Being in our comfort zones everyday sounds so warm and fuzzy but really as I have just learned it is hurting us. Giving into current comforts can lead us to future discomforts. Let’s imagine our muscles for a second, our muscles get smaller over time if we don’t use them everyday because there is no reason for it to stay big. The same thing happens when we don’t challenge ourselves, we become less capable of handling the battles that life throws at us. This is the first reason why we are going to try to step out of our comforts zones a little at a time everyday.

The Growth Zone

If we do this everyday we will enter the growth zone. In the growth zone we will struggle and feel like idiots that don’t know what we are doing but this is exactly were we need to be because this is where progress is made. Remember going to the gym for the first time? We didn’t know what we were doing we had to learn. Ever tried learning a different language? Same thing applies we end up sounding like little babbling babies until we say something enough times that it becomes second nature to us.

We don’t lift the same weight at the gym, or do the same exact work outs every day and when we are applying this to our everyday lives we need to remember to challenge ourselves in our daily tasks as well. This is my second reason for stepping out our comfort zones, we don’t see improvements and progress we need to challenge ourselves everyday.The things that have the biggest payoff are always the hardest.

Feeling stuck

We can all sit back and think about a place in our life where we just feel kind of stuck. There are a few steps we can take to help us.

• We can start by being more consistent
• We can do it more intensely
• We can do it for longer periods of time.

All three of these steps will help us increase the level of difficulty in whatever part of our lives that we want to improve on. These are good ways to move from comfort to growth.

Short Term Pain for Long Term Gain

Will we our muscles be sore from pushing ourselves? YES! Will we tremble a little bit as we try something new each day? YES! Will we have days that we just don’t want to push ourselves one step more? YES! However we will keep in mind that to see results in any part of our lives not just getting in shape we need to push ourselves to the point of pain. We will make pain our friend and start to feel like something is not right if we are not in pain from pushing ourselves.

We can’t push ourselves too far too fast because we will experience set backs such as burn out and loss of motivation because we put too much on ourselves too quickly. This makes us feel like it is impossible for us and we are failures. Positive change does require us to move out of our comfort zones every day but it doesn’t require us to do it all at once. We are going to take baby steps. We will start with committing to small changes so we can then eventually commit to bigger changes. Pushing ourselves further and further out of our comfort zones.

Just like with falling dominoes success fuels bigger success. We will start to believe in our abilities more and more and this my friends will help us in feeling as if we accomplish more each day. We will begin to feel we can handle life better leading us to feel more positive and safe. Person growth is what we are here to do and like I said before I truly believe that if we all took a step back. looked at ourselves and began some inner work the world would indeed be a much different place.

There is a real chance for change in all of us but it won’t just happen to us. We have to step out of our little comfort zones that keep us all warm, fuzzy and sedentary and push ourselves each day to talk to a stranger, or work out an extra 30 minutes, or study for an extra 30 minutes, or choose to not eat that late night bowl of ice cream and instead eat a apple or peach. We are born of our ancestors and we still feel the call of the wild within us. Each day they went out hunting and gathering. Their bodies were always in motion and their senses were always in alert for danger.

We no longer have to hunt and gather or live in fear quiet the same way today and our little souls miss the challenges. We need to be challenged to improve ourselves and this helps us to reach some inner happiness, so in today’s world we need to get creative. Moving our bodies in our work outs to help maintain our health because we weren’t meant to stay sat down or standing in place for 8 hours a day. Challenge our minds with learning new things or doing things in a new way. Growing spiritually because each day we are in the state of mind of know better do better and each day we recognize how much we have to be grateful for.

Let me know if you guys have things you do already to help you step out of your comfort zones daily and let me know what areas it is you will be focusing on for your growth.