Why stepping outside your comfort zone is a good thing
Discomfort is a funny thing. We generally avoid it at all costs.
But if you can learn to embrace it and get used to the stretch that discomfort pushes you to experience, a huge amount of growth and positive benefit await you on the other side. It’s so worth the effort.
In this post I’m going to share three benefits to stepping outside of your comfort zone, and why you should consider pushing yourself to do so more often than not.
I’ll show you how I’ve leaned into discomfort these past few months, and hopefully as a result, maybe inspire you to too.
1. Personal growth
I find it curious when people suggest “you’ve changed” as a back-handed type of compliment. I used to get this a lot when I was younger but not so much anymore and I think it says much about the person delivering the message now than anything else.
I always say, well of course I have, that’s actually the goal!
Besides, who wants to stay the same as they were 10 years ago, or even the same as six months ago?
No thank you.
The scariest thing to me is stagnation and not moving forward as a human being. Staying stuck while the world evolves.
But that does mean you then need to be brave and do some things that challenge you as well as iterate and pivot once you start getting feedback from life.
Once you start getting comfortable putting yourself in situations that challenge you, you’ll soon realise how much you can grow as a human.
Here are some of the things I’ve done so far this year that have stretched my comfort levels WAYYYY beyond what I thought was possible for me, and further below in section 2, the resulting growth:
I started getting up before 5am every day
This was definitely not easy. I consider myself a reformed night owl and if any of you know what it’s like to shift the tide of your body clock, this doesn’t come naturally.
All of this creative effort in the form of writing that you see flowing out of me now is a result of me finding the time outside of my normal working hours + looking after my kids to start honing the skills of entrepreneurship. I would have never had these moments if I didn’t push myself to find time in my schedule for this to unfold and make myself a priority.
I changed my Instagram profile from private to public
I remember the morning I did this. At the time, I felt like my ears were ringing, I was unbalanced and the ground was completely unstable underneath me. It was a deeply uncomfortable but crucial first step in my journey that I know needed to happen, and without committing to that first step, I wasn’t going anywhere. If this is you right now, I see you and feel the discomfort you’re experiencing!
I was (and still am) a notoriously private person and getting through this with conjuring up the supportive self-talk was hard!
I remember actually having to go and have a shower to ground myself, and after an hour of walking around like a space cadet at home, I found myself realising that no-one had died and the world hadn’t ended at all.
In fact, nobody honestly cared about what I did. I was of no interest to them which was both disappointing and completely liberating.
I started to write content for an audience I did not yet see
This took some enormous belief and trust that the results would pay off.
It still does.
At times the doubt that I was having any impact at all was crippling, but through gentle loving support both internally and through validation from family and friends, I kept on writing and started getting a little bit of interest in my content.
I designed an email newsletter opt-in page + started writing a weekly newsletter to a small audience
Once I decided to do this, I went all in and committed to doing the absolute best I could.
Coming up with consistent content was not the easiest thing to begin with but I wanted to deeply connect with my readers and offer them immense value so I started writing my email newsletter and treated each subscriber like they were the most important person in the world to me.
I treated my newsletter as a place I could give the most value to my new community, and did so even when I knew only two people were on my email list to begin with.
Getting all the forms to connect correctly on my website is another beast in itself though!
I built a website
I did this without any prior experience and just worked on figuring it out as I went.
Was it easy? Not a chance.
Does this mean it’s perfect now? Most definitely not.
But was it worth it?
Absolutely.
I started this blog
Again, like my newsletter, I wanted a place to go deeper into topics that I really like to talk about and provide a supportive + informative space for creatives, women who are building careers, and new entrepreneurs alike to get ideas from and actionable tips around organisation skills, mindset work and sustainable productivity themes. I also want to give hope and encouragement to those building their businesses while trying to juggle it all.
I showed up on video for the first time
Getting the courage to go on camera and speak in a public sense was one of the most terrifying things for me. You have no idea the self-talk I had to go through to switch that blinking light on and I worked really hard to overcome this fear.
If you’re in that space right now and it’s something you’d like to do, I really encourage you to practice showing up for yourself and keep trying each day so that it becomes more comfortable.
It does get easier, I promise.
2. Action + results
The second benefit is that when you start to take steps to push yourself into arenas you haven’t been before, and especially with aligned effort and intelligent application, results really start to manifest for you.
How the above is starting to look for me now if I were to capture the growth in tangible results is listed out below. But remember as an aside to this, an enormous amount of growth occurs internally for you first with no outside visibility apparent to others:
I now have a very small but aligned audience.
I receive comments and messages that my content is incredibly useful and actionable(!) and that fills me with both joy and hope that my voice resonates for someone who needs it.
My morning wake-ups are getting much easier these days and my body clock is really changing.
I now get a small amount of traffic to my website + blog and my newsletter subscribers are increasing incrementally each week.
It’s getting much easier to speak on camera and my confidence is growing each time I do.
3. Confidence and self belief
Lastly, it goes without saying that the more you do something, the greater your confidence will be. But hand in hand with that is self belief and a deep knowing that you can achieve something you’ve set your mind to now.
This has absolutely been the case for me and if this recent experiment over the past few months of doing things that have truly been outside of my comfort zone has taught me anything, it’s that anything is possible with courage and aligned action.
It just takes you moving through sometimes extreme levels of doubt and fear at times, and taking a chance on yourself.
I know you can do it!
One very final thing to remember though: Please don’t do anything that makes you feel triggered or brings a personal trauma response with it. That’s not the goal here! A good amount of stretch and growth is what you’re looking for.
Until next time!
Valli x
PS - As always is the case with me in real life as well, please feel free to ask me any questions in relation to the above post because I genuinely love to help people work on being their best selves. Don’t be shy!
If you want to learn more about organisation and productivity, be sure to also subscribe to my email newsletter “Weekly Insights ⭐️” here where you’ll hear from me every week with a update of what’s happening in my world, the latest tips and tricks I have, things I’m currently loving and inspiration for your every day life.
