Leave your comfort zone, never your safety zone

We’ve all heard, or read, the words, “Feel the fear and do it anyway” or “Go beyond your comfort zone”.?They make sense, right??

If we only do what we’re capable of now and never attempt to increase our capability, we’ll never advance – whatever the task.?And pushing ourselves that little bit more is uncomfortable.?All sorts of fears and concerns might raise their doubt-inducing, and mostly boisterously vociferous heads and don’t get me started on complaining muscles.?I swear some mornings I only have to think of looking at my workout clothes for my body to stage a mental assault on my resolve.

So why did I feel that there was something missing??First, a little background.

My mother was an inconsistent care giver.?Some days she’d be amazing, others not so much.?My father was a passive bystander – though he joined in the apparent fun as I grew older and left home.?My older sister would grip my arm and dig in her fingernails, drawing blood and hissing, “My family”.?

I never had a sanctuary, that peaceful place of acceptance where win, lose or draw, you always felt a sense of belonging.?Rather I felt a constant sense of intrusion.

My opinions and achievements were never celebrated, sometimes they were ridiculed.?My mother threatened me with public humiliation if I didn’t ‘behave’. ?She assured me that she ‘knew me better than I knew myself’.?She rejected my opinions, rolling her eyes and discrediting thoughts and emotions I dared to share.?

This led to an outward appearance of self-confidence – showing any vulnerability was akin to mimicking a seal at an orca party – that cloaked a constant state of internal anxiety and sometimes even terror. I doubted myself.?I doubted everything I was feeling.?I doubted my thoughts. ?I learnt my mother’s lesson well:?I could not be trusted.

How is any of this relevant to the ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’ mantra??

As someone who experienced childhood trauma, this mantra is good and horrendously bad in equal measure.?

I’ve always pushed myself.?I love sports so I understand the ‘no pain, no gain’ concept.?Ageing has meant I now also embrace the ‘rest is as important as exercise’ concept.?I’ve taken that concept into all areas of my life.?In brief, I push myself.

That has not always ended well.?

I’m unsure if this is true for people who haven’t experienced childhood trauma, but I was taught that I was always the problem.?So, if I felt fear, this was an internal failing, a barrier to growth, a comfort zone, that I must push through to become a better version of myself. ?And I did.

Every time I felt discomfort, and sometimes even abject terror, I’d push through.?

Most people recognize fear is a warning, an alarm that something is out of balance.?Since fear was my baseline of existence, I mistook it for an internal weakness, an intrinsic failing on my part.?Learning that this wasn’t the case, that my fear had a perfectly logical – and human – basis in complex childhood trauma, gave me a new level of understanding.?

Sometimes feeling the fear and not doing it, is the wisest thing to do.

But how do we grow if we aren’t push beyond surmountable fears??And how do we distil this concept into a pithy, meme-inducing adage?

It has taken decades – and some intense therapy to realise the missing component.?We don’t just have a comfort zone.?We also have a safety zone.

Healthy growth takes place in our safety zone – that place where we feel physically, psychologically and emotionally safe.?Now, some might be thinking that a safety zone is an unnecessary complication, a way of excusing an inability to push beyond. It isn’t.

Our safety zone contains the deal breakers that impinge on our physical, psychological and emotional welfare. ?It contains – and protects – us, as we navigate the boundaries of our comfort zone.

Let’s take a work-based example.?You have some ideas that you’d like to raise in a meeting.?You’re hesitant to do so. People are happy with the way things are working and while your suggestion would make their lives easier, it would require a period of implementation and adjustment before they reaped the rewards.

In scenario one, your manager is a bully.?They ridiculed the last person who raised new ideas, then refused to give them interesting work, demeaning them at every opportunity until they resigned.?

In scenario two, your manager is fair-minded. They objectively consider all ideas, even though few are adopted.?They encourage participation and even the newest of team members contributes.

I see scenario one as presenting a safety zone issue; to challenge this manager threatens your psychological and financial wellbeing.?Scenario two presents a comfort zone issue; you feel no outward threats, the ‘fear’ is the discomfort around sharing an idea that might not land where you hope.?

In short: Push into discomfort, never into danger.

Oh, joy of joys!?A six-word adage: Push into discomfort, never into danger.?

Perfect.?A comfort zone wrapped in a safety zone.?I loved it, but…

This presented a new challenge – albeit geometrical.?

I’ve always imagined my comfort zone as a horizontal circle.?Pushing beyond it is a horizontal endeavour.?If my safety zone encapsulates my comfort zone, to expand my comfort zone would also mean expanding my safety zone.?Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose of a safety zone?

This led me to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs which is depicted as a pyramid.?I like the geometry of this, that we go from broad needs and hone it to the pointy end of self-actualisation.?Hard to put a safety zone around a pyramid though.?But what if the pyramid became a cylinder??

What if our comfort zone, rather than a single circle pushing horizontal, was a series of circles layered upon each other??In adding another layer, we would, literally and figuratively, be working towards becoming our highest selves.?A safety zone could most definitely wrap around a cylinder.

And just like that: a pithy adage with accompanying visual.