It can feel good being a big fish in a little pond. Everything you do is recognized. You’re respected and have the admiration of others. It’s a nice ego boost.
But if you really want to put things in perspective, you need to go to a bigger pond to see that there are other fish out there that a bigger, faster, etc.
Don’t limit yourself by staying comfortable. If you’re not willing to test the waters elsewhere, you’ll likely stay in your comfort zone and not grow to your full potential.
In the end, you’ll have to make a decision – do you want to stay where you’re on a pedestal or do you want to find new challenges?
Most of the best things in life happen at the edges of your comfort zone. If you only want to feel comfort, you’ll be less likely to branch out/try new things, to overcome adversity, learn new skill sets, etc.
The higher degree of difficulty, the less comfortable most people are with trying to tackle that problem. If you’re willing (and able) to solve that problem, and if you can find a way to solve the problem for others too, you often are compensated (monetarily) for it. Most people want to stay in their comfort zones and are willing to trade money for comfort (paying someone else to solve their problems). There’s nothing wrong with this. We all do it, and depending on the stage of life we’re in, it may be a smarter financial decision to pay an expert/specialist to do something more efficiently so you’re not wasting your non-renewable resource (time) on something you don’t know how to do well and will end up with a worse finished product than if the expert did it in the first place.
Life will only change when you become more committed to your dreams than you are to your comfort zone.
“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” Friedrich Nietzsche
“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” Friedrich Nietzsche
This is true for overcoming physical challenges, but also for overcoming mental challenges.
The biggest mental challenge sometimes isn’t even real. It’s the fear of “what might happen” if you do something. A lot of times, it’s that fear that holds us back from achieving our full potential. We fear that we’ll fail, that others will judge us, that we will be rejected or look dumb. Those fears might be realized. Nobody is immune from failing. BUT, what we need to focus on is not the failure itself, but rather that we mustered the courage to take action.
It’s just like Teddy Roosevelt’s “Man in the arena” speech. In it, TR says:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
When you face your fear, you feel like it’s going to kill you at first, but it doesn’t and you are stronger for it.
1. Avoid getting locked into bad habits. You usually have an idea of if you shouldn’t be doing something, so don’t do it.
2. Avoid resisting change. Change not for change’s sake, but to progress. Always strive for a better way to do something – doing it more effectively, more efficiently, or finding something to replace it. (Do you need to be doing that activity at all? Does anyone?)
3. Avoid seeking comfort in repetition. Just because it’s comfortable doesn’t make it right. The greatest times of accomplishment are often preceded by the greatest challenges/struggles which push us outside our comfort zone. We must embrace challenge.
4. Avoid applying old solutions to new problems. Your core values should stay the same. Your goal(s) might stay the same. But your tactics on how to complete the goal could (and probably should) change somewhat regularly, depending on if the tactics are producing the results you want. Just because a specific solution worked for something else doesn’t mean it will work for this new problem.
What brings us happiness? A balance of mastery and challenge. This is a paradox as a life with only mastery and no challenge would be boring. Imagine playing a 3 year old in a game of checkers. You would always win and there would be no challenge. But a life with only challenges and no mastery would be equally, if not more, dreadful. It would be like constantly getting sand kicked in your face. And just when you’re about to get up again, someone shoves you down. A life of only challenges yet no mastery is not a life of happiness.
We need a balance between the two. With mastery brings a sense of accomplishment and of overcoming difficulties that not everyone is willing to attempt. But if you only stay within your comfort zone, in the domain which you have mastered, you will soon find yourself bored. And a bored mind is not optimized for maximum happiness. Instead, you need another challenge, something to take you out of your comfort zone, but a challenge that is still possible to overcome. And then the cycle continues, as anything that challenges you is inherently something you have not mastered yet.
