A comfort zone is a psychological space where we feel the safest and find the most comfort.
It’s a style of living where everything is familiar and the challenges are so mundane that nothing can surprise us.
But if everything is familiar to you and nothing can surprise you, then there is nothing new and exciting in your life either.
Even though comfort zones are a natural program we create to keep us safe with less energy input, sometimes they are our prison. They keep us safe, just as prison walls keep prisoners safe from the outside world.
In some cases, comfort zones might even be harmful to your health, and you’ll subconsciously assume you are safe just because you are surrounded by familiar unhealthy behaviors.
Humans are not meant to just stay safe. Living requires us to venture into uncharted territories, both externally and internally.
Like gold that keeps its shine with every polishing, so are human beings designed to shine with every pressure there is. Comfort zones couldn’t give us that.
However, comfort zones are not bad, as long as you have the courage to break out of them. In fact, that’s how you grow.
7 Character Evolving Benefits of Breaking Out of Your Comfort Zone
Here are the 7 most important character-evolving benefits we get from breaking out of our comfort zones:
1. Outside of your comfort zone is where you feel most alive.
Let’s travel back in time to when you were still a kid. Remember the times you were scared of trying new things?
By doing the thing you were scared of, you felt the most alive. You learned something that stayed with you.
2. Breaking out of your comfort zone develops your character.
As you grow older, you place more value on stability because it promises you security.
But security does not develop you; finding security or creating it does.
You can do that only by exploring the unknown, where things are not so familiar and you must think outside of your daily pattern.
And that’s how you develop new aspects of your character.
3. Outside of your comfort zone is where you find new passions and discover new talents.
Like a flower, the leaves cover the true essence of who you are. As you go through life, you open some leaves.
But most people open just a few, never realizing who they really are or what their potential really is.
Breaking out of your comfort zone, you try new things, and you learn more and more from the flower.
You discover other aspects of yourself, other passions, and different talents that you have. That’s how you find out your essence.
4. Breaking out of your comfort zone gives you new realms to explore.
Spending more of your time with the same people and talking about the same topics with the same flow of reasoning may make you close-minded to all the other ways of living.
When you expose yourself to a different setting, another group of people, and other opinions and cultures, you go to realms you never thought existed. Your mind opens up.
By doing the same routine every day, you are living a mechanical existence. Your brain uses the same neurons and neural pathways.
The countless other neural pathways and potential neural connections stay dormant; all these other ways of seeing the world are unused.
But once you go to an unfamiliar territory to explore, your mind fully activates, and you see things with greater clarity.
In a way, you force your mind to use different neural pathways by changing the pattern.
You can try by just turning your phone off to focus on new things. It works wonders.
5. Escaping your comfort zone builds your self-confidence.
Anxiety issues might arise from merely thinking of talking to strangers. But actually, doing that is how you make the anxiety fade away from your life.
By trying new things you have never done before, it’s normal to feel a little afraid and have anxiety. That’s a healthy response to new situations.
However, being strong enough to not let those emotions decide for you is what builds your confidence.
By gaining experience in situations where you were courageous enough, despite the outcome, you are giving yourself memories from which your self-esteem can arise.
The easier it is for you to gain self-esteem, the stronger your self-confidence will be. And the stronger your self-confidence, the less anxiety you will feel.
6. Getting out of your comfort zone makes you an interesting person.
Amazing things start to happen once you break out of your comfort zone. Because they’re new, they’ll appear weird, crazy, and epic.
These things are full of details and emotions. They shape great stories and interesting conversations with people.
People would always like to hear about your new adventure and the crazy things you encountered along the way.
Even if you are really bad at telling stories, just sharing your memories from outside of your comfort zone makes you a lot more interesting than anyone who rarely escapes their comfort zone.
7. Being outside of your comfort zone fills your heart and expands your spirit.
When you spread your wings to fly, you’ll see different communities and worlds that exist. You get to learn from them. You discover new things.
There are a lot of sports, activities, foods, books, events, and music to experience. There are countless places and people to get to know.
There are categories you can explore that you don’t even know are out there. The world is a much bigger place than you can even imagine.
You cannot explore all the art and all the beautiful creations people have made, even if you try something new every second.
There is no logical reason to not do what fills your heart and expands your spirit, especially in today’s age when you can do almost everything through a device in your pocket.
Life is a gift. It’s such a waste to spend it on mundane routines and predictability.
Escape your comfort zone, go to a new bar, travel, talk to strangers, try new food, listen to new music, read a new book, or do something you are afraid of.
Taking the first steps may seem terrifying. But that fear fades the moment you take action.
That fear is nothing compared to how terrifying it is to live your life with the regrets of not doing something you loved.
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