![]() ![]() Stepping outside of your comfort zone is a profound concept that can promote personal growth. Well, not all of it has to feel and sound cheesy. You may remember a motivational coach saying it as part of a speech to uplift employees and make them feel inspired again. When you hear the term “step outside of your comfort zone,” you may catch a glimmer of a poster hanging in a corporate office kitchen. You will be glad you did.“Fear and anxiety many times indicates that we are moving in a positive direction, out of the safe confines of our comfort zone, and in the direction of our true purpose.” ― Brain Drain: The Breakthrough That Will Change Your Life, Charles F. The trick is to find a happy medium between pushing hard enough to try new things but not so much that you are overwhelmed by the stress and anxiety. Have you noticed that as most people age their comfort zones get smaller and smaller? A study conducted in 2013 showed that learning new and challenging skills can help us stay mentally astute as we age. Recent research by Christine Lee, David Therriault, and Tracy Linderholm published in applied Cognitive Psychology Journal found, for example, that students who dared to leave their familiar campus to study abroad scored higher on two different tests of creativity than those who stayed stateside. Trying new things inspires you to be more creative and opens you up to new experiences. Here are two reasons to break out of your comfort zone and stretch yourself: Reasons to Break Out of Your Comfort Zone If you want to keep learning and growing, you have to risk failure. ![]() What we need to recognize is that there is no real learning without some difficulty and some fumbling. If we are in its grip, we don’t even try potential new ways of doing things. The enemy to overcome is our fear of failure. A little bit of “healthy” stress can be a catalyst for learning. While everyone needs some amount of psychological safety and some absence of interpersonal fear to experiment, collaborate, and innovate, if you truly aspire to achieving personal and professional growth, you need to get used to stretching just beyond the boundaries of your comfortable patterns and routines. It sure seems like a similar drop in people’s ability to think clearly occurs during stress. One recent study showed that people’s peripheral vision drops from 180 degrees to 30 degrees during times of stress. It can mean that you are more open to new ideas and creative thinking.Īccording to Psychology Today, too much stress is personally and culturally toxic, but a little performance pressure can make you stronger. It can mean that you become less afraid of taking risks, more comfortable encountering change, and trying to do things you wouldn’t normally do. It’s not just about “doing more stuff.” Breaking out of your comfort zone can mean finding ways to be more productive and be smarter about the way you work. To Break Out of Your Comfort Zone is Not About “Doing More” Workplace complacency is the enemy of growth, development, and higher performance. To succeed, most people and companies need to keep learning and improving. In a business setting or in a high performance culture, that can be problematic - not only for you but also for your team and the company as a whole. The problem with staying in your comfort zone is that your learning and performance never significantly changes or improves. We relax in the familiarity of the setting and of what is asked of us. It is where we feel at ease and in control. If you want to develop your special talents to propel you upward in your work career, you need to break out of your comfort zone at work. To Grow, Break Out of Your Comfort Zone at Work ![]()
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