Ditch the discomfort mindset and embrace your flow

Flip through any motivational or self-help book, and you’ll likely come across some version of this core message: You’ve got to push yourself beyond your comfort zone to accomplish anything worthwhile. She heard these messages early in childhood, and embraced the idea that unless she pushed herself, lived on a growth edge, and leaned into her discomfort, she’d never achieve her goals. 

And for a while, it worked. She studied hard, became obsessed with her goals and spent every waking moment pushing herself to achieve them. She crammed her college schedule to the brim, networked constantly despite being an introvert, and pushed all those uncomfortable feelings away, telling herself that the discomfort was actually good. It was a sign of growth.

That’s exactly how she burned out, too. Despite all the praise for her many achievements, she felt empty and apathetic. Worse still, she’d taught herself not to listen to her intuition, not to take her own needs seriously and honor them. So she missed all the warning signs of impending breakdown. By her early twenties, wracked with anxiety and depression, obesity and ill-health, she had a complete mental and physical collapse. Feeling like a failure, she knew something had to change. But it would take several more breakdowns before it did.

Finally, at rock bottom, she began to honor the quiet voice of intuition that told her it was okay just to be her. Not the grind-culture, go-get-’em hustle queen whose self-worth rose and fell with her latest accomplishment, but just her authentic, positive, and happy self. The one who liked having time to reflect, to connect deeply with others and herself. When she made those things a priority, things even got easier as she began to thrive.

So this article will bust some long-standing myths around what it takes to succeed, starting with the idea that you can’t grow or succeed without suffering for it. It will take an honest look at the costs of living outside your comfort zone for too long, and how you can avoid it by nurturing your intuition and making comfort a priority. Then it offers some practical advice to help you chart a new course toward the life you dream of – without ever leaving your comfort zone. 

No pain, no gain? Think again

Take a moment and imagine a time in your childhood when you had trouble doing something, like your math homework or learning to ride a bike. What kinds of things did people around you say about it? 

For many, the answer might have been something like, You’re just not trying hard enough, or If you want to get better at anything, you have to work hard. Or perhaps it was the ever-encouraging Nothing comes easy.

The real message in these comments is simple: anything worthwhile in life comes with a high price in effort, time or discomfort. Whether at school, work, in sports, or even around the family dinner table, the belief that hard work is the only way to achieve your goals is an accepted paradigm. 

And beliefs matter more than you may think. The human brain believes things, like messages it hears from parents, teachers, religious leaders, media, or peers, and then actively looks for evidence to support those beliefs. The idea that experience determines your beliefs is actually false. Called confirmation bias by English psychologist Peter Wason, it's an all-too-human tendency to ignore evidence that contradicts one’s beliefs, and unconsciously seek confirmation of them instead.

So if you believe that you can only build a life you love by working incredibly hard all the time, you’re going to look for evidence that this is true. You’ll completely ignore the fact that this belief is actually chaining you to discomfort, anxiety, and stress. Even worse, this belief is based on the idea that there’s some fundamental deficit you have to make up for by pushing yourself to grow in uncomfortable ways – that you can only accomplish worthwhile things by working against your own nature and not being your authentic self.

That’s why the first step in finding your comfort zone is to seek out beliefs like this and start to challenge their implicit messages. If you’ve internalized the idea that your self-worth is tied to your achievements, you may feel compelled to keep pushing yourself as a way of life. That’s a recipe for burnout and exhaustion, and for denying yourself the love and compassion you so richly deserve just for being you.

So the next time you feel compelled to say “yes” to setting a goal or taking on a challenge regardless of how anxious or fearful it makes you, pause for a moment and ask yourself why you feel that way. You may discover that these beliefs are trapping you outside of your comfort zone, keeping you in places that are far less conducive to living a life you love.

Zones of living

If you’re not in your comfort zone right now, feeling authentic and fulfilled with life, you may be experiencing another zone of living that is far less pleasant. So let’s take a closer look at the three zones of living, to understand why choosing the comfortable one makes real sense.

When you’re not in a place where you feel fulfilled, authentic, and connected to the things that truly matter to you, then you’re living in either the survival zone or the complacent zone.

Just outside your comfort zone is the survival zone. This is the place where you are pushing yourself to put in outsized effort, and making decisions based on stress, fear, and uncertainty. In the survival zone, it is easy to make short-term decisions that jeopardize long-term health and well-being, because daily life is chaotic, driven by circumstances that feel beyond your control. 

A lot of workaholics linger in the survival zone, and they may even be admired for their work ethic. But driving all of this effort is a layer of fear – fear that goals are out of reach, that being themselves isn’t enough, that their achievements don’t measure up to those of others. 

Those in the survival zone likely feel exhausted by all this effort, and recognize that it is unsustainable. Sadly, instead of seeking comfort again, they may actually push themselves even farther away — to the complacent zone.

In the complacent zone, everything comes crashing down and all effort ceases. This is the place where everything feels too difficult – where exhaustion isn’t just a bodily phenomenon, but seems to have a hold on mind and spirit, too. This is the place where all the fear and negative self-talk leaves you unable to care about anything. It may feel like a relief for a short time, as numbness sometimes feels like an improvement in the endless cycle of stress.

But this zone is really just burnout. It is a place where living itself has become a chore, and even getting out of bed is too much. This is where the body and mind retreat when the stress of survival mode becomes unbearable. But it, too, is unsustainable, because life in this zone has no joy, no peace, and no growth. It’s neither living nor surviving, just … existing.

If you find yourself in the survival or complacent zones, the answer is not to work harder to get out of them. In fact, it’s the opposite. It’s putting yourself at the top of the priority list, and making time to rest, reflect, and restore yourself. While this might feel counterintuitive in the survival or complacent zones, it’s actually the smart choice – as we’ll see next.

Create with comfort in the flow zone

If the survival and complacent zones are ultimately about acting from feelings of fear, anxiety, self-judgment, and lack of self-worth, let’s take a closer look at what living in a comfort zone might feel like.

Try to remember a time early in your life when you discovered something that made you feel incredible. Perhaps it was learning to ride a bike, or the first time you applied finger paints to a canvas. Maybe it was the first time you sang a whole song by yourself, or read a book out loud. 

Can you remember how uplifted you felt? The excitement of discovery, or the happiness that flooded your system? It might have felt natural at that moment to imagine yourself a great artist, a world-class athlete, a great novelist, or famous musician. Those feelings of confidence and passion were the driving force in that moment, and you just flowed with them.

This is what life is like in the comfort zone. Think of it as the mental place where you feel at home – the safe place from which you can encounter the world, and that allows you to interact as your authentic self with the full awareness that it is enough. This is the place where you feel confident in pursuing the things that make you feel fulfilled, whether or not they matter to anyone else. 

And because all those stress hormones that were driving your choices outside this comfort zone get a chance to turn off here, the comfort zone is actually the place where real growth can happen. Associating growth with stress actually works against the brain’s abilities. Humans make better decisions when they are at ease – when their nervous systems aren’t on high alert and their bodies stuck in fight-or-flight mode.

The more you stay in a zone where your well-being, health, and vitality matter, the more your body and brain have time to rest and repair. This in turn makes you far better at making good choices about how you spend your time and effort, and brings better results. Because you are moving with purpose and passion, even the difficulties that arise have less impact. They feel less personal, and don’t arouse as much anxiety or stress response as a result.  

This is also the safe, mental place from which you can learn new things and experience sustainable growth. In fact, you don’t have to leave your comfort zone to accomplish great things; you just have to grow your comfort zone large enough to encompass them.

Growing in comfort: expanding the comfort zone

Remember the old fable about the race between the tortoise and the hare? Everyone bets the hare will win, given its quick and energetic nature. It is in fact the tortoise who wins, however, because he keeps a steady pace right up to the finish line, while the hare burns out. This idea of moving at your own pace and winning the race is timeless, but the story has even more lessons to impart.

Think of the tortoise’s shell as its comfort zone. It has everything it needs to feel safe and at home right there. From this safe place, it takes on the challenge of the race, knowing full well that if it stops anywhere along the way, it will be just fine. It is safe at home the entire time.

From this safe place it sets out on a journey into the unknown, with the full awareness that no one around it can imagine it will succeed. Slowly, steadily, and with time to enjoy the experience, why wouldn’t the tortoise enjoy the race? It’s not all about the finish line, the tortoise knows, but what it will experience along the way.

That’s what living in the comfort zone is all about. It is moving and growing at your own pace, in a direction you really want to go, and not leaving yourself behind to do it. After all, it’s doubtful the tortoise could enjoy the journey without its shell. Neither can you truly enjoy life’s journey from outside your comfort zone. 

Your growth journey should take all the time you need to acclimate yourself to the changes along the way. Understand that growth doesn’t have to happen in spurts, and challenges don’t have to be overwhelming. You can go slowly if you aren’t driven by fear, worried about survival, or stuck in complacency. And slow and steady do ultimately win.

To return to the comfort zone, it is important to confront the feelings that try to push you out of it for too long. That confrontation can feel uncomfortable, for sure. But the goal is to understand how negative self-esteem or self-talk are keeping you from expressing your authentic self. They may also be keeping you stuck in relationships, jobs, or living situations that don’t feel good, too.

Confronting these negative feelings takes courage. But like the tortoise, courage is much easier when you can feel at home in whatever circumstances you happen to be. Living in the safety and certainty of your comfort zone means fully accepting that everything you are right now, already, is enough. It also means resisting the temptation to abandon yourself just to cross some imaginary finish line a little faster. 

Because ultimately, each finish line is also a starting point. And when you’re in your comfort zone, you can meet each new challenge you take on with purpose and passion.

Although the widely-accepted paradigm is that growth can only be achieved if you push yourself beyond your comfort zone, that kind of thinking has kept many people stuck in endless cycles of stress, anxiety, and low self-worth. A better way to think about growth is to imagine growing from a place of safety, ease, and comfort. When you do that, your brain and nervous system are better able to make good choices and learn new things. Giving yourself time and breaking big challenges into small, manageable steps isn’t a sign of weakness, either, but of courage, self-acceptance, and authenticity.