Three Signs to Know Whether You are in the Comfort Zone
Life is good, isn’t it? It may seem that way. Things at home are calm. Your relationships are strong. Your work is generally a breeze. Pieces of your life are fitting together like a neat puzzle. Sure, there is the odd loose end here and there, some bothersome acquaintance you have to deal with or your car occasionally breaking down. But these are minor blips. In the big scheme of things, as you lean back in your office chair, you can safely say you are pleased as punch with the way things have turned out for you.
Yet, in the back corners of your mind, there remains a recurring thought that does draw your attention. Like a leaky tap that drips, it repeatedly asks for your attention. All is not fully well, this thought tells you. The comfy life you have steadily built for yourself is not an end in itself. If all life wanted from you was for you to be comfortable, it may have asked that from someone else. Instead, this thought tells you that this convenience and ease that you have surrounded yourself with is not enough. You are meant to push yourself further, towards the edge of your abilities, towards bigger challenges, and you have shirked this duty. And until you fulfil this, that leaky tap in the back of your mind will keep dripping.
We spend a good chunk of our formative and productive years building a fortress of comfort. The dividend of our efforts earlier on is to deliver us a state of ease later. Yet paradoxically, this very comfort can prove our own undoing. It can initiate a phase of stagnation, and cause our cherished abilities to be exerted in less and less rigorous fashion.
The comfort zone is our personal calm before the storm. This doesn’t mean that our life should be a continuing series of chaos. Rather, as human beings, we have a need to be pushed to our potential, and if we neglect this, we suffer in silent comfort.
What are the warning signs then that we have entered this stage of ill ease? Below are some common signals we may see that are quietly telling us we need to take our life or career gear up a notch into new horizons.
Daydreaming our days away
Daydreams can be a sign of a healthy imagination, but also an untapped one. In the midst of our day, our mind will wander into the forests of yesterday or the mountains of tomorrow, but rarely into the swamps of today. We think about the highlights of our pasts, our own golden memories, or conjure up images of what we would be like in a more adventurous future. What is clear is that the present lacks the excitement to engage our creative mind.
Boredom that doesn’t go away
Boredom is a feature of the modern world. With our reduced attention spans and countless digital distractions, our capacity to be bored has greatly increased. Yet the comfort zone type of boredom is of a different variety. It is enduring and pervasive. It covers our work tasks and even our recreational activities. It may cease for short spans of time but rises again when we try to stay engaged. Our familiar routines lack the spark that can energize us. This boredom tells us that we need to think outside of the confines of our current life.
Risk Scares Us…and Thrills us
The notion of taking risks, either calculated or hazardous ones, becomes a sort of tease for us in the comfort zone state. We may naturally be risk-averse, but are especially so when in the lap of comfort. We may know on an intimate level that a certain risk may offer tantalizing possibilities, and we allow ourselves to consider these possibilities, but we shy away from the moment of deciding to execute the risk. It may not be the potential harm of the risk that dissuades us, but the idea of leaving the fortress we have built.
Other symptoms of comfortzonia may range from individual to individual. In certain people, it can manifest in a form of restlessness, of pingponging from one activity to another. Being busy for the sake of busyness can be a way to avoid having to think about the larger issues of life. Other people can find themselves in a prolonged slump, with laziness in work and other activities induced by the surrounding comfort.
Once we recognize the root cause of our malaise, it is important to accept this reality rather than lie to ourselves. We need to make our own intention to leave this place of comfort and move onto bigger possibilities. This can then be the start of the next thrilling chapter of our lives and careers.
