40,000 Years Developing the Comfort Zone and Now You Want Us to Leave?
Don’t get out of your comfort zone, find your true comfort zone.
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We’ve all heard it, the only way to succeed in this brutal, modern world is to get out of our comfort zone. And what exactly is the point of that?
There appears to be a direct line between exiting the comfort zone and burnout. This is blithely overlooked by the proponents of this approach.
I would advocate for the opposite. Find your comfort zone and be clearly aware of what makes you uncomfortable.
No gain without pain?
One type of business I’ve come into contact with a lot recently is physiotherapists. It’s clear that there is one source responsible for a prominent rise in personal injuries.
The gymnasium.
If there is one industry more focused on the getting out of your comfort zone mentality it’s the “health” and fitness industry.
I’ve recently noticed a significant increase in the numbers of half naked men appearing on skyscraper-sized posters at the local shopping centre. Naturally, they all have six packs deeper than the Cataract Gorge.
It’s what goes hand in hand with exiting the comfort zone — an unrealistic goal.
The goal and narrative in this case is that if you don’t achieve a body of which Arnold Schwarzenegger would be proud, then you are not a real man.
The only way to achieve that goal is to get down the gym and “get out of your comfort zone”.
That for many, this involves a self inflicted injury that sends them to the physiotherapist appears to have escaped many people’s attention.
I should also add that it is not just men showing up with these gym injuries, increasingly it’s affecting woman. Although women aren’t new to the idea of suffering at the hands of unrealistic expectations.
That getting out of your comfort zone has become synonymous with hustle culture points to a different set of injuries, this time mental.
That to succeed we need to amplify a way of life that’s focused on stress, exhaustion, hyper competitiveness and the…
