Break Your Comfort Zone, but Maintain Your Boundaries
The Crucial Differences Between the Lines We Draw
We make our lives more endurable by establishing certain rules.
These rules are like lines bordering a circle. Within this circle are our wants and needs, and outside are the things that cause us discomfort and pain. We keep to the circle’s inside, protecting ourselves from the outside.
In some cases, drawing a line indicates courageousness. In other instances, it is an act of cowardice.
It all depends on whether the circle is a boundary or a comfort zone.
Comfort Zones
All growth happens outside the comfort zone.
Your comfort zone contains your desires. These behaviors cause physical or mental comfort, and they are often automatic and habitual. Therefore, they involve making choices that feel the easiest, safest, or most familiar.
Your comfort zone is a shield against discomfort and actual growth. By taking the most comfortable paths in life, you fail to accelerate upward. Your growth remains stagnant (or even negative), and your health, career, and relationship goals remain unreachable.
On the other hand, if you expand your comfort zone, you might learn to:
- Live a healthier lifestyle
- Spend your time working on your goals
- Become a better and more confident person
Indeed, your potential always lies outside your comfort zone.
Boundaries
Drawing boundaries might induce positive change.
Your boundaries encapsulate your needs. They create security and protection from harmful outside forces. This way, they become fertile ground for development and growth.
Knowing your boundaries is like knowing what you simply cannot tolerate or stand by, in terms of getting the life outcomes you desire. For example:
- Demanding honesty and respect from another person
- Turning down a request that oversteps your time or emotional limits
- Reducing contact with a harmful or uncompromising family member
Fundamentally, your boundaries include the values and principles you live by to obtain healthier outcomes in your social and personal life. Without these rules, anyone and anything has the chance to invade or harm you — and so, boundaries increase your likelihood of securing a happier life.
Therefore, it is the inside of these borders that create proper growth.
Comfort Zones vs. Boundaries
Both circles come from the lines that we draw — but their insides have very different functions and outcomes.
- Your comfort zone appeals to what you want in order to be happy. Your boundaries mainly pertain to what you need to reach a happier outcome.
- Comfort creates an illusion of security. Boundaries actually do protect.
- Never moving outside your comfort zone might cost you a sense of self-respect. Staying within your boundaries is a signal of great self-respect.
- You need to be courageous in order to meet and endure the discomfort waiting outside of your comfort zone. You need courage to maintain and communicate your boundaries despite the backlash that you will face.
- Growth can be found in discomfort. Growth is nurtured by boundaries.
To clarify this difference, I refer to two examples from my life:
(1) I do not go to bars. This is not a matter of comfort — but a boundary. I know the good and the bad of these places, and I have known for long that I am uninterested in the practice. For me, it would be unsafe and harmful, and it would go against my core principles in life.
(2) I find it hard to confront certain friends when they have hurt me. This is definitely a matter of comfort. It would be better for both me and my long-term goals to be more direct in these instances. Therefore, I am working hard to reshape my comfort zone to become more socially confident.
In other words, the circles you create have a huge impact on your growth (or lack thereof). Thus, it is important that you draw the correct lines, and that you know what they encapsulate and how far they expand.
As they say, know your worth.
Maintain your boundaries, and dare to challenge your comfort zone.
