There’s nothing better than being at home, where the smell of your favourite cake is mixing up with the smell of coffee and you’re snuggled into a warm fluffy blanket on a couch in front of the TV. Right? That is the place where you are safe. Nobody can touch you there. Nobody can hurt you there. Imagine you stay like that for an hour – it’s ok, you are still comfortable. And then the next few hours you also can stay like that as well. But imagine you have to stay there for a day. You don’t want to go and leave that precious place because you might touch the cold ground and what a terrible thing it would be to destroy that cosiness that you’re into. It is such a lovely feeling to be where you are, but let’s be honest –  after a while, sitting in the same position will cause you more trouble – pain, boredom, misery, sadness and depression. So you know what you have to do right? You have to get up. You have to get up and go. You have to leave your comfort zone.

Is it just me or have you also noticed that if we want to go out to the shop in freezing cold or heavy rain just to buy that bag of Cheetos it seems so natural and ok, but if you want to follow your dreams, get a better job, move to a different town or country, create a new business it seems like it is something unreachable or unavailable for us? It is so scary to do things that we are not used to doing. So many different emotions and feelings go through our mind and body when we face a new and unknown activity doesn’t it? But that means that we leave our comfort zone. We leave all the things that we know and dive into the things that we didn’t explore yet.

Cambridge University dictionary offers this definition comfort zone – a situation in which you feel comfortable and in which your determination and ability are not being tested or a situation in which you feel comfortable and you do not need to do anything new or difficult. So basically comfort zone is our safe place, the huge bubble in which we feel calm, secure and relaxed. It might sound like a good thing, because the comfort zone protects us, but is it really that good? If we are in our comfort zones that means that we aren’t doing anything. We are not trying anything new. We don’t go out, we don’t celebrate, explore, experience, find and enjoy. We do not live in our comfort zones. We just exist. 

Comfort zone is the main thing that stop us from following our dreams.

Out there, behind your fluffy bubble is the actual life that needs to be lived, experienced, tasted, felt and enjoyed. But we are too scared to take that step out of our comfort zones and we create millions of excuses why we don’t have to do that.

You might be interested in exploring similar topics: How to Overcome Limiting Beliefs and Healing Your Inner Child.

How many times did you think about changing your job? Or creating a blog? Or learning a new language? Or starting a new gym class? I know we all have something that we would like to do, learn or try. Now think about the thing that you would like to do and ask yourself how many times did you stop yourself from doing it. I bet a lot. What excuse do you use the most? You don’t have time? You don’t have money? You don’t know what to do? You are not good enough or you are too old for this s**t?

There is so many examples when people left their comfort zones and fears behind them to follow their dreams. Steve Jobs started Apple with a few fellow friends in a garage, and Starbucks owner heard ‘no’ 217 times before his success. 

And there is one thing what they’ve done – they got out of their comfort zone. They overcome all the excuses, they defeat the fear and followed their dreams. I am not saying that you have to drop everything you have and go and create an app now or write a book right now. You don’t have to do that. But what I want to say is that we create our life, we create ourselves everyday over and over again. And the happy life begins out of your comfort zone.

I found some tricks how to get out of your comfort zone, that also helps me a lot when I have difficulties with getting out of the circle:

1. Identify your fears. Sounds silly, but you have to know what you’re afraid of, what scares you. And when you clearly know what you avoid to do because of the fear – there you have to make a change.
2. Learning is a must! When you are not sure about the activity you want to do – you have to learn something new. The goal is to collect some information by reading books, asking friends, watching video tutorials or just googling the information. When you learn about it – you feel more confident in taking the action.
3. Choose positive thoughts instead of negatives. Once you decided to go out of your comfort zone by choosing activity that you are afraid of – your brain will send you lots of negative information about that idea. Try to catch yourself thinking about it and change every thought from negative to more empowering and cheerful.
4. Do not pick the safe choice. Once you start doing something that you’re not used to do – do not pick the safe place. Do not go the same road again. The more uncomfortable you feel – more you will learn and more you will grow.
5. Laugh. This really really helps. Do not judge yourself if something is going unexpectedly wrong and don’t be afraid to look silly – just laugh from yourself and keep on going!

Thank you very much for reading! I hope it will be helpful in the future to find the light in your life. And I want to ask you a question to think about – are you really happy or just comfortable?

Remember to be kind to yourself.

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