A full list would require a separate article, so here are four top-line, broadly applicable examples. We’ll explore a few powerful benefits of leaving the comfort zone in the next section.īenefits of Leaving the Comfort Zone: 4 ExamplesĪside from enhancing performance, there are plenty of less-direct benefits of leaving the comfort zone. The best sailors, however, aren’t born in smooth waters. While occupying the comfort zone, it’s tempting to feel safe, in control, and that the environment is on an even keel. Nevertheless, appreciating the steps can help in tolerating uncertainty. Sometimes, we even need to retreat to the comfort zone periodically before mustering the strength to leave again. Peaks, troughs, and plateaus often complicate the journey. In reality, the process of moving from the comfort zone to a growth zone may not be linear. Most people have experienced leaving the comfort zone in at least one area of life, and there are usually plenty of insights to be uncovered from this experience. Understanding and capitalizing on personal strengths can be of great use. Taking on challenges that lie somewhere in between will stretch you, leading to growth and learning. Similarly, you must develop an intuitive sense of where your panic zone lies. To leave your comfort zone, you must appreciate its outer limits. Thus, it can be beneficial for clients to consider the following:Īcross every life domain, everyone’s zones vary in size. It’s important to state that like most behavioral change attempts, moving into the growth zone becomes harder without some level of self-awareness. This is what it means to be in the growth zone. Yet persevere long enough, and you enter the learning zone, where you gain new skills and deal with challenges resourcefully.Īfter a learning period, a new comfort zone is created, expanding one’s ability to reach even greater heights. Without a clear roadmap, there’s no way to build on previous experiences. It takes courage to step from the comfort zone into the fear zone. Source: Toolkit – ‘ Leaving The Comfort Zone’ As the below diagram shows, fear can be a necessary step en route to the learning and growth zones: When leaving the comfort zone, fear doesn’t always equate to being in the panic zone. But too much, and you enter the ‘panic’ zone, which also stalls progress: Too little, and you remain in the comfort zone, where boredom sets in. The core idea is that our nervous systems have a Goldilocks zone of arousal. The Yerkes–Dodson Law (Yerkes & Dodson, 1907) is true not just for more tangible types of performance, such as being given a stressful new task at work, but also in many life areas such as understanding ourselves, relating to others, and so on. This makes sense because in response to anxiety-provoking stimuli, the options are either fight (meet the challenge), flight (run away/hide), or freeze (become paralyzed). Above a certain threshold, they began to hide rather than perform.Ĭorresponding behavior has been seen in human beings. They saw that mice became more motivated to complete mazes when given electric shocks of increasing intensity – but only up to a point. In 1907, Robert Yerkes and John Dodson conducted one of the first experiments that illuminated a link between anxiety and performance. It’s here that people go about routines devoid of risk, causing their progress to plateau.īut the concept can be traced further back to the world of behavioral psychology. Within the comfort zone, there isn’t much incentive for people to reach new heights of performance. “The comfort zone is a behavioral state within which a person operates in an anxiety-neutral condition, using a limited set of behaviors to deliver a steady level of performance, usually without a sense of risk.” The phrase ‘comfort zone’ was coined by management thinker Judith Bardwick in her 1991 work Danger in the Comfort Zone: Now firmly embedded in cultural discourse, the metaphor of ‘leaving one’s comfort zone’ became popular in the 1990s. 4 Tips to Support Leaving Your Comfort Zone.Benefits of Leaving the Comfort Zone: 4 Examples.What Is the Comfort Zone in Psychology?.
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