Step out of your comfort zone - the reward will come
It is a known fact that successful people regularly step out of their comfort zone. It is essential in order to grow and develop. However, everyone is very good in getting used to the feeling of comfort, of staying in the known and it is very easy to get a little bit too comfortable in that status. To leave your comfort zone means you make a step into new territory, into the unknown and that alone can be very scary for a lot of people. Anther annoying fact about stepping out of your comfort zone is that there is no guaranteed reward for it. When you go into the unknown, you simply don’t know the end result and how things might turn out. What if you change that perspective and already see having made the step into the unknown as a development and a success in itself. If you step out of your comfort zone, you will always learn and develop regardless of how things might turn out.
Personally, I have stepped immensely out of my own comfort zone in some many different ways this year. I became a mother, and nobody is born a parent. Secondly, I changed positions within my company. I moved from my comfort zone of knowing my job inside out to completely new territory, working with new people and facing projects that really push me in being challenging and making me learn very fast. All of these are therefore steps out of my comfort zone that I consciously chose to take in order to develop and get where I want to be in my life.
As mentioned before, the idea is to find that balance between moving out of the comfortable but not overwhelming ourselves. Being challenged is a good thing as it requires us to move, develop and progress. It prevents us from standing still and have the ability to make active choices before life chooses for us. Moving out of our comfort zone therefore, believe it or not, can make us very happy.
However, moving out of our comfort zone does not always mean we get rewarded straight away. We cannot expect a reward straight away for our courage to leave the known. We really need to change our mindset here and see the journey and the hardship we took on by challenging ourselves further as the biggest reward. Our development is the biggest reward we can expect and the journey is really already the main achievement here.
Leaving our comfort zone is a necessary and a good thing. We will eventually get rewarded for it but we cannot expect this immediately. Being courageous enough to leave the comfort of the known behind and step into the uncertain and unknown will let us challenge ourselves and will spark a large leap of personal development. This alone, should be enough of a reward to regularly give it a try when the timing and the circumstances we find ourselves in are right.
