When was the last time you truly challenged yourself? Not a little, but in a way that made your stomach flutter and your heart race, a moment that asked you to step into the unknown with no idea how it would go.
That flutter is usually read as a stop sign. It may be the opposite. People taking improv classes to build their confidence were split into two groups. One got the usual instructions. The other was told to go looking for the awkward, uncomfortable moments, and to take them as a sign that they were growing. The discomfort seekers threw themselves in further, and felt they had achieved more, than the people given the usual advice. The same held when people wrote about painful feelings, and when they listened to political views they disagreed with.
So the uncomfortable feeling is not the problem. It may be the point. Your stomach is not a reliable career adviser.
The comfort zone is predictable and safe, and it can also keep you exactly where you are. Here is what lies just outside it, how far to go, and what to do when it goes wrong.
What the comfort zone is
The writer Judith Bardwick called it "a behavioral state where a person operates in an anxiety-neutral position". Nothing is at stake, so nothing much is felt. That is pleasant, and it is also why nothing much changes. A sofa is comfortable too. It is not famous for making people stronger. Michael Easter's argues that modern life has made comfort the default, and that a little chosen discomfort pays you back.
The other end is no better. In 1908, Robert Yerkes and John Dodson published their work on Japanese "dancing mice": performance rose with arousal up to a point, and past it, fell. A little pressure sharpened the mice. Too much made them worse. The paper was cited only ten times in the next fifty years, and four of those ten already called it a law. Not bad for a paper about mice.
So the place to aim for is the middle: a stretch, not a panic. Uncomfortable enough to notice, not so much that you freeze. 5 Ways to Build Your Inner Strength and Live a Fulfilling Life, linked below, has the same curve for hard times: some adversity left people stronger, and a lot of it did harm.
How do you tell which one you are in? In a stretch you can still think: you weigh the options, pick one, and would do it again. Too much stress does the opposite. Fewer options get tried, and you fall back on the familiar ones even when they are not helping. When that happens, step back a notch rather than quitting: a smaller version of the same challenge, not the sofa.
1. Take risks for growth
It is natural to stick with what is familiar. It feels safe and manageable. But every big step you have taken, learning a new skill, a leap at work, an unfamiliar challenge, needed you to leave the familiar behind. If you want to grow, you need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. It sounds like a contradiction. It is a skill.
The improv finding shows how. The discomfort seekers did not feel less awkward. They read the awkwardness differently, as proof that something was changing, and that kept them going. It worked only where the discomfort came straight away, which is exactly where it is easiest to give up.
Newness itself seems to help. 132 young adults in New York and Miami had their phones track where they went for three to four months, and answered short mood questions along the way. On days when they moved through more different places, they felt better. A new route, a new park, a new corner of town counts.
Routine has a second cost. Across four experiments and two real-life checks, time spent in routine was remembered as shorter than the same time spent on varied tasks, and the pattern held for holidaymakers and for people living on a kibbutz. Weeks that all look the same shrink in the memory. A comfortable year can feel, looking back, like a short one. Same desk, same lunch, same evening, and somehow it is December again.
Learning something hard counts too. How to Rewire Your Brain and Change Limiting Beliefs has the older adults whose memory improved after three months of learning quilting or digital photography, while those who spent the time socialising or on easy tasks gained less.
Start with small risks. Sign up for a class that intimidates you, volunteer for the task nobody wants, share your idea in a meeting where you would usually stay quiet. Each one stretches the boundary a little.
2. Learn from failure
Seneca, the Roman writer, had a way of shrinking a fear: rehearse it. In a letter to his friend Lucilius, he suggested setting aside a few days to live on the plainest food in the roughest clothes, asking all the while, "Is this the condition that I feared?" Usually it is not. A soldier, he wrote, drills in peacetime so that he will not flinch when the fighting comes. You can do the same in small doses: the phone call you have been dodging, the question you are afraid to ask, the room where you know nobody. His are short, plain and still useful two thousand years on.
The question is usually less risky than it feels. How to Build Resilience When Everything's Falling Apart has the people who underestimated, by as much as half, how likely others were to say yes when asked directly for help.
Fear of failure is what keeps you in place. Susan Jeffers built a whole book on the plain advice of its title, . And the usual line, that failure is a stepping stone, is only half the story.
Here is the whole of it. Young people starting out in medical science in the United States, applying for one of their first big grants from the National Institutes of Health, were compared in two groups: those who just missed the funding line, and those who just made it. The near misses were more than 10% more likely to disappear from the system altogether. But the ones who stayed went on to outperform the narrow winners over the following years, by more than the weeding-out alone could explain.
So a setback can make you better, if you stay in the game. The danger is not the failure. It is quitting because of it. The scoreboard only counts the people still playing.
Staying is not the whole job, though. You also have to learn from it, and that is harder than it sounds. 5 Ways to Build Your Inner Strength, linked below, has the people who learned less from their own wrong answers than from their right ones, because a failure stings and the mind tunes out, and the fix: look at your own slip the way you would look at a friend's. Learning: The Key to Personal and Professional Growth has why the mistakes you were most sure about are the ones you remember best once corrected.
The next time something goes wrong, ask two questions and write down the answers. What went wrong? What would I do differently next time? Then do the next thing.
3. Build self-confidence
Confidence is not a feeling you wait for. It is evidence you collect. You cannot buy it or borrow it. Each time you take on something new and get through it, however small, you prove to yourself that you are capable of more than you thought, and the next step looks less steep.
Think of the last time you did something you were sure you could not: a race, a presentation, a skill that finally clicked. You did not feel confident beforehand. You felt it afterwards. That is the order it comes in: 5 Ways to Build Your Inner Strength, linked below, has Albert Bandura, who spent a career on confidence, ranking first-hand success as its strongest source.
A lot of the fear is about being seen to get it wrong. Fewer people are watching than you think. Why Your 'High Standards' Are Holding Back Your Career, linked below, has the students in an embarrassing T-shirt who guessed that about half the room would remember it. About a quarter did. Everyone else is too busy worrying about their own T-shirt.
Start a confidence journal. Every time you step outside your comfort zone and get something done, write it down: what it was, and how it went. On the days the doubt comes back, read it. 10 Tips to Fall in Love with Yourself has why small wins lift the day more than anything else.
The comfort zone has a job too
None of this means living outside it. The comfort zone is where you recover between stretches, and the stretch only pays if the recovery happens. Stretch, come back, rest, then stretch a little further. Why You're Always Tired: The Rest You're Missing has the kind of rest that actually restores.
The regret test
If you are still weighing it up, try this. Picture yourself years from now. Which will bother you more: having tried and failed, or never having tried?
In the short run, the things you did and got wrong sting most. Over the years, it is the things you never did that hurt longest. Powerful Signs You're on the Right Life Path has why.
Comfort, the old way
Stepping out of your comfort zone is uncomfortable, uncertain and sometimes scary. That is what it is supposed to feel like.
The word itself agrees. "Comfort" comes from the Late Latin cōnfortāre, "to make stronger" or "to give courage", from fortis, strong. Comfort once meant being made strong, not being kept soft. A comfort zone that only keeps you soft has the word backwards.
Take someone with you if you can. 5 Ways to Build Your Inner Strength, linked below, has the people who judged a hill less steep with a friend standing beside them.
So what is one small step you can take to challenge yourself? It does not have to be big. Growth happens one step at a time, and each one makes the next easier.
This week, do one thing that makes your stomach flutter, and write it down in your confidence journal when it is done.
Want the strength side of it? 5 Ways to Build Your Inner Strength and Live a Fulfilling Life — the adversity curve, the strangers on the train, lifting something heavy, and how to learn from your own slips.
Is fear of getting it wrong what holds you back? Why Your 'High Standards' Are Holding Back Your Career — the two kinds of high standards, what fear of mistakes costs, and how to keep the bar without the fear.
Know someone who has been about to try something new for a year? Send them this, and do the scary thing together.
Disclaimer: This article is general information. For advice about your own health, talk to a qualified health professional. If fear or anxiety is stopping you from everyday things, talking to someone trained in anxiety can help.
Affiliate Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, All For Life earns from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you. We only link to products we would recommend without the commission.
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