By Richard Tardif
Leave me in my comfort zone.
I like it there. I sleep well, eat well, learn well, and frankly, it’s there I’ve learned and worked to have my needs met. In the last ten years, probably longer, the “thing” has been, “Get out of your comfort zone” for a better life, meet new people, and make more money. Keto, HIIT, cold baths, face your fears, eat less, move more, and you are what you eat, well then, I must be a pizza!
I do all that, and more, from my comfort zone. I like my comfort zone. It’s peaceful, warm, loving, and to boot I get to watch football on Sundays, hockey on Saturdays, and UFC sometimes on Saturdays. I read my books, do my writing, and sometimes from my comfort zone, which is my terrace overlooking my community, I see many people I have known for years. Because of this wholesome and warm zone, I have the greatest friends, and that sounds good to me.
It doesn’t seem so good for others, and if I followed the advice, I should feel ashamed of being in my bliss. Just Google “comfort zone” and you’ll learn that, “Your comfort zone doesn’t sound like a bad place to be—unless you are comfortable with disharmonious relationships you avoid working on, unfulfilling behaviour patterns, resentments from the past, and beliefs about yourself and the world that limit you.”
Others add that it is not a real place, this comfort zone. It is an idea created by you and me so we can feel safe. It excludes things we are afraid of or uncomfortable with.
Sorry folks, I am not getting out of bed at three in the morning because the “rich” do it. Forget ice cold baths every morning, because four out of five successful people do it and I should, and if this doesn’t take the cake, one Facebook post lets us Comfort-Zoners know that some of the most successful people changed one thing, and became rich. Nothing is said of their hard work, and they didn’t even take ice baths.
It gets even better. Step away from playing it safe, and you enter the world of possibility. You stop basing your life on what is false and instead tell the truth. Most advice goes like this: Let yourself rule the fear, don’t let it rule you. I do that from my comfort zone. Experience the emotions that underlie your compulsive habits? Not sure that having compulsive habits are bad? And the best, have hard, self, liberating conversations that will clean up your life. Leap into the unknown. I have, and as I learned, it wasn’t that unknown to begin with.
I do this from my comfort zone. I know what is being said. I get it. When I look at this idea, I imagine my life outside in the “uncomfortable zone” where it is constant turmoil, disharmony, fake relationships, fake pretenses, falsehoods and scapegoating humans with goals that are unrealistic. This is considered advantageous to who?
Okay, I’m on a little rant, a given. Not everyone is disharmonious, fake, unrealistic and the world moves because we humans move it, good or bad, right or wrong. There are beautiful people out there.
No, the magic, as one social media blogger wrote, is not outside our comfort zone. This comfort zone is where we observe the world around us, and make choices to step into what we choose. Comfort Zones are great places, imagined or not, to be.
Live. With. It.
Richard Tardif is an award-winning journalist, author based in Montreal
