The Comfort Zone Trap: How to Overcome It and Achieve Your Goals

Why You Should Do Something Difficult Every Day: The Power of Leaving Your Comfort Zone

Why You Should Do Something Difficult Every Day

Life can be a comfortable routine, where we stick to what we know and avoid challenges whenever possible. We have our own comfort zones, and it's easy to get stuck in them. But the problem with staying in our comfort zones is that we don't grow, and we don't challenge ourselves. In fact, we can even regress and become less capable of handling obstacles. This is why it's important to do something difficult every day. In this article, we'll explore the three main reasons why you should push yourself out of your comfort zone.

• First Reason

Is that doing something difficult every day prevents us from stagnating. When we only do what's easy and comfortable, our comfort zone begins to shrink. Things that were once comfortable become less so. For example, if someone is socially anxious and avoids social interaction, they might begin to feel uncomfortable even calling their current friends. By challenging ourselves, we leave our comfort zone and enter the growth zone. This is where we struggle and feel incompetent, but it's also where real progress is made.

• Second Reason

Why you should do something difficult every day is that growth only happens when we're challenged. When we lift the same weights at the gym or practice the same things we already know in a new language, we don't improve. To see real progress, we have to leave our comfort zone and increase the challenge. This might mean trying to lift heavier weights or attempting to recall new information without help. Yes, it will be uncomfortable, and yes, you will struggle, but doing anything worthwhile requires us to go through this. The things that have the biggest payoff always feel difficult in the moment. There's no improvement without challenge.

• Third Reason

Why you should do something difficult every day is that it helps you identify which zone needs more work. We all have multiple zones, and we might be pushing ourselves in some areas, stagnating in others, and even regressing in some. By challenging ourselves, we can identify which areas we need to work on and make progress in those areas. It's up to each of us to determine which zone needs more work, and it's perfectly fine to stop progressing in some areas if we're happy with where we are.

So, how can we go from comfort to growth? There are three ways to increase the difficulty of whatever we want to improve on. The first way is to do it more consistently. For example, if we want to run more, we can raise the number of days we run per week. The second way is to do it more intensely, which means doing a more potent version of what we usually do. For example, we could try a new running route that has more hills. The third way is to do it for longer periods of time. For example, we could try running for 30 minutes instead of our usual 20.

Conclusion

Doing something difficult every day can help us grow, prevent us from stagnating, and identify which areas we need to work on. You can double your growth by learning about procrastination. We should challenge ourselves to leave our comfort zones and enter the growth zone, where real progress is made. By doing so, we can become more capable of handling obstacles and achieve our goals. Remember, there's no improvement without challenge, so don't be afraid to push yourself out of your comfort zone. 

"A comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there." - Unknown

Share this post