As children, we are constantly pushed to go beyond our comfort zones. When you are 5 years old, you would prefer to go out and play with friends rather than stay at home to study Maths. However, our parents take the conscious effort to push us to study, go to school and broaden our knowledge, much to our personal displeasure. Eat, sleep, play – wouldn’t life be wonderful if that’s all we did? Yes, perhaps it would but for how long? Very soon, you would see the negative effects of pursuing a life of leisure as you fall behind your peers in school. The endless encouragement from both our parents and teachers gives us the confidence to explore a world beyond our comfort zone, allowing us to learn new things, try out new activities and explore new horizons. This knowledge that we acquire during this phase of life is absolutely priceless when we grow up, being the base for pretty much anything we do in life. Had we not gone beyond the comfort zone of eat, sleep, play – life would have ended up rather differently. My grandfather did not want to go outside his comfort zone but pushing him to do it has changed the lives of my family forever. More on that story here.
However, on growing older, we are expected to be independent and choose the outcome of our own lives. We have to make decisions, be responsible for them and stand up for ourselves. Sounds simple? Hardly. We all want to live a simple hassle free live, doing our job, nothing out of the ordinary and stay content with that. We live within our bubble, happy that we have made it so far in life. We dare not venture outside our comfort zone because we do not know what lies there. We are afraid of it because we want to avoid the risk of failure. We lie to ourselves and stay in the bubble. The bubble is where the sun is shining, the grass is green and there’s food on the table everyday.
But outside the bubble is where the excitement lies. Outside the bubble is where the magic happens. Outside the bubble is where the giants of history were made.
So go ahead, push yourself to do something that you have always wanted to. Make a list of things that have you have always been afraid of. Tick one item off the list every day. Start off small, assess your progress every couple of weeks and build up your list. It will be hard initially but once you get the inertia flowing, it will become a natural rhythm. As your comfort zone becomes wider, your new list should be wilder. Before you know it, life will be like you never imagined.
History is not made by those who stay in the bubble – go on, get out and change the world.
Currently listening to – Beautiful Stranger by Madonna
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