3 Reasons You Are Stuck in Your Comfort Zone and 4 Steps to Break Out

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The overbearing mollycoddling of ourselves creates fragility. It creates weakness, not strength. So that when a storm comes and we have to hold our own and we have to find a way to get the nourishment and the nutrition we need to stay strong and stay standing. We don't know how to look for it because we've never been able to look for it before. Hey everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every single one of you that come back every week to listen, learn and grow. And today's episode is all about growth. How many of you, and be honest with yourself, how many of you have spent the majority of your time in your comfort zone? How many of you know how hard it is to get out of your comfort zone? And how many of you, even when you try, even when you push your limits, even when you make that opportunity, you put your best foot forward, you still feel completely trapped by your comfort zone. That's what I find so fascinating about comfort zones is often we don't even know we're inside One, we don't even know that we have one. We just assume that this is what life is, this is how it works, this is how it goes, not recognizing the that we are being contained, we are being trapped, we are being restricted and limited by our mindsets, our beliefs, our actions, our behaviors. And so much of this limits what's possible in our lives. Now, I was reading an incredible study about how Judith Bardwick came up with the phrase comfort zone. And this is how she described what a comfort zone is. And this is without a doubt the best definition I've heard of a comfort zone. And you can even make a note of this. The comfort zone is a behavioral state within which a person operates in first, an anxiety neutral condition. A comfort zone is a state where a person operates in an anxiety neutral condition. The second is using a limited set of behaviors to deliver a steady level of performance. And the third, usually without a sense of risk. So let's look at that definition and apply it to our lives. Are we constantly trying to be in an anxiety neutral condition? Are we constantly trying to deliver a steady level of performance? And are we usually avoiding risk? So let's talk about being anxiety neutral. It's important. Today we all deal with so much anxiety in our lives that we try to create a life where we have very little anxiety. And I'm sure you can all agree, and you've all had the experience of just thinking, I have too much anxiety, I have overwhelming anxiety. I am beyond my capacity and my ability to deal with anxiety. And when we feel that way, we all know that it reduces our ability to perform. We know that it makes us less focused. We know that we feel more distracted. We know that we don't feel happy or joyful when we are burdened with that much anxiety. We all know that because we've experienced it. We've all been at that end when anxiety is creeping up on us and it's on our case and we can tell that this isn't going to benefit us. Now there's something fascinating there. That's one extreme. The other extreme is where we are anxiety neutral, where we have no anxiety. We're trying to create this life where we limit anxiety completely. And what Dodson's law, Yerkes and Dodson, what they found was that that actually creates boredom, it creates lethargy. And maybe you've noticed this, that when you have no anxiety, often we create drama. Or maybe you've noticed people in your life that they have to create drama because we need some anxiety. We need a certain amount of anxiety that sparks action, that sparks change, that leads to creativity. And that's what Yerkes and Dodson's law talks about where we need an optimal level of anxiety. Too much is overwhelming and too little creates lethargy or complacency or boredom, or in some cases makes us move towards drama. It's fascinating, isn't it? It's fascinating how this works. And it's incredible how we allow ourselves to be completely restricted and limited because we believe that anxiety is negative. We believe that anxiety is bad. And that's because the anxiety that we've been dealing with has been the unhealthy, drama filled anxiety rather than the anxiety that can be positive nerves. The anxiety that can be, oh yeah, I feel a sense of activation or acceleration that I want to get out of this zone. So the reason I'm breaking down the part of the definition that's anxiety neutral is that often wanting to be anxiety neutral is not the answer. But it's often the first step if you're at an overwhelming state of anxiety. Coming back to anxiety neutral is healthy and then shifting to into optimal anxiety is a pathway that we can take. Now how do we do that? When you're experiencing high levels of anxiety, you may practice more mindfulness, you may practice more breath work, you may meditate with me on the calm app for my daily J series. You may start putting into practice workout routines that really lowers your anxiety. And then how do you invite that optimal, healthy anxiety into your life? What do you do? Well, you experiment, you try new things, you take a new course, you create a new opportunity, you do something you've never done before. You add very intentionally anxiety that you know is healthy. That's the difference between anxiety that is optimal and anxiety that decreases our performance is that anxiety can be intentionally invited rather than unintentionally interrupting your life when you just end up creating drama rather than creating direction. The other part of the definition that Judith Bardwick gave of the comfort zone is using a limited set of behaviors to deliver a steady level of performance. Now what I find truly interesting about that section is, is that we often think that if we're able to do the same level of performance every day, then that creates reliability and stability and security. And that may be true, but we never get to experience whether our performance could increase, our joy could increase, our learning could increase. And when we say we want a limited set of behaviors, we're basically saying, I'm happy with the skills I have. It's why so many people, after graduating from college Never ever tried to learn a new skill. And what does that do? It sets us back in life because as we grow, we're required to grow new skills. As we grow older, as we experience new things in life, we're required to develop new skills. How many new life experiences have you had? This is something that Siddharth or, or Buddha, before he became the Buddha, experienced. For those of you that don't know, his father tried to keep him inside the kingdom, trapped in his comfort zone to not experience anything uncomfortable. His father didn't want him to experience the pains of life because he was scared of how it would affect his son. When his son escaped to experience life, he saw people that were unwell and he noticed that people got sick. He met people in old age and he realized people got old. He was only ever surrounded by youth. And then he saw someone die and he realized that people died. He wasn't aware of that. He was so overprotected and kept so distant from, from old age, disease and death that he grew up believing that they didn't exist. And his father thought that this would strengthen him and protect him. What's really fascinating though is that when we protect ourself from experiencing any sort of pain, we actually make ourselves more fragile. It's a paradox. You think that if you protect someone from pain, they get stronger. Actually, if you protect someone from pain, they get weaker, they get more fragile because they don't know how to deal with it when it inevitably will arise in their life. There's a beautiful story of two families that lived next door to each other. One of the families tended perfectly to the plants in their garden. They perfectly measured the amount of water, they perfectly managed the sunlight, they perfectly took care of the soil. Everything was done with extreme accuracy. The other family, they cared, they were loving, they were kind to their plants. But they weren't always completely accurate. They didn't always get it perfectly right. And often their plants didn't look as healthy as the next door neighbours. One day there was a storm. The storm was horrific. Everyone had to stay indoors for days and neither of the families could tend to their plants. A few days after the storm was over, both these families came out of their homes to see their gardens destroyed. But there was one thing fascinating. The family that tended perfectly and accurately to their garden, their plants were completely demolished. Their plants had not survived. Now, the family that was loving and kind and tried their best, but were not always perfect or completely accurate, some of their plants had survived, some of their plants had made it through the Horrific storm. The other family was completely bemused. How is this even possible? How does that even happen? How does that happen? The lesson is really interesting that the overbearing mollycoddling of ourselves creates fragility. It creates weakness, not strength. So that when a storm comes and we have to hold our own and we have to find a way to get the nourishment and the nutrition we need to stay strong and stay standing, we don't know how to look for it because we've never been able to look for it before. Whereas those plants that had to look for some of their own nourishment, they to look for some of their own stability all the way, they were able to act on that muscle. When we rely on a limited set of behaviors to deliver a steady level of performance, we set ourselves up for failure. Because chances are that we're going to have a life experience that surprises us. We're going to have something. Now, this doesn't apply to how we deal with others. It applies how we deal with ourselves. Are we setting ourselves up to be fragile by overprotecting ourselves from certain types of pain? Now, I'm not saying we invite pain. I'm not saying we choose pain. I'm not saying to put ourselves into pain or put others into pain. What I'm saying is where are we staying in our comfort zone which is restricting us from growth? Where are we staying limited in our comfort zone that is blocking us from achieving our potential? Where are you so trapped in your comfort zone because you're scared?

And that's fair.

I understand. I know what that feels like. I was scared once upon a time that I wasn't an entrepreneur. I stayed in the comfort zone of being an employee. And I would always repeat the words, I'm not an entrepreneur. Today. I can't imagine being anything but one. Now I'm not saying that you have to be an entrepreneur. What I'm saying is that so many of the titles, so many of the statuses, so many of the roles we take on in life are limited. They're limited by our current perception of ourselves. And our current perception could be trapped by our comfort zone.

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And the final part of the definition is usually without a sense of risk. Now, risk is a really fascinating subject. There are four types of risk takers. The first is the conservative risk taker who doesn't take many risks, as we're saying, someone who stays in their comfort zone. Casual risk takers, they just take risks. They hear that NFTs are a thing. All right, let's throw some money at it. Crypto is a thing. All right, let's throw some money at it. And casual risk takers often don't get the rewards because it's so casual in intention and in planning that they're really relying on luck. And they can often have low luck. Now, beyond that are calculated risk takers. These are people that do all the data, they do all the analysis, they do all the calculations, and they're very aware of how they take risk. This requires deep research and deep knowledge. And finally, you have conscious risk takers. Conscious risk takers are people who apply both intuition and data. They take some inspiration and they add insight. They look at the stats and they look at the patterns. Now, the interesting thing here is that the conscious risk taker is not better than the conservative risk taker. The point is that it's a journey that we all must go on as far as we want to go. And taking bigger risks doesn't make you more bold, it doesn't make you more courageous, it doesn't make you more strong or powerful. It could be stupidity, to be honest, it could be ego based. But we have to develop a little bit of being a bit more pro risk because of the growth that is possible when we are able to do that. So I've defined for you how our comfort zone restricts us and how we stay limited by that. And there's a brilliant diagram called Leaving the comfort Zone. This is a famous diagram and it's been out there on many different sites and places. I believe the original source may be from a psychology study. And it talks about how there are four zones. It's the journey we have to take from the comfort zone to the fear zone to the learning zone to the growth zone. So a lot of people say, oh yeah, we'll just jump from the comfort zone to the growth zone, start growing. That doesn't really happen. That sounds like a big decision, a big difference, and doesn't sound realistic. So there are two ways of starting this journey. One is to move step by step by expanding our comfort zone. And the other is to deep dive immersively in being out of our comfort zone. Often what we do is we don't take the little steps, but we jump in the deep end alone. But it's both of the approaches, it's the little step mixed with the big immersive experience that makes the difference. So in this diagram, the comfort zone is a place where we feel safe, we feel secure, we feel stability, we feel control. And that's why you often hear the idea that if you're not failing, if you're not making mistakes, I believe it was Albert Einstein who said, you're not trying anything new. If you're trying something new, if you're trying to grow, if you're trying to do something different, there will always be failure in your life. If you're experiencing failure, it's because you're trying something that's never been done before. If you're experiencing rejection, it's because you're trying something that is new for you. When I find that there's inconsistency or there's disconnection or that things are hard to explain, I get excited about it because I remind me and my team.

We'Re doing something different.

We're trying something that hasn't been done before. This is normal. We should expect this. It would be. It would be surprising if everything actually went smoothly. If everything went smoothly, it means we're not doing anything incredible. We're not trying anything new. We're not trying to do anything magnanimous. So the fear zone, as described in this diagram, is a place where we find excuses and we're affected by other people's opinions. How many of us don't try anything new because we're scared of what will people say. We're scared of what will people think. Let's really talk about this. I remember being really scared of this. And I've now realized that what people think and what people say have genuinely no impact on the quality of my life. We live so much for perception and reputation that we give up purpose and what's truly rewarding? The question you have to ask yourself is, what's more important to me? My passion or my perception? What's more important to me? My purpose or my perception? What's more important to me? My potential or my perception? What's more important to me? The reward or the reputation? What's more important to me? Respecting myself or others respecting me? What's more important to me? The realizations and the reflections I'll gain or the reputation I hope to maintain? Think about that deeply. Which one is going to satisfy you most in the long run? Which one is truly going to bring you a center of joy? It's the answers to those questions that help us get out of living in the world of excuses and being affected by other people's opinions. The learning zone, as described in this diagram is dealing with challenges, acquiring new skills. And I find this to be the place where we need to spend most of our time.

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Jennifer.

I did a podcast a few years ago where I talked about the five stages of growth. Learn, experiment, perform, struggle, thrive. That's the journey of learning. We think we should already know. We should have it figured out. Maybe you want to get into NFTs, maybe you want to get into crypto, maybe you want to get into social media, maybe you want to do a podcast and we think we should just know how to do it or if we just start and we feel passionate about it, it will work. That doesn't work. That truly doesn't work. What works is following this five step system. Let me first learn about the industry. Let me read books about the industry. Let me listen to podcasts about the industry. Let me listen to the experts. Let me do a course from the industry. That's learning. Learning means diving deeply into getting good industry based knowledge. The next step is let me experiment with what I learned. Okay, well, Jake said that. Let me experiment with that. Let me try that out. Let me actually apply that. Let me put that into practice and see what I learned. So now I'm not just saying, oh, yeah, I did that course, I know how to do it. No, let me actually apply, Let me practically put that into my reality. Oh, I learned that I should record a podcast in that way. Okay, let me do that. Oh, I learned that I should post at that time on social media. Let me put that. Okay, I learned that I should be part of discord. Okay, let me do that. Let's actually test and experiment. And in testing and experimenting, there will be lots of false starts. There will be lots of mistakes. So we start with mini tests and mini experiments. And those mini tests and mini experiments give us confidence. They give us learning. We're allowing ourselves to fail. When do we allow ourselves to fail? That is getting out of our comfort zone. We have to allow ourselves to make mistakes. I allow myself daily, weekly to make mistakes. I'm okay now with making mistakes because that's the only way I'll grow. We all know this. It's so well known. The analogy of when you're learning to walk, you have no idea how many times you fell down, but you got back up and you walk today without falling down, hopefully regularly, right? But imagine you Just said, no, no, no. If I don't walk this time, I'm not getting up again. If it doesn't work this time, I quit. We'd still be crawling as adults. We don't want to be crawling as adults. Think about that for a moment. The next stage is perform. Once you experiment, you get into a cycle of consistency. You perform, you deliver. You're in the zone now. And of course you have struggle. You struggle at every step. But struggle definitely comes at this step. Because now you have to innovate. Now you have to create. Now you have to pivot. Performance requires pivoting. It requires adaptation. Then you get to thrive. You finally thrive. But the problem is we want to go from I like this to I want to win at this. I like this to I want to be the best at this. I enjoy this. It should work. We skip every single step that is in this journey to actually get to thrive, to actually get to the space where we win. So how do you get out of your comfort zone this week? I want you to start really small. One thing may be take a new journey to work this week. Try a new path, try a new road. Just take a new journey to work. Another way to get out of your comfort zone is work in a different environment this week. You may hate it at first, but give it a go. Another way to get out of your comfort zone is have a cold shower.

In the morning, give it a go.

And then you may take on a new project at work. You may take on a new responsibility. You may take on a new course, a new program. What is it that you can do to start small and then accelerate? I really hope that this encourages you and helps you navigate what it means to get out of your comfort zone. I appreciate you tuning in and being a part of this community and I wanted to take these last few minutes to read some of my favorite reviews that I've seen about on purpose. And as always, please leave your name because I want to read your name out. This is Kiana. I've been listening to Jay for about a year now and reading his book Think Like a Monk. I'm on a healing journey and wanting to find more peace within as well as live a life of mindfulness. And this podcast has been more than insightful. I often listen and discuss what I've learned with friends and even share the podcast with friends and family. It has helped me enjoy being in the present as well as being mindful with my choice. Throughout my day to day, I will continue to tune in and apply the knowledge to my everyday life. Kiana, that brings joy. Thank you so, so much. I'm so grateful to read that. Okay, looking for more names? Everyone, this is Jen. The timing of when you started your podcast was truly perfect. It came at a time of so much turmoil and pressure in the world. I had to readjust my spiritual journey last year, and God has honored my spiritual reach out in so many ways, including your podcast. I found so much great advice in your episodes and I am abundantly grateful for your life. I've started considering signing up for Genius as well, to grow even more towards my life purpose. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Chen. I love that. Okay, I'm going to read one more. I love how long these are and how. How beautiful these are. They're truly incredible. I'm going to read one without a name because I just want to. Jay. I cannot even tell you how many different podcasts I've gone through. On Purpose is the only podcast I've been listening to from the beginning and stayed subscribed to. Your content is so original and refreshing. It makes me excited to jump out of bed every Monday and Friday morning. It starts and ends my work week in the best way. Thank you for keeping us entertained and educated. You've made the podcast world a different place. Thank you for leaving your podcast. We're nearly at 17,500 podcasts. By the end of this year, we want to reach 20,000. Please, please, please come and help us. Thank you for listening. I'll see you next week.

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Hey, it's Joel and Matt from How To Money. If your New Year's resolution is to finally get your finances in shape, we've got your back prices, they're still high, and the economy is all over the place. But 2026 is the year for you to get intentional and make real progress. That's right. Yeah. Each week we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on, and the small moves that make a big difference. Kick off the year with confidence. Listen to how to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Walley, and I'm Hari Kondabolu. It's a new year, and on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health, which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be. I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that, or am I just depressed? Health Stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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