Outside the Comfort Zone

By Gaz under Martial Arts, Personal Growth

You might define lifestyle as encompassing all the things that you spend your time engaged in, that is whatever it is that you do regularly defines your particular lifestyle. If you take a minute to think about some of those things, and how you feel when you’re doing them, that is what I’m calling your comfort zone. If you’re thinking about your day job, then it doesn’t mean you need to like what you’re doing, just that it is something you can do without needing to stretch yourself too much — especially if it is a job you’ve been doing for a long time.

Letting yourself stay inside this comfort zone for too long is what leads to that “stuck in a rut” feeling, or becoming bored. And not necessarily just with your job; the same applies to your relationships, hobbies and your whole life. The problem is that getting outside this comfort zone is inherently “uncomfortable” by its very nature.

Before I reached my teens, I was a stereotypical geek: Bottle-bottom NHS black rimmed glasses, shy and much preferring to program in Z80 machine code in my room that play outside like the other kids. And worse, my family moved house every year or two, so I was always the “new kid”, which is no fun at the best of times. Like many martial artists of my age, the turning point came when I first saw The Karate Kid and wanted to be just like Daniel-san. My folks found a local Karate club and signed me up, delighted to see me engage in something a little more extroverted than reading, programming and playing Dungeons & Dragons. I felt pretty awkward even just shouting ki-ai (kiyap in Korean) at first, but this was the first time I had gone outside my comfort zone with all the discomfort that brings. I looked up the line at all coloured-belt students and determined to have a belt of my own soon, stuck with it, and sure enough within a month or so my comfort zone had grown a little to include shouting my ki-ai, and I had developed my personality a little.

So, by stepping a little outside your comfort zone for a while, you can improve your own personal development, and pursuing a martial art is an excellent way to be constantly pushed. The trick is not to push too hard, or the stress will make you retract and give you a bigger barrier to get through next time.

I kept at Karate until I left for University 4 years later, to discover the University Karate Club didn’t care too much for the safety of its students. In my first few weeks, one of the senior grades broke a new student’s collar bone with an axe kick in line work… bad enough in itself, but the instructor mistook it for a dislocated shoulder and in trying to pop it back in pushed the broken bone through the skin before calling for an ambulance. Looking for another club, I discovered Tae Kwon-Do which was far less formal than Karate, with students encouraged to help each other rather than compete against one another. I also liked the idea of wearing safety pads and engaging in semi-contact sparring. Once I got to University I’d decided to start wearing contact lenses instead of glasses, so I wouldn’t have to excuse myself from sparring. Over the following year I came to enjoy sparring sessions in the club, and when a local tournament came up I decided to enter. Although I was only a middle grade, I’d been practicing martial arts for a few years more than the other students of my grade, so my instructor entered me in the Mens Heavyweight Red Belt category (one below black belt in Tae Kwon-Do). By now I already knew that I needed to move outside my comfort zone to grow, so I took the sick feeling in my stomach as a good sign that I was pushing myself. Needless to say, I lost in the first round. Badly. I had only sparred with friends until now, and was taken back by how hard my opponent was hitting. I didn’t enter another competition for almost 10 years after that experience. A great pity, because once I did start competing seriously I eventually peaked at 2nd Place in the English Tae Kwon-Do Open Championships 2002. The fights at this competition involved much heavier contact and far more experienced fighters, but having expanded my comfort zone since that first unfortunate loss in 1990, it wasn’t so big a stretch to enter a National level event now as it had been to enter a local competition back then.

Nowadays I use my level of discomfort with new ventures as a sort of radar. If I’m feeling a bit uncomfortable about something, and making bad excuses to myself about why I shouldn’t bother, it is a good indication that I’m moving in the right direction to develop in some way, which spurs me on to stay motivated. If I need to make half a dozen trips to the bathroom and feel a little sick, then I’m pushing too hard and need to expand my comfort zone some more before I set myself back by pushing too hard.

Since then I’ve read Iain Abernethy’s excellent book Mental Strength, which goes into great depth about the comfort zone. If you’ve enjoyed this article, you’ll certainly find a lot of good advice in Iain’s book.