My Comments on a post from Tina Gill in the Ultimate Breakthrough 2022 Challenge Official Tony Robbins Community:

Not necessarily so! 

In fact, you want to have the largest comfort zone possible - because the larger it is, the more masterful you feel in more areas of your life. 

When you have a large comfort zone, you can take risks that really shift you. 

Drawing intellectual cues from bestselling author and fear expert Rhonda Britten, founder of the Fearless Living Institute: 

"Our comfort is our safe place. Whatever is your norm, whatever your life is right now, whatever you're not even thinking about changing - that's your CZ. 

Some people call it a rut. It's not a rut; it's life. It's the things that are regular, that are predictable, that cause no mental or emotional strain and stress. 

Our CZ is where we go to recharge in an ever-changing world. It's our place of reprieve, where we can conserve our energy and not have to figure anything out. 

People often don't honor the CZs they've created; they think it's wrong or bad to need one. It's not! If you deny that you have a CZ or pretend that you don't need one, you'll be stressed all the time. 

When you want to make a life change, build off your existing CZ instead of revamping everything at once." 

She recommends a strategy, "Stretch, Risk and Die" to help expand the possibilities in your own life: 

"1) Stretch yourself: First, focus your efforts. Answer the question, "In what area of my life would making positive change have the most impact?" (Maybe it's your health, or your job, or your love life...) Once you have the answer, come up with three things you've been feeling you "should" do in that area, and do one of them... today; 

2) Staying on the same theme you chose for stretch, give something up. Make it difficult. Make it scary. Make it be something you never thought you could achieve. Giving up sugar (or alcohol, or meat, or caffeine, or gluten) for a month? No Sundays spent couch-potatoing it this season? No more hiding in the corner at parties... ever? Yes; 

3) Sticking to your theme, ask yourself this question: "It would be so awesome if I could XYZ, but that's just not who I am." Then (you guessed it!) take action toward actually doing that XYZ. Quitting your job and going back to school at age 35? Chairing an important company-wide meeting? Traveling abroad alone, to a country where no one speaks English? Yes, yes and triple yes. Take steps to make it happen." 

Her parting shot: 

"What's a die for you may just be a stretch for somebody else," notes Britten. "It's about emotions and mindset. As you begin to stretch, risk and die, your CZ will grow, and you'll find that things that used to be dies to you are now just risks. Unlike typical goal-setting - which can be detrimental because it focuses too much on outcome - expanding your CZ is about motivating and inspiring yourself in a way that honors your whole person. It's not 'I'm going to be good at everything,' it's about not being scared to try." 

Godspeed.

Don't leave your Comfort Zone. Expand your Comfort Zone!

Smart Advisory! Go for it, folks!

After all, life has always been a DIY project! 

Matt Furey, President of the Psycho-Cybernetics Foundation, is pretty well-known for some of his contrarian perspectives about personal development, but in the light of his own successful exploits in the wrestling and kung fu world as well as his impeccable track record in internet marketing, it's hard to default him.

He has had made two interesting but intriguing assertions, as follows:

"Forget about getting out of your Comfort Zone. Expand your Comfort Zone. Grow more comfortable doing what you wouldn't dare do before."

"Forcing yourself to get out of your Comfort Zone invariably leads to procrastination. When you realise there are two Comfort Zones and you choose the good one, procrastination is eliminated.";

In the first instance, I must say, they are in stark contrast to conventional wisdom. They actually set me thinking for quite a long while, until recently I come across a piece of insightful writing, which I am reproducing below:

It's from Jalal Kassam from the Build Your Brand Bootcamp Community:

"We all want to grow, we all want to become better people and achieve great things.

However, growth requires discipline and consistency. You can never guarantee that if you are constantly out of your comfort zone. If you want to succeed, never push yourself to stay out of your comfort zone for long.

The key to growth is motivation and perseverance. You need to be motivated to take on new challenges and keep moving in the right direction. Nonetheless, this requires a great deal of energy, feeling comfortable and at ease. Your comfort zone is the place to regroup and get recharged.

In order to guarantee your success, you'd need to stay in your comfort zone most of the time, however, try to push its boundaries out from the inside out. This way, you'll be gradually expanding the territory of your comfort zone and eventually capture many areas that once were scary to you and remained untapped for a long time. When necessary, stepping outside of your comfort zone briefly can be extremely beneficial and would expedite your growth process.

It would be wise to deeply explore your comfort zone, reflect on the things that you’re good at, make you happy and make you feel at ease. Experiment with them, and be creative. This will give you great new insights and new perspectives to approach growth.

Take it easy on yourself, moving ahead one step at a time is the only way to achieve outstanding success. With this attitude and approach, you’re determined to grow and become the best version of yourself.

“Going out of your comfort zone” is not the thing that gets you the big results and helps you achieve your wildest dream. It all boils down to two fundamental things, your burning desire and the clarity of the how. When you’re clear about the steps, actions become effortless. And your burning desire will be the fuel to boost your motivation to keep taking action.

Whenever you find yourself doubting how far you can go, just remember how far you have come."

In summing up, staying in your comfort zone does not mean staying still or wallowing in a rut of sameness. You can still take action from within your comfort zone.

And those actions, properly planned and executed, don’t make you leave your comfort zone – they expand it.

So, it's not about getting out of your Comfort Zone to reach your goal.

It's about widening your Comfort Zone so far that your goal fits comfortably inside.

I trust readers have now a better and enlightened understanding, just like I have had.

Matt Furey, President of the Psycho-Cybernetics Foundation, is pretty well-known for some of his contrarian perspectives about personal development, but in the light of his own successful exploits in the wrestling and kung fu world as well as his impeccable track record in internet marketing, it's hard to default him.

He has had made two interesting but intriguing assertions, as follows:

"Forget about getting out of your Comfort Zone. Expand your Comfort Zone. Grow more comfortable doing what you wouldn't dare do before."

"Forcing yourself to get out of your Comfort Zone invariably leads to procrastination. When you realise there are two Comfort Zones and you choose the good one, procrastination is eliminated.";

In the first instance, I must say, they are in stark contrast to conventional wisdom. They actually set me thinking for quite a long while, until recently I come across a piece of insightful writing, which I am reproducing below:

It's from Jalal Kassam from the Build Your Brand Bootcamp Community:

"We all want to grow, we all want to become better people and achieve great things.

However, growth requires discipline and consistency. You can never guarantee that if you are constantly out of your comfort zone. If you want to succeed, never push yourself to stay out of your comfort zone for long.

The key to growth is motivation and perseverance. You need to be motivated to take on new challenges and keep moving in the right direction. Nonetheless, this requires a great deal of energy, feeling comfortable and at ease. Your comfort zone is the place to regroup and get recharged.

In order to guarantee your success, you'd need to stay in your comfort zone most of the time, however, try to push its boundaries out from the inside out. This way, you'll be gradually expanding the territory of your comfort zone and eventually capture many areas that once were scary to you and remained untapped for a long time. When necessary, stepping outside of your comfort zone briefly can be extremely beneficial and would expedite your growth process.

It would be wise to deeply explore your comfort zone, reflect on the things that you’re good at, make you happy and make you feel at ease. Experiment with them, and be creative. This will give you great new insights and new perspectives to approach growth.

Take it easy on yourself, moving ahead one step at a time is the only way to achieve outstanding success. With this attitude and approach, you’re determined to grow and become the best version of yourself.

“Going out of your comfort zone” is not the thing that gets you the big results and helps you achieve your wildest dream. It all boils down to two fundamental things, your burning desire and the clarity of the how. When you’re clear about the steps, actions become effortless. And your burning desire will be the fuel to boost your motivation to keep taking action.

Whenever you find yourself doubting how far you can go, just remember how far you have come."

In summing up, staying in your comfort zone does not mean staying still or wallowing in a rut of sameness. You can still take action from within your comfort zone.

And those actions, properly planned and executed, don’t make you leave your comfort zone – they expand it.

So, it's not about getting out of your Comfort Zone to reach your goal.

It's about widening your Comfort Zone so far that your goal fits comfortably inside.

I trust readers have now a better and enlightened understanding, just like I have had.

DANGER IN THE COMFORT ZONE: MINDPOWER HAS REPLACED MANPOWER!

1st Worker: Is your job in jeopardy?

2nd Worker: No. My job is very secure. It’s me they can do without.”

The era of womb-to-employment is over. There are no longer any guarantees of lifelong employment. But you can guarantee lifelong employability.

Organisations are looking for executives who can make quantum leaps in speed, fluidity, responsiveness, precision, and agility.

We are now in a digital world. A supercharger has been attached to speed as a competitive business weapon. The safe routes of yesterday now lead to sterility and extinction.

So what’s to be done?

Take a sledgehammer to your business model . . . before someone else does it for you? Start re-skilling. Elasticate your possibilities.

Flexibility amplifies opportunities. Brain force has trumped brute force.

Start reading different books, meet different people, master different skills.

Keep creating value. You will enrich your actions, interactions, and transactions. Out of such relationships come products, services, and intangibles that will benefit you in the decades ahead.

[Excerpted from the 'Igniting Innovation' edition of The Braindancer Series of bookazines by Dilip Mukerjea. All the images in this post are the intellectual property of Dilip Mukerjea.]

Say Keng's personal comments:

In a nut shell, what Dilip Mukerjea is talking about in the foregoing essay is: Break your Old Habits & Adopt New Habits!

I like to share an insight.

According to peak performance experts, there are three zones of existence:

- Comfort Zone: the realm of our existing old habits;

- Stretch Zone: where true change occurs!

- Stress Zone: where the challenges are far beyond or may overwhelm our current experiences;

Recent neuroscience research has discovered that when we consciously adopt new habits, we create parallel synaptic paths, & eventually new set of neurons, that can cause our pattern of thoughts to jump into novel tracks.

That's to say, the more new things we experiment, the more we step out of our Comfort Zone, & move into the Stretch Zone, . . . the more creative we become as a result, both in the workplace & in our own personal lives.

Interestingly, the new ingrained habits can create parallel pathways that can even bypass those old ones. How about that?

So, my humble advice - as well as Dilip's - is to do something different every day!

We believe, just by getting out of your normal habitual routines will make you more aware of the many possibilities that may come your way.

Come to think of it, I reckon these are the only few things you actually need to get moving: a sense of wonder & a willingness to explore, experiment & play!