Philip A. Gonzales
Comfort Zone
Comfort is very important, and seeking comfort is a healthy impulse. In fact, the feeling of being safe and secure is the second most crucial layer in the Pyramid of Needs – a diagram of what we need to survive and thrive – that was devised by the famous psychologist, Abraham Maslow.
The idea of a “comfort zone” is familiar to most of us. But if there is a great change in your life – a medical crisis, a blow to your finances, the collapse of a personal relationship – your comfort zone can get in the way of your ability to survive, grow, and thrive. So it is important to increase your understanding of your own personal comfort zone.
What are the routines and familiar feelings that nurture and affirm you during ordinary times?
How do you respond when you are forced to leave your comfort zone?
In times of great change, we all have the instinct to grasp for something familiar; something that could provide comfort and security. There have been many times when a crisis in my son’s medical condition has placed me at the Emergency Department instead of in a movie theater, or in a hospital instead of on the ski slopes. Of course I would rather have been in my comfort zone than wrestling with stressful situations in which the quality of my actions was critical to the medical outcome.
Over the years, the constant demands of caring for my son, along with repeated medical crises, have narrowed down my comfort zone almost out of existence. But what has risen up in its place is a sense of vitality and depth of awareness that was hard for me to imagine in my previous existence. Escaping your comfort zone does not mean that you will have constant discomfort. Don’t be afraid. Here’s how to start controlling your comfort zone, making the most of it, but keeping it from controlling you.
Start by noticing how you feel when something unexpectedly takes you out of your comfort zone. Are you likely to be irritated? Curious? Angry? Depressed? Well, the first step to taking control is to set up your own interruptions. Create ways that you can leave your comfort zone and accomplish something that makes you active, not passive. But be sure to leave your comfort zone for new and interesting activities. It can be something as simple as setting a kitchen timer that tells you to get up from the TV and write a letter to a friend. Or it can be an entirely new adventure, like turning your vacation into a hiking tour of the Scottish coast.
No matter how you decide to leave your comfort zone, it will be a decision that will strengthen you for the more difficult times. You will become more aware; more alive by taking charge of your own comfort zone.
Tags: achievement, comfort zone, hierarchy of needs, Maslow, psychology, survival