From a young age I was terminally online. To me, the internet is my comfort zone. A place I could lurk and be whoever I wanted to be.
For those that knew both sides of me, the whole experience was a complete whiplash of who I am. Catch me offline and I’d barely say a word. I would blush hard whenever I tried to speak up unless I was explicitly around people I knew “very well.” Struggling to form sentences, stuttering beyond belief, I was shyness and nervousness personified.
But the weird thing about me was that I hated it.
Going to my childhood years, I was a social butterfly, and these days I’m a mishmash of my child self and teenage self. I still stammer and get nervous at times (as you could maybe tell with all the cuts in my videos). However, I’m more comfortable with myself and who I’m becoming.
The big difference is that I owe it all to challenging my comfort zone periodically and adopting new things into my life. And through these strategies, I believe you can break through your own comfort zone too.
Mentally Prepare To Leave Your Comfort Zone
Instead of trying to limit screen time and get outside more, the kickoff to me busting out of my comfort zone was a big leap. I signed up for a volunteer program where I travelled across Canada for 9 months and lived with a group of people I had never met before.
I’m fully aware that my start is an outlier, nor do I expect people to take that specific leap. Rather, it’s better to focus on what I did leading up to that: mentally preparing yourself.
Time and time again, I keep pushing my own boundaries and work expectations through this strategy. It comes from a place of deep understanding of myself and what I need in order to take action and commit to it. This is crucial because everything that we do effectively leaves our comfort zone one way or another.
What being prepared mentally looks like is having clear goals and a distinct direction that you want to go in. Getting those things means understanding who you are and what you value. So spend some time getting to know yourself and what gets you moving.
Reach Out To People
I wouldn’t be on the journey that I’m on if it weren’t for the people that I met along the way. While I don’t owe it all to one specific person, I find connecting with other people to be the panacea for growth efforts. This is especially the case with leaving comfort zones, as other people could be invested in you as a person and want to help out or walk with you on your journey.
There is comfort in company, as they say, and deliberately leaning into that can tear down barriers in ways you weren’t expecting. How you go about this is up to you, but hanging around public spaces or a hobby shop is a great start.
Be More Curious
One thing that is made abundantly clear to me on my journey is that the more I know and learn, the more I don’t know. I’ve always been someone curious, which is why I hung around so many different people as a kid. Even in my teenage years, I spent time chatting with other people online, and I still very much do. Part of that comes down to sheer curiosity of other people.
But even more broadly, there is a case to be made about any other topic out there. Simply having this and developing it can help you with breaking out of your comfort zone in a more natural way. After all, you’re curious, and that can easily develop into a passion.
“Corner” Yourself
Physically, no. Mentally, absolutely.
While I don’t recommend this strategy right out the door, I do recognize that sometimes you need to have a shock strategy. Similar to how I got myself onto that plane to travel across Canada, there are moments in time where ditching the whole plan sounds like a good idea—especially if our nerves are getting the better of us.
What this strategy entails is essentially coercing yourself to follow through with what you have in mind. To effectively argue with yourself that this is an idea worth pursuing.
Of course context matters, and you shouldn’t try to do anything incredibly reckless, but running over the potential gains and pausing to take a breather and think things over is a way to limit the amount of excuses and possible avenues for you to stay in your comfort zone.
Look For Your Strengths, Then Do The Reverse
Broadly speaking, I think it’s key to know your strengths to some degree. The reason I say that is that it provides a good stepping stone to experience something new rather than routine. We’re multi-faceted people, and there is an endless amount of talents, attributes, and skills that we can pick up and learn.
Best of all, the strengths we have can be transferred to some degree to this new thing.
If you write a lot of content like me, try reading more, as there are plenty of writers who simply don’t read. If you like tinkering with technology, try your hand at something more down-to-earth like yoga, nature exploring, or martial arts.
Accept Your Nervousness
The last strategy that I have for you is simply accepting your emotions for what they are. Similar to cornering yourself mentally, a broader approach of just accepting your emotions is a gentler strategy to breaking out of your comfort zone.
The reason this is so crucial is often we struggle with dealing with our emotions. We lean on our vices or comfort zones in order to soothe ourselves from any potential risk or danger. But by doing so, we simply avoid the problem in the first place, and we’re not anywhere closer to achieving what we’ve set out to do.
Just like with me and my videos, accepting your nervousness is nothing to be afraid about. Work with it, experience that emotion, and let it out by moving forward. All with the gentle reminder that whatever happens, you’ve got this and can handle it.
Break Out Of Your Comfort Zone
Taking action is nerve-wracking, just like with starting something new. But as I’ve talked about in my video on being a better beginner, we can lean into the wonder and curiosity of it all. Just like how we can be better beginners, we can overcome our nervousness and escape our comfort zone on our own terms.
It doesn’t have to be this grand thing or an activity that we have to commit our entire being to. It can be as simple as a mental reminder or getting excited about doing something new. Or even a simple question like…
Are you ready?