Living on the Edge…

…of your comfort zone.

Pascal Kuta

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Let’s face it. We don’t like to change. We like the things exactly as they are and everything that disrupts them creates a deep anxiety. Not cool!

No, this is not ‘yet another Covid-19’-article, but one about the beauty of leaving one’s comfort zone and some pointers to help you out with that. But, let me start with a little bit of personal background first.

I’m just like everyone else. Highly afraid of change to my routines and definitely not comfortable with them. Just the thought of doing something I am not used to makes me shiver, especially when it comes to social interactions. Yet, I ended up moving countries and continents a few times, leaving everything behind in the blink of an eye, and often with a ‘feck it, let’s do it’-mentality, which is quite clearly a little bit mental.

So, what made me do it? Well, at some point in my life I decided to specifically seek the challenge, the uncertainty, the out-of-comfort-experience and push my limits. While I wouldn’t recommend that to anyone just like that, I do think it helped to boost my personal development and made me overall a much calmer person. My friends and acquaintances often even say “Pascal, nothing can stress you out!”, and I do like to think of myself as someone who is just fine with uncertainty - or in other words: okay outside my comfort zone.

So, here’s the thing: I’d like more people to get to the stage of being just a little bit calmer and more okay with all the randomness that life throws at you. Okay, this does somewhat fit the Covid-19 theme. In any case, the past months did inspire me to write this article and I’d like to give you a few pointers of how you can start training yourself to be just a little bit more comfortable outside your, well, comfort zone. Let’s get started!

Try Something New!

This is probably nothing mind-blowing or new, but trying something new can ease you into being more comfortable with uncertainty. There are mere endless possibilities of how you can do it and what works best for you, but here is some inspiration:

  • Cook something new with a previously unknown ingredient. We all have our comfort foods and dishes we feel comfortable with, especially considering our own cultural context, but maybe try to look into another culture’s food and their ingredients. You might be surprised how easy it is to use. And then you have a new spark of inspiration to add more variety to your cooking, which sounds pretty dope to me.
  • Take another street when biking/walking and maybe find something weird and cool. And adding to this, just stop in your way and admire the weird streetart/view/whatever you might find, even if it means you’re at home 10 minutes later than anticipated. I know, this might sound weird and also inefficient, but seriously, try it. You might realise that your city is more interesting than you thought, but also you might find little cute shortcuts and who knows? Maybe you’ll get inspired to do more photography and live your creative side a bit more. Always a win in my book!
  • Propagate a new plant from a cutting never done before. If you’re like me, you have a household full of plants. Or you don’t have any, also cool. You do you. But in any case, try to propagate one of your beloved ones. I know, anxiety shoots immeadiately when thinking about it, but you need to cut your plants anyways every now and then and maybe you’ll end up with a second plant you can gift to your friends (or enemies, you do you)! Or you’ll end up killing the cutting. That’s life, but you will feel more comfortable with it.
  • Start learning an instrument. Okay, I know, this is a big one, but seriously, look at the little steps and not the big ones. Truth is, no one really masters any instrument anyways, so if you ever felt like playing the guitar, get going! Start with 5 minutes a day and set a timer to keep the time. That’s all, and gradually you might become better and better without ever having had too much of a leap to take. And you might realise that the big challenge wasn’t that big at all.

Keep Pushing Yourself Just A Little Bit Further Every Day

Alright, now you have some inspiration of what you can do to get started. The insteresting part is how to keep pushing yourself to become more comfortably with increasing challenge. You decide on your own pace, so if you don’t feel comfortable yet, that’s also good. No one can judge you on your own self-development. Here’s some inspiration:

  • Next time you go out for a run, take another path that may take longer. We all have our running routes (if we go out running that is) and after a while we know how we feel comfortable and how our body works with it. Maybe try to change it up and take a different path.
  • Increase your learning intervals. As previously mentioned, start learning an instrument for 5 minutes a day to get started. If you feel like you’re up for the challenge, increase it to 10 minutes, 15 minutes. Whatever feels comfortable for you.
  • Try exposing your newly acquired skills to friends (and enemies?). You don’t know if your cooking with that weird new ingredient (s-a-l-t?) is? Try cooking for others and expose yourself to the challenge. Obviously in an appropriate pandemic safe setting ;-)

Relate To Your Professional Life

Alright, now you’re challenging yourself in all sorts of ways in your life, but how does this relate to your professional life? This obviously depends on your field and how you work, but there are some things that you can push for to become more comfortable with challenge and keep improving. For example:

  • Ask to lead the next meeting. Meetings are a typical part of work-related settings. Try leading one yourself if you’re usually not in that position. This could be something simple as just the weekly check-ins with your colleagues, or something more advances like a customer meeting. Whatever works for you. Just have a conversation with your colleagues that you would like to do that and you might be surprised about the support you get.
  • Try to do things a colleague is usually doing (in an acceptable framework of course). You are always bugging that colleague of yours to fix “this” or “that”. Maybe try doing it yourself with the help of your colleague? You might feel more empowered and comfortable with the new challenge.
  • Bring up ideas! This one is a bit tricky, but if you have a great idea that relates to your work space, try speaking up about them. First you can talk with colleagues you have a good relation with before bringing it up on a meeting to build up confidence. You might see quite some cool results about the impact you can have.

Final Words

Cool, you’ve read an article on Medium and now you’re a pro in overcoming your comfort zone, right? Well, unfortunately no. And I know I am disregarding my own article here, but here’s the thing: We are all different and deal with challenge in a different way. I do hope however that I might have been able to give you some inspiration of how you can, little by little, overcome fears and extend your comfort zone. Not because I think I’m such a dawg, but because I genuinely believe that many of us are full of potential and great ideas and if we were a bit more comfortable with expressing that, we could make this planet a little bit better. At least, so I hope.

In any case, have the fruitiest of days/weeks/months and feel free to share your own stories and inspirations!

Let’s talk about it.

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Pascal Kuta

Believer in a better world. And trying to actually achieve it — by not sticking to conventions. More about me on pascalkuta.com