The most dangerous place to be: The Comfort Zone

I found that people are trapped in their habits (often bad) due to the most two dangerous status in the world…

They are comfortable.

Ironically comfortably enough is the main goal for many people.
A roof on the head, enough food in the refrigerator, a nice tv, car and sofa.

What do you want more then right?

Well if you are one of my fellow readers you want more right? (otherwise you would be (again) comfortably browsing the tv on your couch instead of browsing blogs on personal development).

Let me state it straight….most people love to be comfortable…9 to 5 until 65 and ending their life in a nursery home…and I am happy for them.

But we are not one of them, we want to live our life differently…on the edge. Experiencing different things…suffering now  to move to another dimension later…to get  financial independence to be more free.

That’s where the excitement start.

Living in a Comfort Zone.

Life is made of different comfort zones.
We go through them all our life.
When we reach a comfort zone it’s… well “comfortable”; the things around us are familiar, we know how things works, we have no fear.

When we stably reached a comfort zone and we are (again X2) too comfortable it’s sign we need to move to another one and not just adopt small changes in our lives (like Forbes suggests).

Because if you are too comfortable you are not growing.

Moving to the next comfort zone and growing is often painful…so we try to escape changes as adult.

A baby at some point will need to start walking.
He will fall and hurt himself (the pain) but the price is worth it…he will walk (the growth) because the curiosity is much bigger than the pain.

The same when we leave elementary school to middle school, the separation is painful, the environment is new but again we are growing!

And interesting enough in most of the cases (if not the totality) nobody regrets the change.

But later in life changing becomes more and more difficult because changes can be more drastic, not necessary needed  and without a  safety net.

Or very simply because as adults, we are more scared.

Typical examples are changing your job or leaving your home town; for someone it just seems impossible.
Leaving a secure job for starting a business, or the simple act of stop smoking.

When we decide not to change it’s in that precise moment that we stop growing, we stop speaking about the future; we speak only in present and past tense.

And we convince ourselves that we cannot do otherwise; “I would like doing that but…
The “Yeah but…” ; finding excuses to remain in the actual state.

How many times we had told ourselves: “I would do it but“:

I am too old
I am too young
I am too poor
I am too sick
My parents are too old or sick
My wife has a good job
My kids go to school and cannot change
I don’t have time
etc.
etc.

Men need to grow, always, otherwise they must be dying.

The Turning Point

What trigger a change ; what is the revelation, the “Ah moment“, the turning point?

In every instant of our life we are the sum of all the experiences accumulated since we were born.
We think differently of what we were used to 10 years ago and will think in 10 year.
What we can understand now was unconceivable 10 years ago and in 10 years from now we will have a different understanding.

Someone call it wisdom.

I call it the turning point.

In my life different events triggered deep changes in my life and prospective; start living abroad, losing a parent, leaving difficult situations and people behind are some turning points of my life.
I start loving me more , taking more care about my self, saving money, believing I deserve more that I thought.

Hadn’t I never took critical steps (e.g. leaving  certain situations or habits) my life would surely be on a different path, for sure worst.
It took courage to leave the comfort zone and luckily some events happened so fast and so concentrated to accelerate the processes.
But again I took the first step.

In our life we always know when it’s time to change; if we don’t it’s because we lie to ourselves (the “Yeah…but…“) or we created a thick layer around our micro world that make us blind.

I firmly believe our life should be on a path of continuous improvement; the changes can be small, microscopic (there is no need to leave your job or hometown if this is really what you love to do) but they must be there.

But then, why so many people are not happy around us? Why they complain about their job, misfortune, money, everything else?

Because they stop growing and being negative is the easiest path of accepting (or justifying ) their situation.

Every time someone complains with me about how unhappy is in a “changeable” situation (marriage, job, hometown) I candidly ask “Why don’t you change?” (and usually the answer is “Yeah…but“)

Every time someone asks me how I am doing my typically answer is “Great!” and I strongly mean it. Of course someday I am tired, sick and in a not perfect mood but it’s what inside of me that makes me feel great.

The feeling great comes from the love and passion to move ahead, to the next step.

I am falling and failing  all the time and I will fall  and fail some more.

Maybe I will not reach all my goals but some for sure and this is all that really matters to me.

Never Forget:

We become what we think about, all day long”  (Ralph Waldo Emerson).

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