Do you have a particular part of your home that you feel most at peace and content? It’s the place you gravitate to for relaxation or to create. Is it the kitchen where you love to cook? A favourite chair you like to read in or watch television? Is it outside in your garden?
Our physical home can very much be a representation of our comfort zone. Within our home we are able to be ourselves, relax and find a sense of contentment. It’s a place we decorate with our personal taste and focus on creating a sense of safety and comfort.
We venture out each day to the world beyond, yet it’s so nice to pull back into our driveway, open the door, kick off our shoes and unwind again.
Photo by Alisa Anton on Unsplash
Our inner comfort zone is similar. Kirsten Butler in her book ‘The Comfort Zone’ describes it as a place where you can feel safe and can express yourself fully without judgement. It allows you to feel uplifted and good about yourself and your life. It’s a very personalized space where you can stay and remain strong, in your power during stressful times.
The lovely thing about our ‘inner’ comfort zone is we can take it with us when we venture out into the world. It’s our safe and nurturing space, our space of inner strength and calm as we go about our day.
When you are inside your comfort zone: –
- The ‘fight and flight’ response is mostly inactive. This allows you to be in the ‘rest and digest’ mode where you feel at peace and safe. Your body can heal and recuperate.
- Your heart rate quietens allowing your body organs to go into balance with your heart. A state that helps your organs function more efficiently. This makes the comfort zone really powerful. Its impact on your physical and emotional wellbeing allows you to become healthier and more creative.
- As individuals we love to learn and experience new things. We like to continually stretch the limits of our abilities and experiences. In that expansion we also like to feel a sense of comfort. If we go too far out of our comfort zone, we lose the benefits of comfortably expanding our sense of self.
The Comfort Zone is a good place to live your life from.
First, you need to feel safe.
It’s necessary for our survival and as soon as we step out from what’s comfortable for us, that feeling of safety is gone.
The two main elements of safety are creating healthy boundaries and self-care. Boundaries represent your outward-facing needs and preferences in relation to the world. Self-care refers to your inner nurturing. It’s important to strike a balance between the two.
- Healthy boundaries require you to know what you want and need so you can communicate those desires to others. This is not easy when you are going through lots of change. Remember to pause, feel and name the emotions of your experience. When you feel calmer, ponder from a wider perspective what your current wants and needs may be. Take your time. Observe life around you and tune in to your intuition.
- Healthy boundaries allow you to give respect to yourself and to ask for respect from others. It is also acknowledging the choices of others and respecting their boundaries. A valuable insight to take on board is that we cannot change others. We can only impact change within ourselves.
- Self-care requires us to tune into our physical body to maintain its optimum health. It’s also important to be aware of our mental thoughts and beliefs, our emotional state and our connection with the non-physical or spiritual part of ourselves.
Once you feel a sense of safety it’s easier to express who you are.
Self-expression is the different ways you share yourself and your preferences with the world. It helps others know who you are and how to treat you. It helps your ‘tribe’ find you. Those people who enjoy your company and want to spend time with you.
Your self-image plays a big role in your self-expression. It can be positive and empowering, giving you confidence and a strong sense of self-esteem. It can also be negative and disempowering, filling you with self-doubt and uncertainty.
If you are not consciously building up how you see yourself then you will tend to mirror how others see you instead. The good news is you can refine and adjust your self-image at any time. You can appreciate your qualities and feel more comfortable with who you are.
Your self-image also informs your choices and actions. Having a good sense of self lets you be more authentic and express your true nature. In the clothes you wear, the activities you choose and the people you surround yourself with. You can create a life that fits more closely with who you are.
All of this can occur within what is comfortable for you but it’s also true that you can venture outside your comfort zone and explore knowing it’s possible to return to the familiar. Just like you venture out from your physical home each day.
We are always building up a picture of who we are. Let yours be a kind, generous and grateful one.
Enjoying your life from your Comfort Zone
Do you know people that live simply and also feel their life is blessed? Perhaps you are one of those people. The opposite can also be true. The person continually striving for more, without feeling satisfied with what they have.
When you feel safe, comfortable in your own skin and can express yourself authentically it’s easier to enjoy your life wherever you are.
Enjoying your current life attracts more possibilities into your life. Bringing new people, events, opportunities, relationships and moments for you to enjoy. That’s the magic of manifesting.
This is why gratitude and having a positive outlook on life is such a powerful practice.
Expanding from your Comfort Zone
Who we are changes from moment to moment, day to day, year to year. In fact, physically on a cellular level we replenish completely over seven to ten years. We become a completely different person. That also goes for our outward experience of the world. We are a decade older and the life experiences we’ve had mature us into a different version of ourselves.
Really knowing our wants and needs and living authentically with gratitude for our current life is a wonderful start for expanding into desires and dreams we’d love to achieve.
We don’t quite know how those dreams will unfold. You’re not supposed to know the how. It’s impossible to map your whole path at the beginning of a journey. That journey is part of your life experience.
Instead focus on the what and the why. Identify those desires and why they are so personally important to you. Life rarely goes exactly as planned so trust in yourself and the unknown to help things unfold. Just focusing on the next step is enough.
The comfort zone is a wonderful place from which to live. It’s familiarity allows us to be who we are and its always a place we can return to, just like our physical home when we need to. The comfort zone can also be our springboard for the new. We can step out and experiment with different versions of ourselves and our lives. Kristen Butler describes it as intentionally expanding our sense of self. In time that expanded self is our new familiar and we can venture into new terrain and dream again.