become your own Coach.  And also hire a Coach! You can elevate your thinking by coaching yourself. Ask  yourself questions like, “What is the worst that could happen? What is holding me back? How can I make this a better experience?” This will help you re-engage your prefrontal cortex, which basically means you’ll be able to calm yourself and be better prepared before you step outside your comfort zone.
5. Find your cheer squad.  If you want to leave your comfort zone, you must surround yourself with the right people - people with a growth mindset, people who challenge themselves to be better and do better on a daily basis. 
6. Accept Failure, and find the lesson in it.  Fear of failure is one of the most common fears that hold us back from achieving excellence. When you look at the best athletes, business people and actors, you will find they have one thing in common: they have all failed spectacularly at some point in their lives. The difference is that they don’t let failure hold them back. They know that in every failure there is a lesson – but you must move out of your comfort zone in order to find it.

Ready to Stretch your Comfort Zone?

Infinite Mind Life Coaching offers 1:1 and group coaching on stretching your Comfort Zone. Our signature program "From Can't to Can" helps you to understand the mindset and beliefs that are keeping you stuck and how to transform these to stretch and achieve what you want in your life. If you're feeling stuck in your career or your life while others are passing you by, then this is the program to change your life.

From Can't to Can is also available in a half day workshop and is ideal for organisations looking to create a High Performance Mindset and increase resilience and self-belief.

About Margaret

Margaret is a 3 times survivor of burn out and a recovering perfectionist. Quitting the corporate world, she dedicated herself to the prevention of chronic stress and burnout in the workplace, and supporting those who are experiencing their own burn out journey.

She is an accredited Strategic Life Coaching Practitioner, Law of Attraction Practitioner, Life Transformation Practitioner and Happiness Coach, based in Melbourne Australia.

Margaret is the Founder and CEO of Infinite Mind Life Coaching providing Workplace Wellbeing programs focussed on mindset and mindfulness, as well as burnout and stress management coaching. Margaret combines a 30+ year career in high performance, management and leadership roles with practical and easy to apply methods along with her own personal story of life changing transformation.

Margaret is also the Founder and CEO of Queen of my Own Universe, supporting and empowering women to uncover and step into their full potential.

Margaret's story about how she quit as a Senior Vice President of a global software business to live her life helping others to live their best life was recently featured in an article in the Australian Financial Review.

To learn more get in contact with Margaret on 0405 755 526.

www.infinitemindlifecoaching.com.au

www.queenofmyownuniverse.com