How to Expand Your Outer Purpose Comfort Zone
When it comes to comfort zones, there’s a sweet spot. A point at which you’re growing and expanding with intention while also being mindful not to over-extend and burnout. Keep reading if you’d like to know how to expand your career comfort zone with intention. Be sure to read this post first if you haven’t already.
here’s what you’ll learn from this article:
Why comfort zones are cozy but unfulfilling.
How to differentiate between stress and growth-oriented discomfort.
A totally new way of thinking about your comfort zone.
Let’s get to it!
THE ‘C’ ZONE
Comfort zones.
They’re so cozy, aren’t they? Safe, predictable, relaxed, easy, routine, (mostly) risk-free.
Comfort zones aren’t home to big wins but they also aren’t home to big failures, which is why they’re so appealing.
This is especially true for those of us who consider ourselves “perfectionists,” which many of us here do (*see our sidebar on perfectionism below).
The ‘C’ zone is the perfect place to hang out and exist.
No rocking the boat.
No shaking things up.
Just cruising on autopilot. Smooth waters ahead. Overcast but no chance of rain or storms.
This is why so many of us find ourselves stuck. We hate to love our comfort zones but we do.
And yet even though it feels so cozy and protected, spend too much time there and it quickly becomes unfulfilling and bland.
*Perfectionism will hit self-destruct on every dream you’ll ever have, especially if you continue to allow it to dance around in its fancy clothes. Take away its fancy clothes, and you’ll see that perfectionism is nothing more than fear. It may look a little prettier on the outside, packaged in that over-achiever, humble-braggy facade, but its dream-squashing outcome is just as detrimental to the soul.
EXPANSION FUELS THE SOUL
We hinted at this last week, but the reason we wind up feeling so bleh in our comfort zone is because one of the primary purposes of life is to expand.
And we only expand by stretching ourselves.
Our life force is fueled and energized by expansion. And so when we retreat into the safety of our comfort zone for too long, the soul speaks up through our emotions.
Our days become blanketed with feelings of being stuck, stagnant, unfulfilled, apathetic, resentful, bored, etc.
These feelings are no fault of you or your mind, they’re a nudge from your soul!
You may have comfortably ignored the gentle signs and synchronicities it had been sending you before, but it knows you’ll pay attention to icky emotions.
We find this quote from Brené Brown to ring true here:
“Unused creativity is not benign. It metastasizes. It turns into grief, rage, judgement, sorrow, shame.”
Much the same, unexpanded comfort zones aren’t benign either.
We’re not here, experiencing life on earth, to stay the same. We’re here to grow, expand, and bring our gifts into the world.
Now that we know why it’s important to stretch the bounds of our comfort zone, let’s clarify exactly what growth-oriented discomfort looks like...
DON’T MISTAKE STRESS FOR GROWTH
Comfort-zone-stretching growth is discomfort of a very specific kind.
It feels challenging and yet expansive.
It pushes us yet invigorates and energizes us.
It’s uncomfortable but not suffocating.
It’s not uncommon to experience energetic tension while stretching the bounds of your comfort zone, but this type of tension is very different than stress.
Stress, itself, isn’t an indicator of growth.
This is an important distinction, especially during these hustle-praising times.
Hustling yourself into the ground doesn’t automatically imply that you’re growing in an expansive, comfort-zone-stretching manner.
Energizing discomfort is a sign that we’re growing, chronic stress is a sign that:
We’re out of our outer purpose sweet spot.
We’ve leaned too far forward into doing and have neglected our primary purpose of being.
Or both of the above.
Chronic stress is no good. It’s a pressure cooker that halts growth rather than fosters it.
To share another plant analogy…
The tomato plant that endures a bit of discomfort via the elements—e.g., intermittent high-heat days, occasional drought—produces juicier, tastier fruit than the plant that’s totally comfortable.
On the other hand, the tomato plant that endures chronic stress via the elements—constant high-heat days, total drought—withers and eventually dies.
The former has unwittingly pushed the bounds of its comfort zone in a growth-oriented manner, the latter has hustled itself into the ground.
YOUR COMFORT ZONE IS A BALLOON
When asked to visualize their comfort zone, people tend to think of a circle or a box.
There are two presumed options with this visual: You’re either in your comfort zone or you’re out of it.
With this limited perspective also comes the false notion that once you’re out of your comfort zone, you’ve made it. That the hard work is done and you’re set for life.
This conceptualization is a bit too black-and-white for our tastes. When it comes to comfort zones, we’ve found there’s a bit more gray in between.
And so instead of thinking of our comfort zone as a circle (or box), we like to think of it as a balloon.
With this in mind, maintaining a growth-oriented relationship to your comfort zone means you’re consistently expanding the balloon outward with intentional action.
It also means you’re keenly aware of the bounds of the balloon, so that you can simultaneously expand it and respect the limits of its elasticity.
That fear-facing braveness we talked about last week? It’s the air (or helium) in this balloon metaphor.
And so there are three ways this can go:
When you take steps in the direction of your exciting-but-fear-inducing ideas, you breathe air into the balloon, expanding your comfort zone outward with intentional action.
When you take too much action too fast or completely neglect being and focus only on doing (read: you hustle yourself into the ground), you inject too much air into the balloon at once and it pops or you’re left feeling light-headed. (The same can be said when you take lots of scattered, unintentional action and spread yourself thin trying to fill multiple balloons at once.)
When you nervously obey the limits imposed by your fears and don’t take any action at all, you starve the balloon of air and it shrivels.
WHICH BALLOON ARE YOU?
(The below examples reference the story Ashley shared last week—you can read it here under the ‘Make it Real’ section if you haven’t already.)
Which balloon best describes your relationship to your comfort zone most of the time?
The ever-expanding, limitless balloon. You’re stretching and growing as you energetically and compassionately push the bounds of your comfort zone outward through intentional action. You still experience fear but look to it as your guiding light, because you value learning and growth over comfort. You also respect the need to take restorative breaks so that you don’t get light-headed from all that balloon-blowing. Your outer purpose/work feels fulfilling most of the time.
Example: This describes the predominant relationship Ashley had with her comfort zone from “the turning point” onward. She took mindful but brave and serious steps toward her exciting-but-fear-inducing idea.
The popped balloon that’s left a chaotic trail of confetti in its wake. You’re stuck in a habitual hustle ‘n’ grind pattern and chronically stressed. You don’t have the bandwidth to be intentional, so you find yourself in a state of perpetual reactivity. It might have even felt fun at first, but now you’re burnt out after picking up all that messy confetti one piece at a time. Your outer purpose/work feels overwhelming.
Example: This is what hypothetically could have happened had Ashley prematurely quit her job at “the turning point” in 2014 instead of waiting until 2016 once she had two years worth of steady, fear-facing steps under her belt that slowly but persistently stretched the bounds of her comfort zone.
The shriveled, shrunken balloon that hovers a mere six inches off the ground in the corner. You’re playing it safe and letting your fears convince you that life is better inside that comfort zone. Your outer purpose/work feels easy but not necessarily fulfilling.
Example: This describes Ashley’s relationship to her comfort zone before “the turning point”. She had big ideas, hopes, and dreams but even bigger fears and limiting beliefs and so she played it safe.
Listen, no judgment here.
Most of us (our hands are raised) can see a time- or circumstance-bound version of ourselves within each of the above descriptions.
The relationship we have with fear and, consequently, with our comfort zone tends to change throughout the years and within the various seasons of life.
We’re not here to judge where you’re at right now, and we encourage you not to judge where you’re at either.
Instead, remove the fearful lens of the ego—if only for a moment—and consider whether or not the relationship you have with your comfort zone is working for your soul.
We find it helps to close our eyes, put our hands over our heart, and really feel our way through this question.
If your relationship with your comfort zone is working for you, great. Keep at it.
If it isn’t, still great because now you know. Your soul has set off the alarm bells, and it’s time to shake things up.
More on that next week...
INTENTION
I take brave, fear-facing and intentional actions to expand my comfort zone. I value learning and growth over comfort and honor the discomfort that comes with it.
3 RESOURCES
Article: How to Create Life Balance Between Dreams and Habits by Wayne Dyer
Book: The War of Art* by Steven Pressfield
5-Minute Video: How to Find the Courage to Do Anything by Marie Forleo
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