Comfort zone: Stop it now from affecting your goals

This is the second part of our 4 part series about comfort zones. This week I want to discuss how to stop your comfort zone from affecting your goals today.

We all have high aspirations. The hardest part of having those aspirations can be turning those dreams and goals into reality. The hard truth is that a lot of us are struggling to reach our goals. The most common reason frequently involves our hesitation to step out of our comfort zone.

The comfort zone is a lot like an invisible force field that surrounds our mind and as you go about your life you experience a lot of different conditions. Within those various conditions, the force always expands and constricts dependent on said conditions.

To explain it a little bit easier, as you face each situation the mind is either free to do more or may constrict, causing your mind to not expand to its full potential.

Is the saying true?

You know…that nothing ever happens in our comfort zone. Being in this hazard zone keeps us in the “someday” place. You know that place of pushing our goals to the side until the time is right. This zone pushes us to wait for another day or when you have more skills, money, and time.

Guys, unfortunately, “someday” will never happen. That thought of the perfect day to work towards your goals will eventually become a distant memory. It becomes a wish you thought you did sooner, rather than later. We create this fear around trying something different. The thought of putting ourselves out there keeps us from going for it We let our comfort zone keep us safe.

Not stepping outside of your comfort zone

When you don’t step outside of your comfort zone, it will not grow, the brain is not forced to do as much as it is capable of. You are going to be stuck in a rut for quite some time in your life. If you have been living in that rut for years now, and it feels like something isn’t right, you need to change it.

Your comfort zone keeps you at a standstill from doing what you desire in life. You may have goals and dreams but you create this list of what-if’s that scare you into thinking something bad will happen if you do try. Instead, you tell yourself it’s safer to stay behind your invisible force field because you don’t want to get hurt or humiliated by attempting your goal. That darn comfort zone will keep you from walking through the opening to a new outlook on life.

Self doubt keeps us locked up

Your doubt yourself and your abilities. You want to level up in your career, but in order to do so, you have to learn how to speak in front of large groups of people. The doubt of not being good enough prevents you from going full force to that next level, although it is something you desperately want.

So, instead of pushing yourself a little bit outside of your comfort zone, you keep to yourself and stay in your lane where you are on cruise control because you’re comfortable. Not pushing yourself just a little bit you end up staying in a job that you hate. Standing on a pier looking out into the great unknown, but your are doubting you could float if you jumped into the water.

Finding your purpose

Whatever purpose you’re seeking to accomplish… Without a doubt, you will have to step out into the awkward moments to move out of the comfort zone. There are so many ways for you to push yourself out of the zone to expand your limits. You just have to make a plan for your goals and dreams. Doing this can improve your self-growth to be more successful and move away from whatever has been holding you back.

You can’t avoid pain while trying to seek joy. Let’s discuss some of the reasons you might find yourself staying in your comfort zone.

Having fear and uncertainty of the unknown

Setting the goals in the comfort zone can result in dissatisfaction. You have this fear that pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone is somehow pushing yourself to the extreme. Thinking about the “extremes” causes fear of not being good enough or not being pretty enough. You start thinking about all these negative things about yourself. No one is going to believe in me if I pursue my dreams. I don’t have enough experience to do said the thing you want to do.

Feeling like no one will take us seriously, which leaves us feeling abandon and alone. Not because we think that thing may not be accomplished; but because our goals exist outside our comfort zone and leaving the comfort zone puts us in a place where others may shun us for going.

No one (including me) wants to leave this place of pleasure. This place where I know what will happen and what won’t happen. It is our safe zone. However, stepping outside the large walls of this comfort zone is where the magic occurs. It is where you will see, stepping outside of the cardboard box you put yourself in you could be developing and reaching your wildest of your dreams.

Having anxiety over change

Placing the goals way out of your comfort zone can result in anxiety. Having goals within your comfort zone can result in dissatisfaction. Ideally, you might need to avoid both extremes and change the goals somewhere in between, in the region called a stretch region.

Growing as a person can be done by extending 10 percent outside of the comfort zone. You don’t develop if you put three simple goals that represent 100 percent within your comfort zone. You don’t develop by placing goals that are within reach. What could happen if you just lifted these lightweights? Zero. You could take the muscles and it is better than doing things. But the muscles won’t become. What could happen if you lifted weights that you will just move with the bad shape? You could hurt yourself and turn out worse than you go.

Having a negative mindset

To achieve your dreams and goals you have to get the motivation to move. The self-doubt isn’t helping, but speaking negatively about yourself is just pushing you further down the rabbit hole. Once you stop with the negative talk you can reach out and overcome the greatest obstacle in your life. Which is yourself. You are holding yourself back with the self-doubt and low self-esteem.

Everything you need lies just outside your comfort zone. Many people don’t take the essential step to motivate themselves, be different. Know that you are worthy of great things and nobody I mean NOBODY can tell you differently. All you have to do is take that first step to push your comfort zone force field wider, which in turn makes you closer to your dreams and goals. Negative talk about yourself does no good for anyone.

Lack of clarity and focus

Make yourself a plan. A step by step plan that pushes you to reach your goal. Start with your goal and work backwards till you get to the step you are on now. I read this article on the Time website by Ruth Soukup. I think she said it best.

The true secret to getting more done, staying focused, and maintaining motivation is to start thinking big and to set stretch goals — goals that push you past your comfort zone and get your adrenaline pumping.

Goal-setting is relatively easy if you follow a couple of simple principles. The goal should be difficult but not impossible. This is the most crucial step. Make sure the steps to your goal are outside of your comfort zone, but not so far out there that you would never reach it. Don’t set your sights low. Additionally, you need to make sure that whatever steps you create for yourself are the most important steps. If you don’t do the most important steps, you are just doing busywork. You will never reach your goals by doing busywork.

Write down those important steps so you can monitor the progress on a daily basis. Remember, when you reach that first step, celebrate it. Even if it is a small victory. Every step matters. You are closer than what you were before and that should be celebrated.

Fear of failing or possibly succeeding

You decide to take the leap of faith and get out of your comfort zone. However, you didn’t make a plan. You just said you wanted to do whatever your goal is and you thought everything was going to go your way. You just tried to go full force out of your comfort zone with an 80 percent chance you could hurt yourself.

Then you go back to ground zero and try again, but you fail again. Without that plan written out you just ended up 259 percent outside of your comfort zone without a life vest. Now you now have a fear of failing.

You went way further outside of the comfort zone without a plan. Bad things happen when you do that. Create yourself the plan to reach your goal with each step only go 10 percent out of your comfort zone.

Example Goal

Let’s say your goal is to start your own business of starting a blog. Your first step wouldn’t be to monitize your blog to make money. You wouldn’t get very far. Make a backwords plan. The end goal is a monitized blog, what step would you need to complete before that to make that happen? You would need to have viewers… then so on and so forth.

**Disclaimer this is not 100% how a blog plan would go. You need to figure out what would work for you**

Monetized blog making money -100%
Viewers 90%
Blog Posts 80%
Get Followers 70%
Create social media profiles 60%
Get a hosting platform 50%
Buy Website URL 40%
Come up with a blog name 30%
Research your niche -20%
Decide you want to start a blog – 10%

Just doing a little bit at a time can get you to your dreams and goals.

Make mistakes, learn and keep going

Things to keep in mind when running towards your target It is okay to make mistakes. They’re not even mistakes they are minor setbacks. Again learn from your set back, reassess your goal, and what you can do differently. Implement the new route you set up and continue on your badass boss way.

Do one task at a time, before you move on to the next. So many of us turn into scatterbrains when we attempt to multi-task. Don’t be scared if you make some errors along the way…

No matter what your life looks like, your comfort zone is keeping you stuck in a place you might not want to be. You stop the personal growth personally and professionally You stop growing and developing new and interesting skills about yourself. Living your life as a creature of habit – You eat the same meals every day, live in the same house, city, state you grew up in. You end up driving the same car and still hanging out with the toxic people who don’t push you to be a better version of yourself.

I have always said from a young age “I will never live the same day twice. I always push myself to do something different each and every day that betters myself because no one is going to do it for me.”

You are missing out, hun!

By staying in your comfort zone is making it easy for others to pass you up for opportunities to change your life. Friends who are going after the life they want may leave you behind because you are stuck with the same shit, different day kind of life. It will be a life of mediocrity for you, my friend.

Not taking the necessary actions to move the tiniest bit out of your comfort zone really impacts your goals. You will stay where you are at.

Having that unwillingness to push yourself hinders your abilities to live your life to its full potential. Spending your time worrying about what coulda, woulda, shoulda happen if you went for your goals is a waste of your time. You end up not going for it and never reaching it.

Learning to extend outside the comfort zone is important for learning and developing, progressing at your work and business, and reaching your personal and business goals. But is it always the fact that you want to move outside the comfort zone to be productive? Are there places when it sounds reasonable to be just where you are?

Struggling to see yourself achieving your goals is often stemmed from poor self-esteem. I have been working on that with my step-daughter but the principles apply to everyone if you want to check it out. You are stuck and afraid of the change because what if you are not good enough. Honey, you will never know unless you dip your toe in the pond.

Try this exercise

I want you to take a minute and close your eyes.

Envision yourself taking that leap and you succeed. You chose to move forward with new ideas, new experiences, and different perspectives. In doing that you decided to stop being afraid of failure and start taking action. You made the decision to go after your dreams and goals. Making a conscious decision to achieve anything in life. Tell me what would be your first step?

That right there is the 10 percent I was talking about earlier in Anxiety over the change section. Don’t let fear hold you back from doing what you want to do. You know what to do now put the plan in motion.

One small step

One small step outside the comfort zone, one giant leap in your confidence. When was this last time you did things that frightened you? Push that fear aside and strut right out of the comfort zone like the badass you are. You fail, good. Take it as a lesson learned. You figure out what went wrong and you do it again and again. And then again. No matter what the outcome is. You fight for something more. You accept every failure, every win to build those big beautiful wings of yours to fly so you can live for yourself.

I have faith in you that you are ready to yourself past the boundaries of not being good enough, not smart enough… whatever dumbshit you are saying to yourself to keep in down in the dumps. You are everything and much more.

If this helped you see that your comfort zone is affecting your goals today, leave me a comment with what will be your first order of business to get you outside your comfort zone?

Don’t forget to check the other posts in this series of comfort zones.

We will be focusing on:
– Finding who you truly are in the unknown
– Is your comfort zone preventing you from achieving your goals? (You are here)
– If staying in your comfort zone could be holding you back.
– If fear is standing in your way of getting the life you deserve.

Until next time, Have a great day!