Is It Always a Good Idea to Reach Outside Your Comfort Zone?
Learning to stretch outside your comfort zone is critical for learning and growing, advancing in your job and career, and achieving your personal and professional goals. But is it always the case that you need to step outside your comfort zone to be successful? Are there situations when it makes sense to stay right where you are?
Having spoken with people from a range of occupations about this exact topic over the past year, my resounding answer is yes. There are times when you actually don’t need to give the speech, make the point, or take the chance. But to figure that out, it’s important to ask yourself a series of questions to assess whether staying inside your comfort zone is sensible or just a rationalization.
Have you prepared well enough? When you’re going to step out of your comfort zone in a situation that’s meaningful, you need to have a good chance for success. Whether it’s speaking up in a meeting or giving a keynote address at a conference, you want to say something worthwhile, and not fumble your words.
You can never fully prepare for something you’ve never done before, but you shouldn’t wing it, either. So the question to ask is whether you’ve prepared enough. Have you studied how to be successful in this situation? Have you watched and learned from others? Have you practiced in less-consequential versions of the situation you’re going to be trying out? Learning to act outside your comfort zone is a skill — one you can get better at with practice. So if the answer to this question is no, you haven’t prepared enough, it might make sense to put the situation on the back burner until you have.
Is the situation in question something you actually care about? There are many situations in life that are outside our comfort zones but that may not be important to us. Such a situation could be giving public speeches — but you know what? Maybe giving speeches isn’t an important part of your job, or your life. Maybe you’re a chemist and have little interest in speaking to a large audience, unless it’s to fellow specialists about your research findings. The point is that not all of us are destined to stretch ourselves in every possible way, or even interested in trying.
Of course, it’s important to realize that “not caring about it” can be a convenient excuse for not trying something new. For example, I argued to myself for years that I didn’t care about writing or speaking for a general audience, that academic writing was my priority. In reality, the problem was more that writing for and communicating with a broader audience was outside my comfort zone, and I was using my lack of interest as an excuse. When you ask yourself whether something is important, make sure you answer honestly.
Is this the right time? You might want to do the behavior or learn the skill in question, but the time just might not be right. You might want to get better at pitching and promoting yourself at networking events, for example, but given your other responsibilities at work, you can’t devote time and effort to that particular task. Or you might want to improve your public speaking skills — maybe you have visions of one day becoming CEO — but given your current position and work responsibilities, you just don’t have the room to dedicate to mastering the craft. If you don’t have the time to fully prepare and follow through, it’s not worth moving forward.
Comfort zones are hard to leave, and for good reason. They’re often places where we feel most secure and natural, and sometimes they are where we can do our best and most fulfilling work. But don’t confuse bravery with sensibility. Stretching your comfort zone when you’re not ready — or don’t need to — can add more stress than skill. In some cases, comfort zones aren’t about settling or mediocrity; they’re just where you need to be right now.
Is It Always a Good Idea to Reach Outside Your Comfort Zone?的更多相关文章
- L365
When I started my company nine years ago, I was a young, inexperienced founder without much capital. ...
- Creating a New Master Page in SharePoint 2013
Creating a New Master Page in SharePoint 2013 This article explains how to create a Master Page in S ...
- [转]10 Tips for Learning a New Technology
We live in a very exciting time. Never before has education been so cheaply available to the masses ...
- geeksforgeeks@ Minimum Points To Reach Destination (Dynamic Programming)
http://www.practice.geeksforgeeks.org/problem-page.php?pid=91 Minimum Points To Reach Destination Gi ...
- modelsim 仿真时出现无限迭代(iteration reach limitation)的原因及其解决办法
modelsim 仿真时出现无限迭代(iteration reach limitation) 出现这种故障的原因: 一般都是代码里出现的组合逻辑无限循环或者组合逻辑A产生signal_A,signa ...
- Uva10290 - {Sum+=i++} to Reach N
Problem H {sum+=i++} to Reach N Input: standard input Output: standard output Memory Limit: 32 MB A ...
- Error: ORA-16501: the Data Guard broker operation failed ORA-16625: cannot reach database
在备库上建配置文件 DGMGRL> create configuration 'sharkdbbork' as primary database is 'sharkdb' connect ide ...
- [LeetCode] Reach a Number 达到一个数字
You are standing at position 0 on an infinite number line. There is a goal at position target. On ea ...
- [Swift]LeetCode754. 到达终点数字 | Reach a Number
You are standing at position 0 on an infinite number line. There is a goal at position target. On ea ...
随机推荐
- androidstudio项目如何使用git版本回退
使用android studio 编写代码错误,有时可能会需要将项目版本回退到以前的某个版本上,这对于很多刚使用git的网友来说操作可能不是很懂,下面为大家整理了android studio 回退已经 ...
- OAuth 2.0之授权码模式
转载自:http://www.ruanyifeng.com/blog/2014/05/oauth_2_0.html OAuth 2.0授权码模式 授权码模式(authorization code)是功 ...
- LOJ #10130 点的距离
在LOJ做的第一道题. 最开始想复杂了qwq 想的是在求LCA的过程中统计向上的步数 其实此题很裸--就是求出u,v的LCA, 再分别用两点深度减去LCA的深度,再加起来就好了qwq---化简--- ...
- Wireshark解析MQTT
Mac下安装lua curl -R -O http://www.lua.org/ftp/lua-5.2.3.tar.gz tar zxf lua-5.2.3.tar.gz cd lua-5.2.3 m ...
- Ansible在Ubuntu上的安装
#apt安装 apt-get install software-properties-common apt-add-repository ppa:ansible/ansible apt-get upd ...
- 在新获取git中项目时出现的问题汇总
新下拉git项目,今天遇到的问题,因为刚配置实用jdk和idea,所以有可能在打开springboot项目时查看mysql数据库驱动显示为红色. 之后看到pom文件也没有错,最后发现才是在项目中还没有 ...
- Vue常见组件
每一个组件都是一个vue实例 每个组件均具有自身的模板template,根组件的模板就是挂载点 每个组件模板只能拥有一个根标签 子组件的数据具有作用域,以达到组件的复用 根组件 <div id= ...
- GitHub的Windows客户端的使用教程
GitHub for Windows客户端的使用教程 什么是Github >说到什么是GitHub,我们先看wikipedia的描述“GitHub是一个利用Git进行版本控制.专门用于存放软件代 ...
- [原]jsbsim 自动驾驶c310ap文件改写
<?xml version="1.0"?> <!-- Author: 南水之源 Date: 1 January 2019 Function: A-320 auto ...
- Python语法注意点
1. 在Python中定义函数,可以用必选参数.默认参数.可变参数.关键字参数和命名关键字参数,这5种参数都可以组合使用.但是请注意,参数定义的顺序必须是:必选参数.默认参数.可变参数.命名关键字参数 ...