Why I don’t leave my comfort zone

The comfort zone is a series of actions, thoughts or behaviors that someone is accustomed to, causing no fear, anxiety nor risk.

It is a topic often talked about, specially in the field of psychology and productivity. People write books and books about stepping out of this zone. Eradicating it, breaking all those previously habits and behaviors considered comfy enough to hold us back on the action is hard and sometimes almost impossible.

Somewhere in my journey of learning, I have discovered that it is not good to try abruptness change. Change must be small and constant, over a long period of time. But how is it possible that taking risks and putting ourselves in uncomfortable situations causes any good at all? And how can we know if this is the right to do, and staying there without moving is the wrong action?

The answer is, I have no idea. This is why I never leave my comfort zone! I learned to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Breaking the pattern, thinking out of the box and not doing the usual has actually helped me increasing the size of my own zone.

I mean, by enlarging my zone, i can still always be inside it. What changes is the actions that build this list, the ‘zone’ itself. Me? I do change, I change my own parameter of what is comfortable and what is not. For example, watch 2 hours of television is actually uncomfortable to me. But studying 4 pomodoros in a row is pretty doable, and it causes me no fear or anxiety, instead, I feel happy and motivated to do more at the end.

In the begging, it was utopic to say that instead of playing games for several hours in a row, I would actually create games for several hours in a row. Today, it is illusory to me say that “I’m going to play Dota 2 all day long”.

What I am trying to say is that I never step out of my comfort zone because mine is always becoming bigger, englobing the actions that once felt a lot like pain. This process take time, and a lot of discipline to get used to, but is truly rewarding. I’m not a saint, and I still try my best everyday to become better at doing it so. I think that this is the right path if I want to add constructive habits into my life, or drop a few bad habits from the window.

Deeply in my subconscious, the tendency to become my greatest version is bigger than any stimulus of the ordinary world. Here and now, I learned to be comfortable being uncomfortable.