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Embracing Growth: The Power of Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone

Table of contents, the comfort zone paradox, unlocking new abilities, building resilience, fostering personal growth, enriching life experiences, references:.

David, S. A. (2009). Emotional resilience: Simple truths for dealing with the unfinished business of your past. Harmony.
Kashdan, T. B., & Rottenberg, J. (2010). Psychological flexibility as a fundamental aspect of health. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(7), 865-878.
Moss, S. A., & Schneider, R. H. (2011). The role of mindfulness in reducing the adverse effects of childhood stress and trauma. Children's Services: Social Policy, Research, and Practice, 4(4), 314-325.
Tedeschi, R. G., & Calhoun, L. G. (2004). Posttraumatic growth: Conceptual foundations and empirical evidence. Psychological Inquiry, 15(1), 1-18.
Walker, L. J. (2006). Personal growth. In Handbook of moral development (pp. 400-424). Psychology Press.

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Is It Time to Leave Your Comfort Zone? How Leaving Can Spark Positive Change

Getting outside your comfort zone can feel like a daunting task. But there are simple steps to pushing yourself to achieve what you want.

Jessica A. Kent

You hear it all the time: Step out of your comfort zone. Life begins at the end of your comfort zone. Nothing grows in your comfort zone.

But is that true? Can getting uncomfortable and enduring the stress that comes with it really help you grow as a person, move you towards achieving your goals, and push you forward to the next stage of your life?

Let’s unpack what “getting outside your comfort zone” means and how it can be your new tool for achieving the life you desire.

The Science of the Comfort Zone

So you want to run a 5k. You see a 5k raising money for a good cause, and you’ve always wanted to run one, so you sign up.

But you’re not a runner — the most fitness you get is walking between classes — so you know being able to run that 5k is going to take some work and be a bit of a challenge.

In other words, you’ll need to step out of your comfort zone, or your place of greatest security, and get uncomfortable in order to achieve that particular goal.

How do you know where that boundary is — and is the “comfort zone” even a real thing?

The idea of comfort zones is rooted in research conducted by psychologists Robert M. Yerkes and John Dillingham Dodson in 1908. They developed the Yerkes–Dodson Law , which states that performance increases as stress increases, and performance decreases as stress decreases.

However, at a certain point, high levels of stress inhibit performance.

In the context of our 5k example, this means that while you may just want to just walk on a treadmill to train, there’s not much stress in doing so and therefore no increase in performance. However, when you apply stress by upping the speed on the treadmill, it gets a little harder and you have to jog.

Now you’re actually training. But, setting the speed of the treadmill too high to start won’t be beneficial and may result in injury or propelling you off the treadmill altogether.

The Benefits of Leaving Your Comfort Zone

As you train for your 5k, you can see how speeding up your walking pace and pushing yourself to jog — getting outside your comfort zone — can help you develop the fitness, stamina, and mental fortitude to run your race.

But there are a number of benefits to moving outside of your comfort zone and challenging yourself to grow beyond just crossing the finish line.

Achieving your goals . Not everything you want to achieve in life will be easy. By moving beyond your comfort zone into the growth zone, you’ll be able to do just that: grow. You’ll find yourself becoming more productive, achieving more, and reaching the goals you set for yourself — if you’re willing to put in the work.

Boosting your self-confidence . Accomplishment brings self-confidence, especially if you worked hard, challenged yourself, and saw it through. And the boost in self-confidence you get after achieving one goal can push you to achieve more.

Expanding your world . Stepping out of your comfort zone means learning new things, meeting new people, seeing new places, and trying new experiences. All of these can serve to help expand your awareness of the world and how you fit into it and may introduce you to new interests or areas of study you want to explore.

Building your resilience . Challenging yourself to move outside your comfort zone can increase your resilience as well. You’ll gain more confidence in how you handle failure or setbacks and become more comfortable with increased levels of stress, anxiety, and uncertainty.

Giving you self-agency: Finally, by stepping outside your comfort zone often, you’ll learn more about yourself and gain more control over how you want your life to look and what you want to do with it.

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Why It’s Hard to Leave the Comfort Zone — and When You Should

If it was easy to leave your comfort zone, there probably wouldn’t be so much talk about it.

But it’s not easy to do. Moving into that learning or growth zone requires that aforementioned stress, and will likely require facing some anxiety, uncertainty, and a little bit of fear. Yet as humans, we’re wired for survival, and naturally shy away from those perceived threats as much as we can.

This is one of the reasons why it’s so hard to step out of our comfort zones.

Individuals who do want to do it must be mentally prepared. They must also be prepared to change habits and mindsets that may keep them in their comfort zone.

How do you know if you need to step out of your comfort zone and push yourself towards some new things and new experiences?

If you’re not growing or learning new things. You’re not taking chances in your life. You’re not fulfilling your goals or dreams. If you find yourself wondering why you’re not accomplishing things you want to accomplish — making new friends, getting better grades — then it’s time to look at areas where you might be a little too comfortable and passive.

However, it’s also not healthy to push yourself too far all the time. Being in a constant state of high stress can take its toll; humans need to return to the safety of their comfort zone every so often.

Just like you wouldn’t train on the treadmill all day, but may just put in an hour or two, you should step outside of your comfort zone for only certain lengths of time.

How to Leave Your Comfort Zone

Sometimes we’re forced out of our comfort zone by our situations and have to adapt in the moment. But if you want to actively move yourself out of your comfort zone, here’s how to get started.

Set a goal . First, decide what you want to achieve and set a goal. Make it a SMART goal: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.

For example, don’t just set a goal of wanting to run a 5k. Set a goal that you want to run a 5k on a specific date, achieve a time of 30 minutes or less, and run or jog the whole race, not walk.

Make a plan . Once you have your specific goal, now you can make a plan to achieve it. If a 5k is on a certain date, you know how long you have to train. If you want to be able to run or jog the whole way, you need to increase your ability and stamina to get to that point before the race. Make a plan for how you’ll get to your goal, which will include steps that move you out of your comfort zone.

Take action . Start working towards your goal, following the plan that you’ve created. As you do, you’ll likely run into the following:

Finding your boundary: As you begin the work, you’ll be able to find where your comfort zone line is and when you’re pushing past it. Maybe you thought running at a certain speed would be challenging, yet you find that it’s actually pretty easy so you increase your speed to have it be more of a challenge. Look for these shifts in your comfort zone boundary.
Confronting your fears: As you move outside of your comfort zone, you may need to face some of your fears as your stress increases. If you’re someone that lets discomfort derail them from action, you may need to get used to that discomfort in order to grow. If you tend to have some limiting beliefs about yourself, you may need to reassess those beliefs as you push forward.

Adjust as you go . Realize that you may not always be successful in your efforts. Everyone has a bad day or two when trying to accomplish something, so don’t let it derail you from achieving your goal.

However, if you’re constantly feeling like the tasks are too hard, you may have gone past your growth zone into the panic zone. Reassess your plan to see how you can simplify the tasks.

Assess and make new goals . Now that you’ve achieved your goal, assess how it felt to move outside your comfort zone. You may realize it actually wasn’t as bad as you thought, and want to do it again.

You probably already know the areas in your life where you need to step more outside of your comfort zone.

Here are some suggestions on activities you can tackle to help you grow:

Take a class in a subject area you know nothing about but want to learn — or take a summer course at Harvard Summer School
Go to a social event and meet new people, especially if doing so is challenging to you
Travel to somewhere you’ve never been before — even if it’s just across town
Have a difficult conversation you might be putting off
Learn a new hobby or skill
Volunteer with an organization in a role that takes you outside your comfort zone

Crossing the Finish Line — and Looking for the Next Challenge

It’s race day! You’ve made your plan for the 5k, committed to training, got outside your comfort zone, and achieved your goal of running the race in under 30 minutes!

Think about not just the achievement, but about the ways in which you grew as a person by pushing yourself outside your comfort zone during the process.

Knowing more about your comfort zone and what it means to step outside of it can help you face new goals, projects, and adventure head on.

And knowing that a little added stress can actually help you grow, expand your world, and increase your self-confidence will help you become more adaptable and open to change as well.

About the Author

Jessica A. Kent is a freelance writer based in Boston, Mass. and a Harvard Extension School alum. Her digital marketing content has been featured on Fast Company, Forbes, Nasdaq, and other industry websites; her essays and short stories have been featured in North American Review, Emerson Review, Writer’s Bone, and others.

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How to Leave Your Comfort Zone and Enter Your ‘Growth Zone’

Sometimes the problem is not being aware of reasons to do so. After all, if the feeling of comfort signifies our most basic needs are being met, why should we seek to abandon it?

What holds people back most of the time is their frame of mind rather than any distinct lack of knowledge.

This article looks at the shifts in thinking required to step outside of comfort and into personal growth. Along the way, we’ll outline useful tools, tactics, and examples to help make leaving the comfort zone as rewarding as possible.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Goal Achievement Exercises for free . These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients create actionable goals and master techniques to create lasting behavior change.

This Article Contains:

What is the comfort zone in psychology, from comfort zone to the growth zone, benefits of leaving the comfort zone: 4 examples, 4 tips to support leaving your comfort zone, 7 ways to leave your comfort zone, 10 inspiring quotes, positivepsychology.com’s useful tools, a take-home message.

Now firmly embedded in cultural discourse, the metaphor of ‘leaving one’s comfort zone’ became popular in the 1990s. The phrase ‘comfort zone’ was coined by management thinker Judith Bardwick in her 1991 work Danger in the Comfort Zone :

“The comfort zone is a behavioral state within which a person operates in an anxiety-neutral condition, using a limited set of behaviors to deliver a steady level of performance, usually without a sense of risk.”

Within the comfort zone, there isn’t much incentive for people to reach new heights of performance. It’s here that people go about routines devoid of risk, causing their progress to plateau.

But the concept can be traced further back to the world of behavioral psychology.

In 1907, Robert Yerkes and John Dodson conducted one of the first experiments that illuminated a link between anxiety and performance.

They saw that mice became more motivated to complete mazes when given electric shocks of increasing intensity – but only up to a point. Above a certain threshold, they began to hide rather than perform.

Corresponding behavior has been seen in human beings. This makes sense because in response to anxiety-provoking stimuli, the options are either fight (meet the challenge), flight (run away/hide), or freeze (become paralyzed).

The Yerkes–Dodson Law (Yerkes & Dodson, 1907) is true not just for more tangible types of performance, such as being given a stressful new task at work, but also in many life areas such as understanding ourselves, relating to others, and so on.

The core idea is that our nervous systems have a Goldilocks zone of arousal. Too little, and you remain in the comfort zone, where boredom sets in. But too much, and you enter the ‘panic’ zone, which also stalls progress:

When leaving the comfort zone, fear doesn’t always equate to being in the panic zone. As the below diagram shows, fear can be a necessary step en route to the learning and growth zones:

Source: PositivePsychology.com Toolkit – ‘ Leaving The Comfort Zone’

It takes courage to step from the comfort zone into the fear zone. Without a clear roadmap, there’s no way to build on previous experiences. This can be anxiety provoking. Yet persevere long enough, and you enter the learning zone, where you gain new skills and deal with challenges resourcefully.

After a learning period, a new comfort zone is created, expanding one’s ability to reach even greater heights. This is what it means to be in the growth zone.

It’s important to state that like most behavioral change attempts, moving into the growth zone becomes harder without some level of self-awareness. Thus, it can be beneficial for clients to consider the following:

How big are their zones? Across every life domain, everyone’s zones vary in size. To leave your comfort zone, you must appreciate its outer limits. Similarly, you must develop an intuitive sense of where your panic zone lies. Taking on challenges that lie somewhere in between will stretch you, leading to growth and learning.
What are their strengths? Understanding and capitalizing on personal strengths can be of great use. Most people have experienced leaving the comfort zone in at least one area of life, and there are usually plenty of insights to be uncovered from this experience.

In reality, the process of moving from the comfort zone to a growth zone may not be linear. Peaks, troughs, and plateaus often complicate the journey. Sometimes, we even need to retreat to the comfort zone periodically before mustering the strength to leave again. Nevertheless, appreciating the steps can help in tolerating uncertainty.

While occupying the comfort zone, it’s tempting to feel safe, in control, and that the environment is on an even keel. It’s smooth sailing.

The best sailors, however, aren’t born in smooth waters.

We’ll explore a few powerful benefits of leaving the comfort zone in the next section.

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Aside from enhancing performance, there are plenty of less-direct benefits of leaving the comfort zone. A full list would require a separate article, so here are four top-line, broadly applicable examples.

1. Self-actualization

For many, self-actualization acts as a powerful incentive to leave the comfort zone. The concept was popularized through Abraham Maslow’s (1943) theory of human motivation, which he described as follows: “ What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization. ”

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs operates like a ladder, with the satisfaction of our ‘basic’ and ‘psychological’ needs being analogous to inhabiting the comfort zone. But whether we’re conscious of it or not, the theory argues our next requirement is for personal growth and fulfillment.

As long as the decision to leave the comfort zone aligns with a person’s values, this shift is akin to making a bid for self-actualization. Why is this important? For one, not striving for growth could mean falling into a state of inertia later in life.

2. Development of a growth mindset

Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck’s (2008) work on mindsets marked a paradigm shift in the field of positive psychology. Her research distinguished between two contrasting belief systems – the fixed versus growth mindsets.

With a fixed mindset, people believe they have set doses of each ability, with a corresponding ceiling on how much they can achieve. Failure reveals inadequacy, and criticism becomes a fatal blow to self-esteem .

The growth mindset means recognizing humans as malleable. From this stance, setbacks become opportunities for learning (Dweck, 1999) and our potential becomes unlimited.

Intentionally leaving the comfort zone goes hand-in-hand with developing a growth mindset. While the fixed mindset keeps us trapped by fear of failure, the growth mindset expands the possible. It inspires us to learn and take healthy risks, leading to positive outcomes across life domains.

3. Resilience and antifragility

Life isn’t exactly a predictable affair; perhaps then, people shouldn’t be either. Sooner or later, everyone faces adversity. A habit of expanding our comfort zone equips people to handle change and ambiguity with more poise, leading to resilience.

Taking this further, statistician Nassim Taleb (2012) introduced the concept of ‘antifragile’ systems, which “ thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors. ” Examples include evolution and immune systems, as well as the human psyche.

While resilient systems bounce back to the same level after a shock, antifragile systems learn to grow from them, reaching new heights. To step outside the comfort zone then is to purposefully cultivate antifragility – so long as we don’t veer into the panic zone!

4. Greater self-efficacy

As outlined by Albert Bandura (1997), self-efficacy is the belief in being able to execute necessary actions in service of a goal. Goals that lead to higher self-efficacy are specific, not too difficult, and short-term (Yailagh, Lloyd, & Walsh, 2009).

Leaving the comfort zone means a phase of trial and error, during which at least some level of success is inevitable. Experiencing this success builds our self-efficacy , with belief in our ability starting to grow.

Like other benefits of leaving the comfort zone, this probably won’t happen overnight. Yet the cumulative upward spiral of achievement and confidence can become a potent asset for anyone.

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What follows are four useful tips to support clients in leaving their comfort zones. These are a mix of mindset tips and practical guidance on setting goals.

1. Reframe stress

Physiologically, there’s no difference between anxiety and excitement (Smith, Bradley, & Lang, 2005). Both entail a ‘stress response,’ but whether they’re perceived as positive or negative is a matter of labeling.

Society tends to conceptualize all stress as ‘bad,’ but the idea of ‘ eustress ’ or ‘positive stress’ challenges this. Eustress provides the energy to get through a public speech, go on a romantic date, and so on. These stimuli can be reframed as exciting, propelling us out of the comfort zone.

2. Understand neuroplasticity

An essential step toward internalizing the growth mindset is to embrace neuroplasticity research . Once understood, less courage is needed to make the first move away from comfort because failure itself becomes integral to the journey.

At the core of Dweck’s theory is that humans are malleable and adaptable. Another good way to appreciate her philosophy is by watching this TED talk:

3. Prioritize

Occupying the comfort zone isn’t always detrimental. For example, it might be reasonable to stay in your ukulele-playing comfort zone but not your managing-personal-finances one.

The point is to identify bottlenecks: areas of life where being too comfortable does more harm than good. Encourage goal selectivity in clients so they can focus effectively.

4. Small steps

It’s okay to take small, methodical steps, as well as larger, bolder ones. Leaving behind the comfort zone doesn’t mean recklessly throwing caution to the wind. Every step forward is progress.

Patiently fostering self-awareness while intelligently assessing each zone’s boundaries is a sure way to make the process as smooth as possible.

Do you find it difficult to take on new challenges and step into the unknown?

Does the uncertainty of leaving your current space cause you immense fear? To have a growth mindset is to believe that our most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work (Dweck, 2008).

But how do we do this? Featured in our Positive Psychology Toolkit© is a tool titled ‘Leaving the Comfort Zone’, which was designed as a visual aid for us to understand the costs of staying in our comfort zone and the necessity to leave this zone to experience growth.

The yellow circle represents our comfort zone. It is the space in which we feel safe and in control. Here, things come easy to us. We know what to do and what to expect. However, no learning or growth takes place here.
To learn and grow, we must leave the comfort zone and step into the fear zone. The fear zone is uncomfortable and uncertain. We do not know what to expect and cannot build on our previous experiences. We may even retreat back into our comfort zone if the fear becomes too much. This is the most challenging part of our journey to learning and growth.
If we can muster the courage to endure the fear zone, we come out on the other side, the learning zone. Here we can begin to acquire new skills and learn to deal with challenges and problems, ultimately extending our comfort zone.
When we stay long enough in the learning zone, we begin to experience that we can change and start redefining ourselves in terms of what we can do, achieve, and feel comfortable with. Over time, we enter the growth zone and experience changes on a personal level.

Leaving the comfort zone requires courage and feeling through fear, but it takes us toward learning and growth.

Having covered the what, why, and how of leaving your comfort zone, let’s now cover seven ways someone might try to do so.

1. Do everyday things differently.

In everyday life, there are ample opportunities to challenge yourself. Turn off your smartphone and television while having dinner, decide what to wear more quickly, or just slow down to take in the surroundings on a walk. These changes break you out of old, comfortable routines.

2. Expand your professional skillset.

Growing your skillset can foster creativity and refresh your self-confidence , as well as increase employability. Skills like public speaking, negotiation, and leadership can represent a new challenge for many people. Investing in them can build resilience, personal satisfaction, and open up more opportunities than ever.

3. Try a new diet.

Many people want to improve their diets and stop relying on ‘comfort foods.’ Doing so often means trying something new.

Sticking to a healthy diet can be as challenging as it is rewarding, with self-efficacy growing as you hit milestone goals along the way.

4. Take workouts to the next level.

Similarly, many aspire to this goal. For some, it can mean running their first 5K, but for others, it might be completing a triathlon.

Aiming high with exercise is emblematic of leaving the comfort zone and a great way to get the ball rolling.

5. Get creative.

Creativity – anything from writing a poem to building a business – usually involves an element of risk. Creative endeavors are about stepping into the unknown, with failing and subsequent learning as expected outcomes.

Exercising creativity is a good way to train yourself to have a growth mindset and let go of a need for perfection from the outset.

6. Challenge your beliefs.

While exploring alternative perspectives can be uncomfortable, it enables growth and insight by challenging entrenched beliefs.

This might take several forms, such as reading varied book genres, diversifying who you talk to, and visiting new places. It’s easy to get stuck in our ways, but this can lead to complacency – a hallmark of being in the comfort zone.

7. Practice honesty.

When employed sensitively, honesty can be a tremendous catalyst for personal growth. Whether being straight with yourself in a private journal or telling someone close how you feel, honesty forces people out of their comfort zone. Through honest communication, we can understand ourselves better and build deeper bonds with others.

Here are ten quotes that encapsulate many of the ideas discussed:

All growth starts at the end of your comfort zone.

Tony Robbins

You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.

Brian Tracy

My comfort zone is like a little bubble around me, and I’ve pushed it in different directions and made it bigger and bigger until these objectives that seemed totally crazy eventually fall within the realm of the possible.

Alex Honnold

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Becoming is better than being. The fixed mindset does not allow people the luxury of becoming. They have to already be.

Carol Dweck

One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.

Abraham Maslow

Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.

Benjamin Franklin

You have calibrated life when most of what you fear has the titillating prospect of adventure.

Nassim Taleb

The level of effort you tolerate from yourself will define your life.

May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.

Nelson Mandela

17 Tools To Increase Motivation and Goal Achievement

These 17 Motivation & Goal Achievement Exercises [PDF] contain all you need to help others set meaningful goals, increase self-drive, and experience greater accomplishment and life satisfaction.

Created by Experts. 100% Science-based.

PositivePsychology.com is an excellent repository of tools you can leverage in supporting clients to leave their comfort zones behind.

We have a range of various worksheets and exercises designed to help people enter the growth zone and realize their potential.

Here are three examples:

Learning New Skills This tool encourages clients to reflect on times when new skills. The exercise can help clients normalize the .anxiety, apprehension, and even fear that can prevent them from leaving their comfort zone.
Breaking Out Of the Comfort Zone This tool helps clients identify habits or common practices that make their life more fixed. Using the table, they are invited to come up with new and challenging activities to pursue that will make them more ready to deal with the unfamiliar or unexpected.
Adopt a Growth Mindset This intervention moves people toward the growth mindset by providing them with phrases to correct fixed mindset thoughts.

An additional resource that may seem bizarre yet revealing is titled Funeral Meditation . For any client reluctant to depart from a comfortable routine, reflecting on their future funeral could be a remarkable incentive to step into a growth mindset.

If you’re looking for more science-based ways to help others reach their goals, this collection contains 17 validated motivation & goals-achievement tools for practitioners . Use them to help others turn their dreams into reality by applying the latest science-based behavioral change techniques.

Recognizing opportunities to leave the comfort zone isn’t always easy; neither is seizing them with conviction.

It’s crucial to cultivate a mindset that lays strong foundations, paving the way toward the growth zone. This includes seeing yourself as inherently adaptable, reframing stress, and believing in your ability to endure fears and doubts.

Every person faces this choice, knowingly or not. You can settle for what you know – the seemingly safe, familiar, and routine. Or, you can become receptive to opportunities for growth, challenging your personal status quo and seeing what you’re capable of.

When this becomes a habit, the benefits to be reaped throughout life are copious. Not only are disappointments curbed and regrets avoided, but we also reach our highest human potential, acting as an inspiration to others.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Goal Achievement Exercises for free .

Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York, NY: W. H. Freeman and Company.
Bardwick, J. (1991). Danger in the comfort zone: From boardroom to mailroom – How to break the entitlement habit that’s killing American business . American Management Association.
Dweck, C. S. (1999). Self-theories: Their role in motivation, personality, and development . Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press.
Dweck, C. S. (2008). Mindset: The new psychology of success . New York, NY: Ballantine Books.
Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation, Psychological Review , 50 , 370–396.
Smith, J. C., Bradley, M. M., & Lang, P. J. (2005). State anxiety and affective physiology: Effects of sustained exposure to affective pictures. Biological Psychology , 69 , 247–260.
Taleb, N. N. (2012). Antifragile: Things that gain from disorder . New York, NY: Random House.
Yailagh, M. S., Lloyd, J., & Walsh, J. (2009). The causal relationships between attribution styles, mathematics self-efficacy beliefs, gender differences, goal setting, and mathematics achievement of school children. Journal of Education & Psychology , 3 , 95–114.
Yerkes, R., & Dodson, J. (1907). The dancing mouse, A study in animal behavior, Journal of Comparative Neurology & Psychology , 18 , 459–482.

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What our readers think.

Fantastic! I’m currently experiencing anxiety due to (situation) and this was exactly what I needed!!

thanks! alot of information

Mine is my emotions. I get emotional A lot. I can’t really stop it. I’m working on it with a counselor right now.

I agree! Everyone should jump out of their comfort zones eventually or at least attempt to! Mine is Public speaking and Im taking a class that will hopefully help me with that!

Hi Jessica,

That’s fantastic! Public speaking can indeed be daunting, but it’s great that you’re taking steps to overcome this challenge. Remember, growth often happens outside our comfort zones. Best of luck with your class! Keep practicing, and soon enough, you’ll find yourself becoming more comfortable and confident in public speaking.

Kind regards, Julia | Community Manager

a very interesting, encouraging and inspirational topic, I was made to understand that to be an achiever. you most move away from your comfort zone.

Thank You! We all need to get out of our comfort zone in order to grow to the next level according to the goals we have in life!

Very good article.I just decided to leave my comfort zone and spotted this website.Very helpfull with the tools & tips!

Thank you for sharing, I am greatly inspired. I have been stuck for a very long time. Am already working on myself to come out of my comfort zone and am happy that i have taken some of the steps mentioned here

I would love to try ‘be honest in all situations’ as my challenge. I agree

it have been very important article to make a choice to get out of my comfort zone. very powerful Dr.

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5 Benefits of Stepping Outside Your Comfort Zone

Why moving beyond the safe and familiar is essential for growth..

Posted December 27, 2015 | Reviewed by Gary Drevitch

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Each of us has our own “comfort zone” which, more than an actual place, is a psychological/emotional/ behavioral construct that defines the routine of our daily life. Being in one’s comfort zone implies familiarity, safety, and security. It describes the patterned world of our existence, keeps us relatively comfortable and calm, and helps us stay emotionally even, free from anxiety and worry to a great degree. Creating a comfort zone is a healthy adaptation for much of our lives. But so is stepping out of our comfort zone when it’s time to transition, grow, and transform.

Experiencing a little stress and anxiety now and then is a good thing, too. If all you ever do is stay wrapped in your little cocoon, keeping warm and cozy, you may be missing out on a lot, like new experiences, challenges, and risks. And looking at the bigger picture, if you can’t step out of your comfort zone you may experience difficulty making change or transitioning, growing, and ultimately, transforming; in other words, all those things that define who you are and give your life meaning.

Very simply, what we fear most about challenging ourselves is that we may fail and/or get hurt. But most of us have the ability to rise to the occasion, overcome hurdles and obstacles, and actually succeed in accomplishing something new and challenging.

In my book Transitions, I describe a major life change and how I was affected and changed by it. Many years ago my husband had a wonderful job opportunity that promised to be very fulfilling but it meant that we had to move across the country. The physical move would be hard for both of us but my husband would be going to the safety of a job and the familiarity of a work environment.

It would prove much harder for me. I closed my New York-based practice, left my hospital affiliation of many years, sold my weekend house in Connecticut, and left behind family and many dear friends. Essentially, except for my husband, none of the “externals” with which I identified was making the journey west with me. Looked at one way, I was free; looked at another, I had lost my home. Was I out of my comfort zone? You bet.

For the first time in longer than I could remember, I had a lot of time on my hands. In my new home I knew few people. Immersing myself immediately in work was out of the question, since California has its own licensing requirements for physicians. Without the comfort of all my old roles—doctor, mother, daughter, friend—I was suddenly just a person.

Wandering anonymously around San Francisco I often asked myself, “Who are you now?” There was an exhilarating freedom in not having to meet anyone’s expectations, but it was also disorienting to be thrown so totally back on myself. I was often lonely . Psychological and emotional issues I was sure I was done with found their way back into my consciousness. Clearly, something was happening to me; it was a process I myself had initiated, but I no longer felt in conscious control of it.

Thanks to the disruption of my old life and the soul-searching that resulted from it, I was about to learn to see the world in some very new ways. Everyone I met had a story to tell, and I began to see that my own uncertain search had opened me up to listening in a new way.

As a psychiatrist, of course, much of this was familiar territory to me. In one way or another, I'd long been exposed to or directly focused on the problem of how people got themselves through transitions. But for the first time, I found myself thinking about that territory in a new way. What was it that enabled some people to cope with the big changes in their lives while others seemed undone by them? Of course, many factors contribute to the mix, but it seemed to me that when individuals could find a conscious, meaningful structure to encompass the events of their lives, they could take more responsibility and feel less lost.

I recently revisited that time in my life. My conclusion: Before I made this major move I had allowed myself, on many occasions, to step out of my comfort zone—sometimes because I had to, sometimes to try new things, and sometimes to take bigger risks because not doing so would keep me in the life in which I was already firmly established.

Here are 5 huge benefits of stepping out of your comfort zone:

Your “real life” is out there waiting for you. Your real life exists beyond the bubble of your own personal thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. Your real life is the sum total of ALL of your experiences, not just the one’s you’re comfortable with.
Challenging yourself pushes you to dip into and utilize your personal store of untapped knowledge and resources. You have no idea what you’re made of unless and until you venture outside of your own familiar world.
Taking risks, regardless of their outcome, are growth experiences. Even if you make mistakes or don’t get it right the first time those become experiences you can tap into in the future. There really is no such thing as “fail” if you get something out of the experience. And just so you know, “FAIL” re-framed means “First Attempt in Learning."
Don’t settle for the mediocre just to avoid stepping out of your comfort zone; it’s too big a price to pay. Your challenges and risk experiences are cumulative. Every time you try something new, and allow yourself to be open to whatever experience arises, you are learning, and expanding your repertoire of life skills and self-knowledge. As you do this you also expand the size of your comfort zone.
Leaving your comfort zone ultimately helps you to deal with change—and making change in a much better way. Life transitions are all about change. Each time you transition you move to another level. Inevitably, these life transitions transform you.

It may seem overwhelming to step into the unknown. But instead of thinking of the “big picture," break down what you want or need to accomplish by making small changes. Small changes accumulate and each builds upon the last. Try to make small changes that take you out of the everyday and familiar, yet are not too emotionally challenging. We are all such creatures of habit. Change your daily and/or work routine. Try something new—food, music, and activities you’ve never done. Undertake a creative project of any kind in which your thinking is channeled in a new way. Add newness to your life. Be open to experience.

My takeaway: I have within myself the ability to make big change. I did it once. I can do it again.

You can, too.

Abigail Brenner, M.D . , is a psychiatrist in private practice. She is the author of Transitions: How Women Embrace Change and Celebrate Life and other books.

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The Science of Breaking Out of Your Comfort Zone (and Why You Should)

Routines can be stable and comforting, but they can also turn stale and confining over time. All those inspirational messages telling you to break out of your comfort zone aren’t just trying to sell you bungee cords. Doing something new and potentially frightening helps stave off burnout and is good for your brain. Still, it’s pretty hard to shake yourself out of a routine, and there’s plenty of science explaining why—and how to do it.

It’s important to push the boundaries of your comfort zone , and when you do, it’s kind of a big deal . But what is the “comfort zone” exactly? Why is it that we tend to get comfortable with the familiar and our routines, but when we’re introduced to new and interesting things, the glimmer fades so quickly? Finally, what benefit do we derive from breaking out of our comfort zones, and how do we do it? Answering those questions is a tall order, but it’s not too hard to do. Let’s get started.

The science of your “comfort zone,” and why it’s so hard to leave It

Simply, your comfort zone is a behavioral space where your activities and behaviors fit a routine and pattern that minimizes stress and risk. It provides a state of mental security. You benefit in obvious ways: regular happiness, low anxiety, and reduced stress.

The idea of the comfort zone goes back to a classic experiment in psychology. Back in 1908, psychologists Robert M. Yerkes and John D. Dodson explained that a state of relative comfort created a steady level of performance In order to maximize performance, however, we need a state of relative anxiety—a space where our stress levels are slightly higher than normal. This space is called “Optimal Anxiety,” and it’s just outside our comfort zone. Too much anxiety and we’re too stressed to be productive, and our performance drops off sharply.

The idea of optimal anxiety isn’t anything new. Anyone who’s ever pushed themselves to get to the next level or accomplish something knows that when you really challenge yourself, you can turn up amazing results. More than a few studies support the point . However, pushing too hard can actually cause a negative result, and reinforce the feeling that challenging yourself is a bad idea. It’s our natural tendency to return to an anxiety-neutral, comfortable state. You can understand why it’s so hard to kick your brain out of your comfort zone.

Even so, your comfort zone is neither a good or bad thing. It’s a natural state that most people trend towards. Leaving it means increased risk and anxiety, which can have positive and negative results (which we’ll get to in a moment), but don’t demonize your comfort zone as something holding you back. We all need that head-space where we’re least anxious and stressed so we can process the benefits we get when we leave it.

What you get when you break free and try new things

Optimal anxiety is that place where your mental productivity and performance reach their peak. Still, “increased performance” and “enhanced productivity” just sound like “do more stuff.” What do you really get when you’re willing to step outside of your comfort zone?

You’ll be more productive . Comfort kills productivity because without the sense of unease that comes from having deadlines and expectations, we tend to phone it in and do the minimum required to get by. We lose the drive and ambition to do more and learn new things. We also fall into the “work trap,” where we feign “busy” as a way to stay in our comfort zones and avoid doing new things. Pushing your personal boundaries can help you hit your stride sooner, get more done, and find smarter ways to work.

You’ll have an easier time dealing with new and unexpected changes . In this article at The New York Times , Brené Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston, explains that one of the worst things we can do is pretend fear and uncertainty don’t exist. By taking risks in a controlled fashion and challenging yourself to things you normally wouldn’t do, you can experience some of that uncertainty in a controlled, manageable environment. Learning to live outside your comfort zone when you choose to can prep you for life changes that force you out of it.

You’ll find it easier to push your boundaries in the future . Once you start stepping out of your comfort zone, it gets easier over time. This same NYT article explains that as you step out of your comfort zone, you’ll become accustomed to that state of optimal anxiety. “Productive discomfort,” as they call it, becomes more normal to you, and you’re willing to push farther before your performance falls off.

You’ll find it easier to brainstorm and harness your creativity . This is a soft benefit, but it’s fairly common knowledge (and it’s easily reproducible) that seeking new experiences, learning new skills, and opening the door to new ideas inspire us and educate us in a way that little else does. Trying new things can make us reflect on our old ideas and where they clash with our new knowledge, and inspire us to learn more and challenge comfirmation bias , our tendency to only seek out information we already agree with. Even in the short term, a positively uncomfortable experience can help us brainstorm, see old problems in a new light, and tackle the challenges we face with new energy.

The benefits you get after stepping outside of your comfort zone can linger. There’s the overall self-improvement you get through the skills you’re learning, the new foods you’re trying, the new country you’re visiting, and the new job you’re interviewing for. There are also the soft mental benefits you get from broadening your horizons.

How to break out of your comfort zone

Outside your comfort zone can be a good place to be, as long as you don’t tip the scales too far. It’s important to remember there’s a difference between the kind of controlled anxiety we’re talking about and the very real anxiety that many people struggle with every day. Everyone’s comfort zone is different, and what may expand your horizons may paralyze someone else. Remember, optimal anxiety can bring out your best, but too much is a bad thing .

Here are some ways to break out (and by proxy, expand) your comfort zone without going too far:

Do everyday things differently . Take a different route to work. Try a new restaurant without checking Yelp first. Go vegetarian for a week, or a month. Try a new operating system . Recalibrate your reality . Whether the change you make is large or small, make a change in the way you do things on a day-to-day basis. Look for the perspective that comes from any change, even if it’s negative. Don’t be put off if things don’t work out the way you planned.

Take your time making decisions . Sometimes slowing down is all it takes to make you uncomfortable—especially if speed and quick thinking are prized in your work or personal life. Slow down, observe what’s going on, take your time to interpret what you see, and then intervene. Sometimes just defending your right to make an educated decision can push you out of your comfort zone. Think, don’t just react.

Trust yourself and make snap decisions . We’re contradicting ourselves, but there’s a good reason. Just as there are people who thrive on snap decisions, others are more comfortable weighing all of the possible options several times, over and over again. Sometimes making a snap call is in order , just to get things moving. Doing so can help you kickstart your personal projects and teach you to trust your judgement. It’ll also show you there’s fallout to quick decisions as well as slow ones.

Do it in small steps . It takes a lot of courage to break out of your comfort zone. You get the same benefits whether you go in with both feet as you do if you start slow, so don’t be afraid to start slow. If you’re socially anxious, don’t assume you have to muster the courage to ask your crush on a date right away, just say hello to them and see where you can go from there. Identify your fears, and then face them step by step .

There are lots of other ways to stretch your personal boundaries. You could learn a new language or skill. Learning a new language has multiple benefits , many of which extend to learning any new skill. Connect with people that inspire you, or volunteer with an organization that does great work. Travel, whether you go around the block or across the globe. If you’ve lived your whole life seeing the world from your front door, you’re missing out. Visiting new and different places is perhaps one of the best ways to really broaden your perspectives , and it doesn’t have to be expensive or difficult to do. The experiences you have may be mind-blowing or regrettable, but that doesn’t matter. The point is that you’re doing it, and you’re pushing yourself past the mental blocks that tell you to do nothing.

Trying new things is difficult. If it weren’t, breaking out of your comfort zone would be easy and we’d do it all the time. It’s just as important to understand how habits form and how we can break them as it is to press yourself out of your comfort zone by doing specific things.

Why it’s important to return to your comfort zone from time to time

You can’t live outside of your comfort zone all the time. You need to come back from time to time to process your experiences. The last thing you want is for the new and interesting to quickly become commonplace and boring. This phenomenon, called hedonistic adaptation , is the natural tendency to be impressed by new things only to have the incredible become ordinary after a short time. It’s why we can have access to the greatest repository of human knowledge ever created (the internet) at our fingertips (on our smartphones) and still get so bored that all we think of is how quickly we can get newer, faster access . In one way it drives us forward, but in another it keeps us from appreciating the subtle and the everyday.

You can fight this by trying new, smaller things. Ordering something new at a restaurant where you get the same thing every visit can be eye-opening the same way visiting a new country can be, and both push you out of your comfortable spaces. Diversify the challenges you embrace so you don’t just push your boundaries in the same direction. If you’ve been learning Latin-based languages and you find yourself bored, switch gears to a language with a completely different set of characters. If you’ve taken up running, instead of just trying to run longer and farther, try challenging yourself to run on different terrain. You still get the challenge, but you broaden your horizons in a different way.

Take it slow, and make stretching your boundaries a habit of its own

The point of stepping out of your comfort zone is to embrace new experiences and to get to that state of optimal anxiety in a controlled, managed way, not to stress yourself out. Take time to reflect on your experiences so you can reap the benefits and apply them to your day to day activities. Then do something else interesting and new. Make it a habit if you can. Try something new every week, or every month.

Similarly, don’t limit yourself to big, huge experiences. Maybe meditation pushes you out of your comfort zone just as much as bungee jumping. Try the former if you’ve already done the latter. The goal isn’t to become an adrenaline junkie—you just want to learn to learn what you’re really capable of. That’s another reason why it’s important to return to a comfortable state sometimes and just relax. Just don’t forget to bring back as much as you can carry from those inspired, creative, productive, and slightly uncomfortable moments when you do.

This story was originally published on 7/03/13 and has been updated on 9/26/19 with new photos and to reflect more current links and information.

Stepping Out of My Comfort Zone

If you told me I would be playing a sport called squash at 11 years old, I would call you crazy. But in seventh grade, I was at a new school 10 times bigger than my last one. I felt like a little fish in a big pond. I was quiet, withdrawn, and very introverted. A lot of the time, I stayed where I was comfortable.

During the first week of school, a group of people visited the school and they introduced themselves as Squashbusters. At that time, I’d only heard of Squash once before, but I didn’t really know what it was. Because the program combined the sport of squash with academic support, mentoring, and service opportunities, I decided to sign up. It’s been six years and this program has made a monumental difference in my life.

Being a part of SquashBusters is a program that really pushed me out of my shell to the point where I’ve grown accustomed to challenging myself. In SquashBusters, they tell us to push ourselves past our limits on the squash courts, but that mindset has transferred to other areas of my life as well. From team trips and tournaments to cringy karaoke moments and participating in eccentric traditions like our annual SquashBusters Olympics, my comfort zone has steadily grown larger. My peers brought out a side of me I didn’t even know existed. I haven’t transformed completely from introvert to extrovert, but I’ve become more social as the years go by.

At Hopkins, I want to do something similar. I want to try new things and embrace the campus traditions. Even though I will develop intellectually from the many academic classes and clubs/activities offered on campus, I feel as though a true community is birthed from exploring beyond what one’s used to. From traditions like Blue Jay Opening Day and the Spring Fair to the many world-changing clubs like the Amnesty International club and the Foreign Affairs Symposium, the different ways to be involved in the Hopkins community is limitless and invigorating and I can’t wait to be a part of the Hopkins family.

Admissions Committee Comments

Samuel’s essay is a reflection on pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone which is not only an important life lesson but also something that Hopkins students do every day. Our students push the boundaries of discovery, are faced with challenges in and out of the classroom, and pursue newfound passions. By growing accustomed to challenging himself, Samuel exemplifies these characteristics and is able to take the lessons he has learned on the squash court into other areas of his life. He shows that if given the opportunity, he would flourish on our campus given the variety of academic and extracurricular opportunities and that he is equipped with the tools to overcome whatever challenges he is faced with.

“My advice to students who are currently writing their essays is to remember that the first draft is rarely going to be good, so just write as much as you can even if it’s incomprehensible. Also give yourself a lot of time for revisions from peers, teachers, and even self revisions.” Samuel, Boston, Massachusetts

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The Powerful Benefits of Stepping Outside Your Comfort Zone

And how to do it, one step at a time.

Haley is a Wisconsin-based creative freelancer and recent graduate. She has worked as an editor, fact checker, and copywriter for various digital and print publications. Her most recent position was in academic publishing as a publicity and marketing assistant for the University of Wisconsin Press

Why Some Discomfort Is Healthy
Why We Stay in Our Comfort Zone

The Benefits of Stepping Outside Your Comfort Zone

How to Get Out of Your Comfort Zone

Constantine Johnny/Getty Images

Comfort and growth are like oil and water: They don’t go together. You’ve probably heard some iteration of this before. Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche famously believed that comfort crushes creativity and promotes conformity. Even modern-day self-help entrepreneur Tony Robbins comments on this paradox of life , writing, "too much certainty, and we won’t fulfill our need for growth and new experiences. But too much uncertainty can lead to anxiety and lack of productivity."

Comfort generally refers to a state where our needs are met, so we are at ease. We are wired to seek comfort and certainty because it means safety and security. Retreating to our comfort zones can recharge our batteries.

However, a lack of risk-taking results in a lack of growth. Eventually, progress plateaus. Pushing the envelope and trying new things challenges our beliefs, changes our mindset, and helps us reach our full potential (not to mention that exposing yourself to new things is one of the best ways to keep your brain sharp ). But doing so is often easier said than done.

Why (Some) Discomfort Is Actually Good for Us

One reason it’s important to embrace some uncertainty and discomfort is that the true magic of life typically happens outside of our comfort zones. In 1907, psychologists Robert M. Yerkes and John D. Dodson studied the relationship between stress and performance. Now called Yerkes-Dodson Law, this theory helps us understand how a certain amount of anxiety and tiny bit of stress actually help us.

Imagine a bell-shaped curve on a graph. On the Y-axis or vertical line on the left, you have performance (with the lowest level/worst performance at the bottom). The X-axis or horizontal line represents stress levels (the lowest amount of stress on the left and highest amount of stress on the right). Initially, low anxiety or pressure equals poor performance. This is how you feel when you’re bored or disengaged—you’re on autopilot.

As arousal increases, so does performance, eventually hitting the optimal level of anxiety, or as psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi later dubbed it, "flow," a state of peak self-regulation where you’re totally in the zone and focused solely on the task in front of you. When we enter the flow state , we experience intense concentration, spontaneous waves of creativity, and immense joy. If you’ve ever seen a musician play live, they often look lost in the music. At this peak, there are just enough stress hormones—adrenaline, cortisol—to wake us up and fully engage us.

But when stress continues to increase, it tips past the point of being helpful, and we become overwhelmed, frantic, or scatterbrained—and performance drops. It becomes hard to focus or retain information. In short, a healthy amount of stress and stimulation rises us to the occasion, but too much is counterproductive to innovation and seriously affects our mental and physical health.

This sweet spot of stress applies to many aspects of our lives—in jobs, sports, social settings, creative pursuits, and even how we approach learning.

Why We Like to Stay Within Our Comfort Zone

If we know it’s good for us to feel some level of discomfort in order to grow and improve, why is it so hard for many people to step outside of their comfort zone? Pninit Russo-Netzer, PhD, a researcher and Founder of the Academic Training Program for Logotherapy at Tel-Aviv University in Israel, explains that evolutionarily, people are strongly motivated to feel competent and in control, and they prefer clarity and predictability over ambiguity and uncertainty. Trying things outside our comfort zone can feel threatening, especially if those things challenge our need to feel competent or in control.

This could explain why taking a small step outside of our comfort zone, such as trying food we’ve never had before, seems more doable than moving to a new country where we don’t speak the language or know anyone. Both are unpredictable, but not liking a new food likely won’t challenge our competence or feel all that threatening.

"Extensive research suggests that when individuals are faced with decisions, they tend to maintain the status quo," Russo-Netzer explains. "Maintaining the default requires less mental effort and psychological threat than change." In other words, the potential costs of change feel more significant than their potential benefits.

Russo-Netzer’s research on this topic has found that for people who were relatively less happy, engaging in activities outside their comfort zone boosted their life satisfaction. Through her studies, here are some benefits she’s observed when people step outside their comfort zones.

Self-Integrity and Self-Efficacy Self-integrity refers to peoples’ view of themselves as morally and adaptively adequate. Having self-integrity is empowering. Overcoming a challenge outside of one’s comfort zone, rather than avoiding it, can strengthen self-integrity as people attain greater competence and confidence in navigating uncertainty and unpredictability. Although going outside one’s comfort zone may be stressful, it is unlikely to be as aversive as people imagine it will be. Self-efficacy refers to the belief that one has the skills necessary to do a task. By pushing beyond our limits, we realize we are capable of more and can thrive in challenging circumstances.
Growth Mindset Someone with a growth mindset believes they can expand their abilities through effort and practice. The term was coined by psychologist Carol Dweck, who differentiated between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. People with a fixed mindset believe they were dealt particular cards in life, and that is that. There is a ceiling to what they can achieve, so trying new things is terrifying and pointless. People with a growth mindset believe they can change and grow and expand. This mindset gives us room to try new things.
Reduced Regret Research suggests that people tend to regret the actions they did not take rather than the actions they did, and they tend to find excuses to miss many of the seemingly risky opportunities in their lives for growth.
Resilience and Antifragility The practice of stepping outside one's comfort zone prepares them to deal with unpredictable life stressors. The term "antifragility" was coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, an essayist and mathematical statistician, and refers to the ability to gain strength from adversity. "Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness," he’s quoted as saying. "The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better."
Self-Actualization In short, this means achieving one’s full potential. People who go outside of their comfort zone may discover new opportunities in their environment and meet new people to help them grow into the best versions of themselves.

How to Get Out of—and Expand—Your Comfort Zone

Don’t worry; stepping out of your comfort zone doesn’t have to involve massive changes that uproot your life. Even small acts can lead to increased life satisfaction, Russo-Netzer confirms. But deviating from what’s familiar requires a bit of reflection and self-awareness.

The psychologist Lev Vygotsky coined the term "zone of proximal development," suggesting that every person has their own unique range of growth potential in various areas of their life. (What you might fight scary and uncomfortable is nothing at all to someone else—and vice versa.)

A first step to becoming more aware of your unique range of comfort and learning zones would be to write down all the things you would like to try that are different from what you usually do. It could be trying a new workout class or finally learning to play the guitar. Then, break them down into concrete actions, schedule a specific time for one activity from the list, and document your experience.

To expand your comfort zone gradually, pick challenges you are genuinely interested in. And remember, this experience should be an opportunity for you to learn something new about yourself. Create space for curiosity and engagement rather than judgment.

"We can train our growth muscle to expand our comfort zone through regular exposure to new experiences in familiar places," Russo-Netzer says. "What does it mean for you to surprise yourself? When was the last time you did something for the first time? It may mean trying out a new hobby, experimenting with a new taste, smiling or complimenting a stranger on the street, or even behaving like a tourist in your neighborhood."

Godefroid ME, Plattfaut R, Niehaves B. How to measure the status quo bias? A review of current literature . Manag Rev Q. 2022. doi:10.1007/s11301-022-00283-8

Russo-Netzer P, Cohen GL. ‘If you’re uncomfortable, go outside your comfort zone’: A novel behavioral ‘stretch’ intervention supports the well-being of unhappy people . J Posit Psychol. 2023;18(3):394-410. doi:10.1080/17439760.2022.2036794

Towers A, Williams MN, Hill SR, Philipp MC, Flett R. What makes for the most intense regrets? comparing the effects of several theoretical predictors of regret intensity . Front Psychol . 2016;7:1941. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01941

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Why Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone Is Essential for Growth

Exploring the benefits of taking risks and embracing challenges..

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Comfort zones are those cozy spaces where familiarity reigns supreme and routines dictate our actions. While it's undoubtedly comforting to reside within these boundaries, it's equally crucial to recognize the transformative power of venturing beyond them. According to Forbes , stepping out of your comfort zone is not merely an act of spontaneity; it's a catalyst for personal growth, resilience, and self-discovery.

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Going beyond the familiar At its core, the comfort zone represents a psychological state where activities and situations feel safe, familiar, and predictable. While this sense of security provides temporary relief from stress and anxiety, it also creates a stagnant environment where growth becomes stagnant. It's within the realm of discomfort that true growth thrives – a notion echoed by countless philosophers, psychologists, and thought leaders throughout history.

One of the most compelling reasons to step out of your comfort zone is the opportunity for personal development and adaptability, as Forbes suggests. By embracing new challenges, whether they're professional aspirations, social interactions, or personal hobbies, individuals expose themselves to unfamiliar territories that demand adaptation and resilience. Each venture beyond the comfort zone presents a chance to expand one's skills, knowledge, and perspective, ultimately fostering a more robust and versatile individual.

Stepping out of your comfort zone cultivates resilience in the face of adversity. Every new experience, whether successful or challenging, contributes to the development of coping mechanisms and problem-solving skills. Over time, individuals become more adept at navigating uncertainty and adversity, emerging stronger and more resilient with each obstacle overcome.

“Adaptation and stimulation are important parts of our wellbeing, and a huge part of our capacity to be resilient. We can get stagnant, and it is about growing and finding different ways to be, which then allows us to have a different life experience. Then you start to feel better about yourself – you’re aware of what you can do, more willing to take positive risks. You have more energy. It’s a kind of domino effect,” Clinical Psychologist Robertta Babb told The Guardian .

Beyond personal development and resilience, stepping out of your comfort zone fosters a sense of empowerment and self-discovery. By challenging self-imposed limitations and societal expectations, individuals unlock hidden potentials and unveil facets of their identity previously undiscovered. Each new experience provides valuable insights into personal strengths, weaknesses, and aspirations, paving the way for a more authentic and fulfilling life. “People think about going from zero to 100, as opposed to all the different steps in between. This is linked to a cognitive behavioral therapy technique called exposure and habituation – you are building up to what you want to do. You have an opportunity to celebrate the little wins that give you a boost of confidence and energy, which makes it exciting,” Babb added.

Continued learning and innovation Psychology Today reports that embracing discomfort fosters a mindset of continuous learning and innovation. By actively seeking out new experiences and perspectives, individuals remain open-minded and adaptable in an ever-evolving world. This willingness to embrace change and explore the unknown is not only essential for personal growth but also for professional success and societal progress.

Stepping out of your comfort zone is a necessity for growth, resilience, and self-discovery. By embracing discomfort and venturing beyond familiar boundaries, individuals unlock their full potential, cultivate resilience, and embark on a journey of continuous learning and innovation. So, dare to embrace the unknown, for it's within the realm of discomfort that life's most profound transformations occur.

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE: Why Leaving Your Comfort Zone Gives You a Chance to Grow Comfort Zone Weekends Help Grieving Kids Heal How Taking Risks Can Lead You to a Better Life

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, examples of stepping outside your comfort zone.

Hey guys, I need some help! I'm working on a college essay and it's about the last time I stepped outside of my comfort zone. What are some good examples that I can use as inspiration? Thanks in advance!

Hey there! I'd love to help by providing a few examples that you can draw inspiration from for your college essay. It's important to remember that your essay should be a reflection of your own personal experiences, so try to think deeply about the times you've stepped outside your comfort zone and how they've shaped you.

1. Trying a new hobby or skill: For example, you may have decided to take up a new instrument or learn a different language despite having no previous experience. This could show your ability to adapt and your willingness to learn from trial and error.

2. Overcoming a fear: This could be anything from conquering your fear of heights by going ziplining or rock climbing, to overcoming stage fright by giving a speech in front of a large audience. In this scenario, you would demonstrate resilience and growth by facing your fears head-on.

3. Taking a leadership role: Perhaps you stepped up to lead a project or group that you had no prior experience with, whether in school or a community setting. In doing so, you can showcase your ability to take initiative and collaborate with others.

4. Traveling alone: If you've ever taken a solo trip, whether it be to another country or a simple weekend getaway, this could be a great experience to discuss. Traveling alone demonstrates independence, self-reliance, and adaptability as you navigate unfamiliar environments.

5. Engaging in difficult conversations: This could involve discussing sensitive or controversial topics with people who hold different opinions or come from different backgrounds. By doing so, you could demonstrate emotional intelligence, open-mindedness, and respect for others' perspectives.

When choosing your example, make sure it's authentic and meaningful to you. The admissions officers want to get an insight into who you are and what you value, so the more personal and unique your story is, the more it will resonate with them. Good luck with your essay!

About CollegeVine’s Expert FAQ

CollegeVine’s Q&A seeks to offer informed perspectives on commonly asked admissions questions. Every answer is refined and validated by our team of admissions experts to ensure it resonates with trusted knowledge in the field.

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Describe a situation when you found yourself outside of your comfort zone

Growth and progress does not happen within the limits of our comfort zone. But that’s not the no.1 one reason why they may ask you this question in an interview. The thing is that regardless of whether you apply for some repetitive job in a fast food restaurant, or for a managerial role in a Fortune 500 corporation, you will face some tough situations , and either your physical or mental limits will be tested. As they rightly say, the beginnings are always hard , everywhere…

Hiring managers wonder whether you have such an experience from the past: Were your limits tested? And have you stood to the test? Did you crack under pressure, or did you actually manage to widen your comfort zone , and discovered that your limits are much further than you originally thought they were? Let’s have a look at seven sample answers to this tricky interview question. Do not forget to check also the notes below the list of answers, for additional hints on how to make a great impression on the hiring managers.

7 sample answers to “Describe a situation where you found yourself outside of your comfort zone” interview question

I recall such a situation from my very last job in sales. The managers have set extremely ambitious monthly targets for us, and I had to spend seven hours a day on the call , talking to clients, in order to at least stand a chance of meeting the goals. Needless to say, it was extremely hard to remain focused for such a long period of time, and it also wasn’t easy for the mind and body. Before, I’ve never spent more than three hours a day calling. However, I understood that unless I wanted to lose the job, I had to try my best to meet the high expectations. And so I did it. I found myself out of my comfort zone, but day after day, week after week, I keep calling, closing deals, earning commissions. I was actually one of the very few employees of the sales department who managed to meet the monthly targets on a rather consistent basis. Having said that, eventually I decided it wasn’t the job I wanted to do in a long run, and decided to quit. Hence now I am here, trying to get a different kind of job with you.
This is my first job application, so I cannot really recall an example from my working life. However, just a few months ago, preparing for my school leaving examinations , I definitely found myself outside of my comfort zone. I have never been the most talented student. Always had to try harder than the rest of the class . Trying to prepare for the finals, I spent four weeks doing almost nothing but studying. I slept for four hours a day. Definitely didn’t feel great physically, but I pushed myself to the limits , passed the finals, and now I can finally start working, in the field that I like.
Working in CPS, I found myself outside of my comfort zone daily. Because even though you know the reality of the job, and expect to witness the worst in the families, things will still catch you off guard. At the end of the day, you have empathy, you are a woman, and you feel for the children. I cannot tell you how many times I felt terrible, wanted to run away, with or without the kids. But I knew I had to keep my emotions in check, and could not say all I desired to say to the parents or guardians. It was hard, I often cried back at home, but I didn’t quit. I saw a meaningful purpose in my job , knew why I did it, and continued, even though I found myself outside of my comfort zone on a daily basis.
Perhaps the best example is from my personal life . Last year, New Year’s Eve, I decided to lose weight. I knew I had to do it, since being obese was too bad for my health. What’s more, it impacted my self esteem, and consequently my chances in relationships, interviews, and so on. I decided to embark on a journey, a three months weight loss program, which included both dietary changes and physical exercise. Both of it was far outside my comfort zone. When you do no exercise whatsoever for over five years, even a fast five miles walk feels like a marathon, like the most difficult task in the world. And then you have food, all the addictions—sugar, coffee, fast food, you name it. I think one cannot describe how hard it was, how much did I have to broaden my comfort zone . But I always kept reminding myself why I was doing it. My goals, the new life I hoped to live, and how losing those 30 pounds will improve the quality of it. And hence I stuck to the program. Eventually, after about one month, things started getting easier. My body began to get used to the new routines, and I was slowly getting rid of my addictions. You can see the final result in front of you. I dropped 25 pounds, feel much better about myself, can do more. It is an amazing feeling, and an experience that proves that I can withstand being outside of my comfort zone, even for prolonged period of time.
The best example I can think of is actually from my trip to the mountains of Morocco. I prepared well, had the maps, the GPS, and everything. But on one day the weather was terrible, all my devices got soaked, stopped working, and I got lost in the mountains. My heartbeat rose sharply, and I was really afraid. However, I tried to my best to remain calm. Looked around, studied the paper map I had with me, tried to descend to the valley below. The terrain was rough with loose stones, and it was important not to push myself too hard. Because if I injured myself there, without knowing where I was, without means of communication, I would be lost. Though I definitely felt outside my comfort zone—both physically and mentally, I managed to keep at least some calm, and slowly but steadily I reached the valley and eventually the civilization.
To be honest with you, I cannot recall such a situation in last ten years. I am pretty resilient, adaptable , and have experienced a lot in my managerial career. Therefore it is hard to surprise me, to catch me off-guard, to get me outside of my comfort zone. No doubt some people have tried to do it in my last job, but without succeeding. But I do not want to sound over-confident . I know that the role I try to get with you is extremely challenging. I may face the unknown in your company, I may be pushed to my limits. No doubt it won’t be easy, but at the same time I feel ready to face every challenge , and to try my best in every possible, and every impossible scenario.
I am outside of my comfort zone right now . Having worked in IT for the past 10 years, I haven’t really experienced many stressful meetings. But this interview matters a lot to me , and I find it hard to concentrate, to deliver, to do my best. Yet I try what I can, because I really want to get this job . At the end of the day, in today’s economy you either adapt or you “die”. I have no other option, and look forward to keep getting outside of my comfort zone, and growing in that way, both as an engineer and as a person.

Special Tip: This isn’t the only difficult question you will face while interviewing for any decent job. You will face questions about prioritization, dealing with pressure, dealing with ambiguity , and other tricky scenarios that happen in the workplace. If you want to make sure that you stand out with your answers and outclass your competitors, have a look at our Interview Success Package . Up to 10 premium answers to 31 tricky scenario based questions (+ more) will make your life much easier in the interviews. Thank you for checking it out!

Examples from personal life are great

You do not have to stick to work when facing this question in a job interview. At the end of the day, work is just that—work, and some situations from our personal life can be much more stressful, because the outcome matters to us more .

Facing a tricky situation in your relationship, having to learn something new, trying to lose weight, building a new healthy habit, losing someone you loved… Your attitude matters for the interviewers. Whatever situation you narrate, the key is to demonstrate that you can actually step outside of your comfort zone, and handle it both physically and mentally . Once you manage to do that, they will be satisfied with your answer.

The power of humility

We live in a world of over-confident individuals. Humility is a highly sought-after quality on the employment market, and this question is an opportunity to showcase it in an interview. Now it doesn’t mean that you should say that you collapsed, and had to quit, as soon as you found yourself outside of your comfort zone. That isn’t a good idea really…

But it is fine admitting that you struggled, or even suffered in the process. Keep it on your mind while dealing with this one. Show them that while you feel ready to face the challenges of your new job, you are also aware of your fragility as a human being. You try to be the best employee you can be, but at the same time you have your weaknesses, and you may struggle in some situations. That doesn’t change nothing on the fact that you will try to face them with your head high, and that you actually enjoy stepping outside of your comfort zone…

Ready to answer this one? I hope so! Do not forget to check also sample answers to other tricky interview questions :

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Get Out of Your Comfort Zone: A Guide for the Terrified

Andy Molinsky

It’s not easy, but these three tips can help.

No one likes to move beyond his or her comfort zone, but that’s really where the magic happens. It’s where we can grow, learn, and develop in a way that expands our horizons beyond what we thought was possible.

Andy Molinsky is a professor of Organizational Behavior and International Management at Brandeis University and the author of Global Dexterity , Reach , and Forging Bonds in a Global Workforce . Connect with him on LinkedIn and download his free e-booklet of 7 myths about working effectively across cultures .

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More From Forbes

16 reasons why you should get out of your comfort zone now.

There are no bones to break in an ego. How long yours takes to heal depends only on your attitude.

When you are self-conscious or nervous, you feel as if the whole world is watching. They aren't.

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Before I started Uncommon Clarity in 2004, I read Alan Weiss’ book Getting Started in Consulting . Any independent professional, whether consultant, painter, lawyer, or something else is in the marketing business first and foremost. Hanging a shingle on the proverbial door might let you call yourself a consultant, but it doesn’t let you practice it. Weiss' book made this perfectly clear. It also identified almost two dozen different ways to become known, many of which left this introverted, Scandinavian, engineer quaking in her boots:

Business group committee leadership
Radio interviews
TV appearances
Adjunct professor

However, after looking at each suggestion separately and reading Weiss’ concrete steps, I couldn’t see any reason why I couldn’t give each a try.

That first year in business, I figure I was out of my comfort zone 99% of the time. The second year, it was more like 75% of the time. By the third year, that number was closer to 60%. I was getting comfortable. Too comfortable. It was time to stick my neck out farther! I felt like a different person from the one who sheepishly hung that original shingle emblazoned with the bold promise of uncommon clarity. And I liked that feeling! I was even a little worried about my marriage, not for any concrete reasons, but because I wondered if my husband liked the person I was becoming. I felt that different. So I pushed onward until I’d accomplished everything on Weiss’ list. None of them had killed me! As a matter of fact, most were enjoyable. But not networking. I’ll never be a fan of networking. But that doesn’t mean I can’t do it!

A baker’s dozen years later, I thought I’d share 16 reasons why it is good to get out of your comfort zone:

1. It won’t be as bad as you expect.

I attended a story-telling event recently where one speaker stumbled badly, repeated his introduction twice, and admitted his stage fright. His confession was met with cheers. The applause when he finished was loud and supportive. The audience clearly admired his willingness to push himself.

2. Egos heal.

3. No one is paying that much attention to you.

4. Others are scared too.

When you are nervous or scared, you feel alone. You aren't.

5. People with no more talent and no less fear than you are successfully doing the thing you are avoiding.

I remember vividly one of my very first business breakfasts. Everyone got a chance to stand up and give an elevator pitch. I was unprepared and sweating bullets. I'll never forget watching a woman with admitted nervousness and far fewer traditional advantages than I stand up and knock it out of the park.

6. There is no better way to grow.

Push yourself and you will grow. Guaranteed. And it feels great!

7. You might discover something you love.

Seriously. Think of all the things you've never tried. How can there not be tons of wonderful activities on that list!

8. New challenges and experiences rewire your brain and make it more adaptable, stronger, and healthier.

Research shows that brains benefit from new exercises. New challenges are a great way to keep your brain young and healthy.

9. You will boost your self-confidence.

This one needs no explanation, but I certainly didn't want to leave it off the list!

10. You will be proud that you took the leap.

We all stand a little taller with the pride of a new accomplishment. You can make that happen far more frequently than you are today.

11. Each milestone makes it easier to tackle another milestone.

Success breeds more success thanks to the confidence, experience, learning, and determination it inspires.

12. You will be more promotable and/or will earn more money.

Those who are willing to step up to challenges and take some risks earn respect and promotions. Independent professionals must take personal risks to make more money.

13. You will learn that failure is rare because the most common outcomes are success, learning, and growth.

You learn the most when things don't go perfectly. If you are determined to try new things and grow, you will focus on what you are learning and forget about failure.

14. As your comfort zone expands, you will see new opportunities previously obscured by barriers of your own making.

Staying in your comfort zone is like wearing blinders. You will tell yourself that all you care about are the things that are already a part of your life. You will continually convince yourself that you dislike the things you've never tried. They just aren't for you. And with every such thought, you erect thicker walls between yourself and everything that makes you uncomfortable. Take some risks and the walls start coming down.

15. You will become more resilient and prepared for whatever comes your way.

Life can be tough. Things can happen that will yank you right out of your comfortable nest. The more open you are to new possibilities, the more diverse your experiences, and the more confident you are in your ability to face new situations, the more resilient you will be.

16. It could change your life by opening doors you never knew were there.

New experiences can change everything about what you believe, what you like to do, how you behave, and how you live. The possibilities are truly endless.

Are you feeling inspired to take some risks and try something you've been avoiding? I hope so! You'll probably do great! If not, you'll learn. Go for it!

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Stepping Out Of Your Comfort Zone Essay

Comfort Zone Brian Tracy, one of the top success speakers and authors in the world, has once said, “Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new. ” His point is that, when one steps out of her comfort zone it will be strange, difficult, or painful. However, one will only grow or learn from the experience if they accept the embarrassment, difficulties, and the awkwardness that come with trying something new.

I agree with Brian Tracy because of my experience becoming a soccer player.

It started in middle school when I decided to join my school’s soccer team. I would watch soccer matches with my family and I was comfortable with the idea of watching it, never playing it. Until eighth grade, when I decided to step out of my “comfort zone. ” Growing up, I wasn’t the healthiest child and I knew that I needed to change my habits.

Therefore, in middle school, I decided to join my school’s soccer team. I knew a majority of the rules and how to play different positions despite not knowing how to dribble a soccer ball.

Brian Tracy Comfort Zone

When I attended the soccer meeting, that’s when it hit me that there’s a huge difference between watching soccer on TV and actually playing. The other players on the team had played soccer since the age of four, and there I was, without soccer experience.

Proficient in: Comfort Zone

“ This writer never make an mistake for me always deliver long before due date. Am telling you man this writer is absolutely the best. ”

After signing up for the team, I felt foolish, scared, and distraught because I didn’t want the other players to judge me. I didn’t want them to make fun of me because I couldn’t dribble or kick a soccer ball, but my inner voice was still telling me, “ Don’t quit! Let the judging motivate you! Who cares if I can’t kick a ball, I will learn! My comfort zone was watching soccer whereas, trying to play soccer was me, stepping out of my comfort zone. During warm-ups in the first practice, I felt as if I was going to die! My legs felt horrible, and there were 2 hours left of practice. I wanted to quit, I was uncomfortable and embarrassed because I fell during an easy drill, was the slowest runner, and tired in the first 20 minutes. In the back of my mind I knew that I shouldn’t quit, I did soccer for me, to benefit my health and feed my anxiety and curiosity about the sport. On the other hand, if I were to quit, I knew I would be unhappy and disappointed with myself.

Therefore, I stayed with soccer and I’m happy with my decision because I’ve made the greatest friendships and came out of my comfort zone. My middle school soccer experience has changed me in the greatest way, it helped me realize that I will face problems where at times I won’t feel comfortable and that I shouldn’t quit, no matter how difficult, strange, or painful. After playing soccer in the eighth grade, I decided to continue to play in high school; I wanted to continue my new healthy habits and my friendships that I made in middle school.

From freshman year to senior year, I have played soccer for my high school team, junior varsity for my freshman year and varsity for my sophomore, junior, and senior year, and during all my embarrassing falls, crazy drills, and “psycho” coaches, I realized I love playing. Such a shift in my own paradigm was one of the hardest things for me to do however, I learned what it means to play with heart and passion, a team is a family, and new healthy habits. I grew because I was willing to feel awkward and embarrassed and as Kristen Wiig has once said, “When you go out of your comfort zone and it works there’s nothing more satisfying. ”

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Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone

by Melissa Donovan | Nov 5, 2020 | Creative Writing | 2 comments

Get out of your comfort zone and expand your writing horizons.

Today’s post is an excerpt from Ready, Set, Write: A Guide to Creative Writing . This is from a chapter titled “Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone,” which encourages you to try new forms and genres of writing.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to explore a completely new form of writing? Are you willing to challenge yourself and get creative by trying something new?

Many writers specialize in a specific form, genre, or niche. Fiction writers are concerned with plot, character, and setting, and they focus on their genre, whether it’s mystery, romance, or fantasy. Poets are consumed with form, language, musicality, and imagery. Essayists focus on the topics they write about.

Sure, some of us explore various types of writing, but how deeply are we willing to immerse ourselves into unfamiliar waters?

When novelists experiment with poetry, they are likely to improve their vocabulary, bring better imagery into their stories, and craft sentences with improved flow and rhythm. When poets experiment with essays, they learn how to approach their subjects from a different angle, broadening their perspectives. And when essayists try their hands at writing fiction, they learn how to bring the power of narrative into their work.

As an added bonus, working in different forms, even if only briefly, often rejuvenates your creativity, bringing new ideas to the forefront.

When we lodge ourselves inside a comfort zone, our work can become stale or feel formulaic, and our inspiration can dry up. That why it’s beneficial to read and write a little bit of everything. That doesn’t mean if you’re passionate about science fiction that you have to start reading just as much poetry and nonfiction, and it doesn’t mean if you’re a poet that you have to divide your time equally between crafting poems and creating stories. But occasionally, you can take a little time to check out some other types of writing, both as a reader and as a writer.

Below, you’ll find a few activities that will prompt you to explore unfamiliar territory in your writing. Choose a type of writing that you’ve never attempted before, or choose something you’ve only dabbled in. Pick a form or genre that you’ve struggled with in the past. Just pick something that you haven’t mastered, and then dive in. It won’t take long:

Write a piece of flash fiction under a thousand words.
Write a hundred-word poem.
Write a thousand-word topical essay.
Compose a newspaper column.
Write three pages of a script.

If you’re not ready to try a completely new form of writing, then expand within your preferred form. If you write horror stories, try writing a piece of contemporary fiction. If you write free-verse poetry, try writing a few form poems. If you write personal essays, try writing a response essay or a descriptive essay.

Ready Set Write a Guide to Creative Writing

This is really good advice. It is important to break out of the box or comfort zone we tend to nestle into. I have shared this widely.

Thanks, Mark!

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How to get out of your comfort zone (in 6 simple steps)

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What is the comfort zone?

Why is it hard to leave your comfort zone?

How to get out of your comfort zone

What happens when you leave your comfort zone?

Steps to getting out of your comfort zone

Key tips when getting out of your comfort zone

In the warmth of our comfort zone, life feels safe and familiar. More often than we care to admit, finding the motivation to leave is hard. But the more we’re stuck in our comfort zone, the more opportunities we miss to fully immerse ourselves in the human experience.

Learning how to get out of your comfort zone takes willpower and a change in mindset. Each step you take to expand your comfort zone leads to personal growth , learning , and success .

Let’s find out what a comfort zone is, why it’s hard to leave it, and the steps needed to break through that bubble and find out what you are capable of.

What is the comfort zone?

The comfort zone is a psychological state in which a person feels at ease because they’re not being tested.

Inside the comfort zone, people don’t typically engage in new experiences or take on any challenges . They only participate in activities that are familiar, making them feel “in control” of their environment.

People stay in their comfort zone to avoid feelings of anxiety or stress, and pain. Anything outside the comfort zone creates uncertainty, and uncertainty makes us feel anxious . Naturally, human beings are wired to avoid these feelings. This makes them reluctant to leave their comfort zone.

After all, why should they ?

As comfortable as it seems, this safe bubble keeps people from personal growth and doing the things they want but don’t have the courage to do.

For example, staying in an unfulfilling job for years leaves you feeling burnt out and disengaged . Yet, it’s become your comfort zone. You know you’re capable of more, but venturing out and challenging your boundaries scares you because it involves uncertainty.

Why is it hard to leave your comfort zone?

Finding the motivation to leave your comfort zone isn’t easy. Here are three reasons why you may be hesitating to take the first step.

Fear and uncertainty

In your comfort zone, everything is predictable, which makes you feel safe. For example, you know exactly what to expect when you take the same route to work every day.

Woman-sitting-in-front-of-laptop-worried-how-to-get-out-of-your-comfort-zone

When you think of leaving or expanding your comfort zone, you’re met with uncertainty. And according to Psychology Today, uncertainty equals danger , which makes you fearful.

So even when you know you’ve outgrown your comfort zone, fear holds you back from moving forward. For instance, you may hesitate to pursue a different career path because of a fear of failure .

The temptation of comfort

Even if we want to grow, the pull of the comfort zone is strong. Because it’s safe and easy, it’s natural for people to want to stay there.

Yet staying there also means never moving forward and growing. As Dr. Margie Warrell explains to Forbes, “ growth and comfort can’t ride the same horse .” She explains that we often forget about the risk of not taking risks. In other words, you risk missing out on the life you have the potential to live.

A fixed mindset

When you have a fixed mindset , you convince yourself that you don’t have the necessary skills to do or accomplish something. This makes you less motivated to look for opportunities to grow and learn new skills .

Instead, you use your skills as an excuse to stay in the comfort zone, making statements like, “I can’t do that” or “That’s not something I’m good at.”

This mentality keeps you stuck in the comfort zone as a way to avoid challenges and hardship.

Fixed habits

Successful behavioral change is difficult because our behavior is habitual. The more we repeat certain behaviors, the more we get stuck into fixed patterns.

For example, waking up at 6 am every morning will be difficult at first if you’ve been following an irregular sleep schedule for years.

Lasting behavioral change starts with a strong willingness to change.

How to get out of your comfort zone

In 1908, an experiment performed by psychologists Robert Yerkes and John Dodson found an interesting relationship between performance and anxiety. They discovered that mice were more motivated to complete a maze when given mild electrical shocks. However, the mice hid in fear once the shocks became too strong.

According to the Yerkes-Dodson Law, an optimal level of pressure or anxiety increases performance, but only up to a point . Too much pressure has the opposite effect, causing someone to panic.

Trying to jump too far outside your comfort zone can have the same effect. Doing activities that increase your anxiety too much can have you scurrying even further back into your comfort zone.

The best way to leave your comfort zone is to gradually expand it and find your optimal level of “ good stress .”

Increased performance is just one of the many reasons stepping out of your comfort zone is important. It also helps you find out your true potential , reach your goals, and live a more fulfilling life.

Here are five ways to get out of your comfort zone:

Do one thing you’ve always wanted to
Take on a fitness challenge
Change up your routine
Expand your professional skillset
Choose a fear, and face it
Travel somewhere new

Let’s break down each of them, one step at a time.

1. Do one thing you’ve always wanted to

If you have a list of things you’ve always wanted to do but just haven’t gotten around to yet, you’re not alone.

Many people have so-called bucket lists filled with meaningful experiences and goals they want to accomplish .

Challenge yourself by picking one thing you’ve always wanted to do and doing it. This can be anything from learning how to play the piano to learning a new language or running a marathon.

2. Take on a fitness challenge

According to YouGovAmerica data, getting healthier was the main goal of US adults in 2021.

women-running-up-steps-how-to-get-out-of-your-comfort-zone

Take on a 30-day fitness challenge like running or cycling. Fitness challenges not only expand your comfort zone but also improve your physical health and well-being .

Studies show that regular exercise decreases the effects of stress on the body , lowering anxiety levels. This makes it easier for you to try things outside your comfort zone, as one of the barriers to stepping outside of it is the feeling of anxiety that it triggers.

3. Change up your routine

A routine built on good habits gives people stability and helps them get things done.

But when someone becomes too cemented into their daily routine, they begin to feel like they’re running on autopilot.

Shaking up your routine with some spontaneity is one way to get out of that rut. For example, say you’re working remotely from the comfort of your home office every day. Change up your routine and try working from a cafe or a different place in your home a few times a week.

4. Expand your professional skill set

Comfort zones can get in the way of your professional growth. Getting too comfortable in a role you’ve outgrown, for example, can keep you stuck when you need to move forward in your career.

One way to leave your comfort zone is to learn new skills that give you a competitive advantage and make you more employable. Use your organization’s learning and development resources to upskill yourself with in-demand skills in your industry.

5. Choose a fear, and face it

You need to be brave to step out of your comfort zone. Being brave is not about eliminating fear but moving forward despite it.

Choose one fear that’s currently holding you back and confront it. You can start with something small. For example, if you’re afraid of public speaking , practice speaking up more during work meetings, and join a local Toastmasters club .

6. Travel somewhere new

Traveling is one of the best ways to step out of your comfort zone. It’s not only fun, but it’s also eye-opening.

If you go to the same beach resort every holiday, choose a completely new destination next time you travel. Exploring a diverse environment , language, and way of life is one of the most rewarding experiences because it offers new perspectives and challenges your ways of thinking.

Travelling also exposes you to the natural wonders of the world and makes you gain a deeper appreciation for nature and the environment .

What happens when you leave your comfort zone?

There are countless rewards waiting at the end of your comfort zone. Let’s take a look at some of them.

Increased resilience

BetterUp research found that resilience is an inner strength that can be learned .

The more you expand beyond your comfort bubble, the more you strengthen your resilience muscles . Embracing uncomfortable situations over and over again builds mental strength. This helps you overcome obstacles in your personal and professional life with more ease and optimism.

As change and uncertainty are bound to happen throughout your life, learning how to navigate them is a crucial skill.

Self-actualization

According to Dr. Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, self-actualization is our need to become everything we are capable of becoming. This is a process of personal growth and the development of abilities to reach one’s full potential in life.

If you stay in your comfort zone, you’ll never know what you’re really capable of. Once you push through the initial fear of leaving, you begin to step into your potential . Start by challenging yourself, being more spontaneous, and looking for opportunities to learn.

However, we should look at self-actualization as a continuous journey rather than a destination.

A boost in self-confidence

Self-confidence and comfort zones are directly correlated. This means that the smaller the comfort zone is, the less confidence you have in yourself and your abilities.

happy-businesswoman-walking-how-to-get-out-of-your-comfort-zone

The more you face your fears and challenge them, the more confident you will become.

For example, facing your fear of public speaking will increase your confidence in two ways. It will make you a more confident public speaker, and it will boost your self-esteem . You’ll be proud of yourself for your achievement and your ability to take action despite your initial fear.

Fewer regrets

In her bestselling book The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying , Bonnie Ware reveals the biggest life regrets of her palliative care patients . Three of their responses have a common theme:

“I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself and not the life others expected of me.”
“I wish I had the courage to express my feelings.”
“I wish I had let myself be happier.”

Ware goes on to explain that people who didn’t honor their dreams and settled for a mediocre life came to regret the choices they made or didn’t make. Also, those stuck in old habits and feared change lied to themselves that they were content when they wished they were happier in reality.

Living in your comfort zone means taking the path of least resistance. While playing it safe has its advantages, it can also be unfulfilling. You’ll never regret leaving the comfort zone to pursue your dreams and live the life you want.

Here are six actionable steps that will make it easier to step out of your comfort zone.

1. Measure what’s inside and outside your comfort zone

Take a moment to reflect and ask yourself what it feels like to live within your comfort zone. Write down all the positive and negative aspects of your current situation and how they make you feel.

Then, write down all the things that are outside your comfort bubble. These can be your aspirations, goals, or all the things you’d like to experience. Write down what it would feel like if you lived outside your comfort zone and pursued these desires.

Writing can help you gain insight into your emotions and find the motivation you need to leave your comfort zone.

2. Set personal goals

Set S.M.A.R.T. personal goals that will help you expand your comfort zone.

For example, getting your master’s degree within five years is an example of a career goal that will help your personal and professional growth .

woman-writing-in-agenda-how-to-get-out-of-your-comfort-zone

Get clear on your specific goals, write them down, and identify how each goal will benefit you. Setting goals gives you a sense of direction and helps you create a personal vision of what your life can look like.

3. Take action — one step at a time

Leaving your comfort zone can seem like a difficult task. Overthinking it and looking too far ahead can feel overwhelming, causing you to procrastinate.

That’s why it’s crucial to take the first step and put one foot in front of the other. There will never be a “right time” to start. As the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu once said , “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

Each step you take to expand beyond your comfort zone is progress.

4. Find your sweet spot

Like the mice in the Yerkes-Dodson experiment, determine your optimal risk tolerance.

If your risk tolerance is very low, start small.

For example, if your goal is to grow your professional network , attending a networking event may be too intimidating at first. Instead, you can begin networking in a way that’s more comfortable for you.

For instance, start by reaching out to someone you’d like to network with on LinkedIn and ask them for a virtual coffee chat.

Finding the sweet spot of challenging yourself without pushing too far can make all the difference. Taking gradual baby steps will build up your risk tolerance and confidence.

5. Cultivate a positive mental attitude

When it comes to leaving your comfort zone, having the right attitude is crucial.

A positive mental attitude means approaching every situation and challenge in life with optimism. Here’s how to have a positive mental attitude when you’re faced with uncertainty:

Have compassion for yourself when you fail
Frame challenges as opportunities
Set ambitious goals
See each failure as a lesson
Challenge negative beliefs and learn how to be optimistic

6. Hang out with like-minded people

Identify the people in your life with a growth mindset that regularly take risks.

They can be friends, mentors , or co-workers who are continuously learning, embracing challenges, and moving forward in spite of failure. Spend time with them, ask for their advice, and emulate the qualities you admire in them.

Having a support system makes stepping outside your comfort zone a lot easier than doing it on your own.

Key tips when getting out of your comfort zone

Leaving your comfort zone will feel uncomfortable and intimidating at first. Let’s explore a few important tips that will make your transition easier.

Have fun with it. Leave your ego at the door , and don’t aim for perfection. Instead, have fun, and rediscover the joy of experiencing new things .
Reframe your outlook. Instead of imagining the worst possible outcome, how about you start imagining the best? Practice visualization techniques and feel the joy of achieving your goals.
Celebrate each win. Acknowledge your progress, and celebrate your successes — big and small.
Reduce overthinking. Overthinking stops you from taking action and turns everything into a worst-case scenario. Practices like mindful breathing can help reduce negative thinking and anxiety.

How to get out of your comfort zone and start living

Living life inside the comfort zone has its benefits: it’s safe, familiar, and less stressful. But as

Nelson Mandela famously said, “There is no passion to be found playing small — in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”

Learning how to get out of your comfort zone leads you to the life you’re capable of living. Find what motivates you, and challenge yourself one step at a time.

Getting out of your comfort zone leads to your professional and personal development and transformation. BetterUp can help you discover growth opportunities in all areas of your life.

Understand Yourself Better:

Big 5 Personality Test

Maggie Wooll, MBA

Maggie Wooll is a researcher, author, and speaker focused on the evolving future of work. Formerly the lead researcher at the Deloitte Center for the Edge, she holds a Bachelor of Science in Education from Princeton University and an MBA from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. Maggie is passionate about creating better work and greater opportunities for all.

Build real self-confidence: These tips get beneath the surface

Following your dreams is possible here are 10 reasons to do it, learn how to be your own best ally for reaching your goals, how to walk the freeing path of believing in yourself, personal goals that work: 20 examples to get started, the importance of knowing yourself: your key to fulfillment, 50 good habits to help spur your mental well-being, cracking the code on how to take care of your mental health, how to make a self-care checklist (and 7 examples), tired of playing it safe learn how to take risks that pay off, why can't i keep a job overcoming 5 common challenges, how to reset your life in 10 ways, how to get out of a rut: 8 tips for finding purpose, take the initiative: a how-to guide in 10 steps, change your relationship with change: get comfortable being uncomfortable, how to challenge yourself to start living your best life every day, how to get your life together in 10 simple steps, how to embrace change and why it's necessary for growth, stay connected with betterup, get our newsletter, event invites, plus product insights and research..

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COMMENTS

Get Out Of Your Comfort Zone
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Comfort generally refers to a state where our needs are met, so we are at ease. We are wired to seek comfort and certainty because it means safety and security. Retreating to our comfort zones can recharge our batteries. However, a lack of risk-taking results in a lack of growth. Eventually, progress plateaus.
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1853. Comfort Zone Brian Tracy, one of the top success speakers and authors in the world, has once said, "Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new. " His point is that, when one steps out of her comfort zone it will be strange, difficult, or painful.
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722 Words. 3 Pages. Open Document. Comfort zone is a situation where one feels safe and at ease. It is a type of behaviour that keeps us at a steadily Low anxiety level. Something that we do all the time, like taking the bus to school, watching television programmes and checking out social media platforms are part of our comfort zones.
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