• About
  • Workout Routines

Daily Ramblings…

~ Thoughts on Productivity, Health, Writing, Job Hunting, and many other topics…

Daily Ramblings…

Tag Archives: Pitfalls

Daily Ramblings – Daily Quote – Stretching Beyond the Comfort Zone

04 Friday May 2018

Posted by Dave Gardner in Quotes

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Comfort zone, habits, Measuring, Pitfalls, Stretching

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” – Neale Donald Walsch

This quote is about defining what our comfort zone is and stretching beyond it. To give you a better idea of how to do this, I’ll use exercise as the metaphor. The metaphor of exercise is one of the easiest ways to measure your comfort zone.

Let’s say today you can run for 15 minutes at a steady pace without too much trouble. This would be your comfort zone. If you want to stretch beyond this, you would increase your time to 20 minutes. Simple, right?

If you go to the gym and stay within your comfort zone, you won’t improve. In fact, the body is so efficient that it will find ways to minimize the stress it goes through to attain the 15 minutes of running it has to do each day.

The comfort zone is where you are when you have automated something—converted it to a habit. This is when you know something so well, you can do it unconsciously. Most of the apps on your mobile device are this way. You do these things so many times and these things become automatic–habitual. Touch the icon, interact with the app, hit the home key. That’s it.

Establishing the habit is another thing. If there is something you believe would be beneficial you decide to make it a daily routine or habit. Again, we’ll use exercise to work through this together.

When you first begin exercising, you will notice you have to purposely do it. This is the phase where exercise is not yet a habit. You must get dressed, head to the gym or out the front door, and then begin. While you are going through this initial phase, you will experience some resistance. You may begin to feel time pressures (do I really have time for this today), you may have a friend that reaches out to see if you can do something (right around your exercise time), or you may get so busy doing your normal-day-to-day that you forget about it. These are all forms of resistance and they are normal.

How do you overcome them? Pick a time of day when there is absolutely no potential for something coming up to interrupt it. For me, this was always early in the morning. At 4:30 or 5:00 am there was no possibility of something else coming up. For you, it may be on the way home from work or during your lunch break or some other time when your world is not busy.

Get it on your calendar. Set up an exercise event in your calendar and set a reminder using all the “bells and whistles” your device allows. This will help you avoid “forgetting” it.

Have your gear ready. Have your tennis shoes, your workout outfit, your towel and anything else you need at the ready in a gym bag, the trunk of your car, or in plain view in your home or apartment. This will help build the habit by preparing for it.

Do the workout. If you’re sticking with cardio, set the time on the machine to the 20 minutes you will be on it. If it is, set the time. Do not get off the device until the time is up.

This is it. The only thing left is for you to continue going and going and going until it becomes a subconscious act. There are a lot of articles on the Internet that tell you it’s this number of days or that. Your number will be individual so do not think you can skimp on one of these steps when you hit 60 days or whatever number you come up with. Just keep going and going and going. You’ll know when it has become a habit—you’ll want to do it, you’ll expect to do it, you’ll not want to avoid it.

You can follow this practice with anything. Just ask yourself what am I doing now? This will help you identify your comfort zone. It may take you a bit of thinking because some things are hard to quantify. For reading, I use time or pages. For writing, I use word counts. For learning, it is the number of classes or sessions. Some things you elect to do may not be quantifiable. Let’s say you want to meet new people. In this case, you may want to meet one new person a month. You may attend a local Meetup, you may begin frequenting a coffee shop, or you may find some other venue where you can meet people. It’s up to you. Come up with the things you want or need to do to “stretch” and do them. Keep doing them until that “shy” part of yourself dissipates a bit.

Stretching beyond your comfort zone or potential is a liberating and confidence-building exercise. Do some self-analysis. Find out what you do today. Determine what you’d like to be doing or becoming and begin measuring what you are doing currently, then, stretch a little beyond it.

A good life of adventure, new things, and new people await you.

Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.

Until next time…

Dave

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017

Categories

  • Accomplishment
  • Announcement
  • Annual Goals Posting
  • Birthday
  • Bonus Content
  • Book Review
  • change
  • Christmas
  • Easter
  • Father's Day
  • Four Dimensions of Life
  • Fourth of July
  • Funny Friday
  • Goal Setting
  • Halloween
  • Happiness
  • Happy New Year
  • Helpful Articles
  • Holidays
  • Illness
  • Independence Day
  • Insight Mars Lander
  • Journaling Series
  • Labor Day
  • Las Vegas
  • Life Happens
  • Martin Luther King Day
  • Memorial Day
  • Merry Christmas
  • Milestone
  • Mother's Day
  • Motivation Monday
  • Online Course Review
  • Politics
  • Procrastination
  • Productivity
  • Quotes
  • rituals
  • self-improvement
  • Series Sunday
  • Service
  • Spiritual
  • Spiritual Saturday
  • Spread Your Wings
  • St. Patrick's Day
  • Success
  • Super Bowl
  • Ted Talk
  • Thank you
  • Thankful Thursdays
  • Thanksgiving
  • Thinking Thursdays
  • Thinking Tuesday
  • Travel
  • Uncategorized
  • Valentine's Day
  • Veteran's Day
  • Visualization
  • Weekly Review
  • Wisdom Wednesday
  • Workout Routine
  • Writing

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy