Flexible Mind: Expanding Your Comfort Zone

As we engage in activities to make our bodies healthier, we all know how beneficial it is to stretch those muscles and ligaments, to gently (or not so gently it seems) extend our range of motion beyond what is comfortable.  We may not like it, but it’s Good For Us.

What about those mental muscles?  I’m not talking about intellect or intelligence, but our comfort zone—what we believe is possible for us.

This is a critical concept, because many times our biggest obstacle, our most insistent source of limitations, is our belief in what we can do. 

• We don’t start that craft project, because we have never tried it before and we don’t know that we’d be good at it. 
• We don’t try to go horseback riding because we’ve been afraid of horses, but we think it might be fun.
• Our fear of water holds us back from swimming, although it would be easier on us than the treadmill.
• We don’t start that new class that sounds interesting because, well, we didn’t get around to it—easier to stay home.

If any of these sound like familiar conversations you’ve had with yourself, then it might be that you need to work on the flexibility of your comfort zone. 

Now, let’s get real here.  No one is going to cure a fear of heights by skydiving.  That’s not what we’re talking about at all.   Think about gently stretching your sense of possibility.  If you take a rubber band and look at it, you can observe its natural shape and size.  Then if you place it on an object, say around a stack of cards, that is just a little bigger than the rubber band, just enough to hold them together, and leave it there for awhile, that size becomes the natural shape.  We’ve noticed this, as we “wear out” a rubber band and soon need to double it to get the hold we need on that stack of cards.

Just like the rubber band, we can expand our comfort zone.  Here are some suggestions:

• Take a class.  If you’re uncomfortable in new environments, take a friend.  If you’re nervous about the content (swimming lessons when the idea of swimming amounts to “survival while I’m in the water”), talk to the instructor about your fears beforehand.
• Approach something new in small steps.  Start with just researching that craft project.  What does it really take?  How can you break it up and commit to those small pieces until you’re done.
• Plan.  Sometimes a new activity is scary when we look at the whole thing at once (that really is a BIG mountain…), but becomes a lot less overwhelming if we simply only need to look for walking shoes, then a route, obtain a map, and pick a date.
• Give yourself permission to bail out.  If it’s completely uncomfortable, scary or downright dangerous, don’t feel bad about letting it go.  Sometimes that’s an expansion too.

The more we walk right up to the edge of what we are comfortable doing, being, believing, the more our comfort zone expands.  If we stay well within our comfort zone boundaries, pretty soon those boundaries get smaller and smaller. 

Think about that the next time you’re tempted to do something new—but just don’t know if you’ll like it.  Step out—you never know what cool adventure might be waiting.