As I read other people’s projects, and hear about other people’s experiences, I’ve come to seriously wonder about the comfort zone.
The earliest related experience was my reading of a certain Alice MacDonald’s WISE project. She did dancing as one, and I was confused at first, because Ms. Gergely brightly said when she handed it to me, “She really got out of her comfort zone” (or something along those lines). Despite my remaining in a standing position the entire time, I sat, stunned, because I mean, what? HOW DO YOU GET OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE IN DANCE? THAT’S NOT. That’s not. … … That’s not. Hm.
All this went through my mind, but what made it to the physical plane of existence was actually something more along the lines of: “(Questioning, skeptical look on my face) What do you mean? (pause) I thought getting out of my comfort zone meant cold-calling, or boldly setting forth on a 6 month-long vagabonding trip across Europe, or something.”
But anyways, life went on, and when I sat down to read Ms. MacDonald’s story that night, I began to realize there was more than one comfort zone. Or, actually, there wasn’t.
Sigh. It’s hard to explain.
Because I think I’ve come to the conclusion that getting out of my comfort zone means ignoring all social pressure in the pursuit of doing what feels intrinsically right to me. What is intrinsically right is another good question, but let’s leave that alone for now. You see, most of my readily memorable “comfort zone” encounters have come from Mr. Tim Ferriss’s FOUR HOUR WORKWEEK. Oh yes. That book is so. good. But you see, in it, “comfort zone exercises” range from the crazy normal, like budgeting 700 for a week of outsourcing mundane work, to crazy crazy, like…asking 3 attractive members of the opposite sex for their phone numbers.
So I’ve come, just now or sometime recently, that maybe the latter example of “comfort zone stretching” is why I reacted to the dancing example.
And to bring it all full circle: After reading MacDonald’s dance story, I realized that she was fighting against social pressure in creating a new dance routine outside traditional dance. It was fighting against social pressure in the first place, but I simply didn’t realize it.
The question now though is “Is the comfort zone really only just the level of action we are comfortable taking against the social norm?”
Something to ponder.
