When you feel safe, you may be more willing to venture beyond your Comfort Zone. It is your willingness to step out of what is familiar that is the key to your personal growth, and ultimately, your success.
This venturing forth comes with a price, though. When you extend yourself and meet resistance or rejection, the most common reaction is to snap back to the core of your Safety Zone. This is an area that provides you the most comfort, security, and stability.
Retreating is a normal response. Indeed, it may be a great time for reflection and regrouping. However, if retreating becomes habitual and excessive, you could become stuck in place. Yes, the Safety Zone is a place of renewal, but it also lulls you into complacency, unintentionally crippling your ability to cope with risk. This is the curse of the Safety Zone.
Formula for Growth:
- Keep pushing the edges of your Safety Zone.
- Redefine risk from being something to be avoided – to something to embrace and a state of being that drives success.
- Engage in adaptive behaviors that allow you to objectively evaluate the cause of your hesitancy.
- Change is going to occur whether you take a risk or not. Why not manage it on your own terms?
- If you knew you could not fail – what would you think, feel, do?
Friends – I’d love to hear what you might accomplish if you took reasonable risks outside of your Safety Zone.
