Breaking Out of Your Comfort Zone: 5 Hacks to Grab Back Your Life

Is it difficult for you to break out of your comfort zone and make the changes you want in your life? Do you struggle with overwhelming fears that keep you from taking on new challenges? 

Fear of failure is both a necessity and a constraint to reaching your full potential. Your willingness to push yourself outside your comfort zone is a positive sign that you're growing as a person. It is after all challenging to step outside your comfort zone since everything outside it is unfamiliar to you. It is through fear that you are able to ensure that you are setting inspiring goals that are congruent with your values.

Listening to fear more than your authentic self, disempowers your full potential and holds you back from expressing your intrinsic leadership. The inner thoughts associated with those fears disallow you from stepping up and doing unfamiliar hence difficult things that create the promise of meaningful outcomes.

While it is nice to feel comfortable, it has been proven time and time again that change propels and accelerates growth to measures we would never achieve if we continually stayed within the box that is our comfort zone.

There is a common perspective that staying within your comfort zone gives you more stability — alluding to the sentiment that stability comes from predictability. However, maximum personal and professional growth occurs outside the comfort zone where challenges call for inside-out congruency, properly managed expectations, and emotional governance.

Here are 5 Helpful Hacks for Breaking Out of your Comfort Zone (Without Faking It!).

There is no need to completely recreate yourself when looking to step outside of your comfort zone. Rather, take the steps to clarify how congruent your intentions are with who you are and your life purpose.

At the end of this article, you will discover how to implement these steps within your own life and routine, and thus take this knowledge to grant you more independence, increase your resourcefulness, and expand your capacity and capabilities.

After all, we know knowledge is powerful, but the actual power of knowledge comes through applying what we have learned to our day-to-day lives.

Let’s get started.

Step 1: Align the Purpose

Have you ever had a goal (a meaningful one) that you set out to achieve, but you ultimately lost momentum and only partially got there? Perhaps you got off track, were distracted, or something in your personal life derailed your progress.

Sound familiar?

One of the biggest reasons we do not achieve our goals is that we fail to take the time to identify why the goals are important.

Ask yourself: What are my deeper reasons why I would love to make a change and get out of my comfort zone?

If there is no compelling reason or central purpose, you have nothing to tether or anchor your goal to when things get hard or “life happens.”

Analyze your true life purpose and your core mission in life. Take some time to spend on this compelling reason which becomes your inspiration. Identify and align your purpose to your goal. Take time to anchor yourself to your compelling reason before you commence the journey of breaking out of your comfort zone.

Step 2: Burn the Boats:

To capture the true meaning behind “Burn the Boats,” it is helpful to reflect back in history to the Battle of Julu in China in 207 BC, where an emperor of the Qin Dynasty, Xiang Yu, set out to cross the Yellow River.

Emperor Xiang Yu led an army of 20,000 men to defeat an army of 300,000 men. While statistically, the odds were against him, he instructed his men to destroy all of their cooking utensils and burn the boats, so they could not recross the river.

When you “Burn the Boats,” you commit to the process. There is no way back across that river. There is no backup plan, and excuses are rendered irrelevant. In burning their cooking utensils and kettles, the men in the Qin Dynasty only had three days to survive with the rations that remained, which resulted in a heightened sense of urgency.

Many goals fail due to a lack of urgency. In a modern world full of so many distractions and shiny object syndrome, a sense of urgency is often a thing of the past.

Want to break that mold and develop your sense of urgency? Change your environment.

Burn the boats. Burn your fallback plan along with your excuses.

Those who find themselves in a do or die situation tend to succeed.

Step 3: Choreograph the Moves

Have you ever watched a professional dancer perform on stage?

One can describe a live dance experience as a work of art, a flawless production that looks close to perfection. What you don’t see is that behind that one performance are countless hours, days, and years of sacrifice and practice — strategically and artistically choreographing every move.

Choreography is nothing more than a definite plan: what steps to take, what moves to create, what is the intended outcome of every action, and what is the intention behind every decision.

That is the essence of choreography.

Without a definite plan, you are setting yourself up to fall. Winston Churchill famously said, “He who fails to plan is planning to fail”.

Step 4: Drown the Infatuations

If you look at your behavior and notice that you tend to avoid, at all costs, leaving your comfort zone — you are likely stacking up reasons why that position is so important to you. You tend to justify why staying within your safe place is important versus breaking outside the norms. This constant defense creates an infatuation within that comfort zone that becomes nearly impossible to break. The greater the fixation, the greater your desire to stay inside.

So how do you break free from this constant cycle?

Break the mold by asking yourself: What are all the ways staying in my comfort zone holding me back from achieving the goals I say I want to achieve? How is it affecting the congruency between my objectives and my actions towards those objectives? How is it limiting my resourcefulness? How is it harming my independence?

When you are able to bring your perspectives about the comfort zone to balance, it will empower you to break through the fears of stepping out.

Step 5: Extend your Emotions

Thinking about achieving meaningful objectives from within the comfort zone is constantly dominated by fear and anxiety. Take time to identify these emotions so that you can shift them to empower you to step up into your full potential.

Balancing your perspectives removes the power from these emotions, reinforcing that change is necessary to help us grow.

The moment you break through the grasp of these emotions, you will begin to build an emotional bond to breaking free from the comfort zone.

With these 5 hacks, you are well on your way to beginning to heal your bonded state to your comfort zone and, in turn — break free.

Reading has now moved on to the knowledge-gathering stage of application. Let me introduce you to a robust self- and career-development process in my executive coaching program if you want to put the principles outlined in this article into practice.

The program aims to help growth-oriented executives seeking career fulfillment by becoming more skilled versions of themselves. During this journey, you will develop deeper insights, enhance your communication skills, and be inspired to develop your career.

I would like to find out how I can help you achieve your career goals through a conversation. Begin by applying HERE.