Comfort Zone? More Like Stagnant Zone!
“Do not resist events that move you out of your comfort zone, especially when your comfort zone was not all that comfortable.”
― Alan Cohen
Every once in awhile, I stop into a Facebook group for sober women run by someone I know. She asked a question recently about whether anyone was experiencing stagnation after a year sober. I was interested to see comments like “I’m almost five years sober, and I’m bored”.
Now I don’t know the story of the woman who posted that comment, but to me boredom = comfort zone. This lady needs to get out of her comfort zone!
Sobriety is a brave choice in our booze-soaked world. So when you go through that momentous change, what are you going to do to make it stick? How can you make sobriety epic (as my friend Jake says)?
It’s a booze-soaked world because it’s one where short-term comfort is being sold to us at every turn.
You can watch TV from bed, switch on the heat in your house from your phone, get a coffee made JUST the way you want it without getting out of your car, have almost any item you want delivered to your doorstep overnight. It’s easy for you to stay in your bubble. Or is it?
This short-term comfort isn’t making us more happy. Instead, as a society we are feeling more anxious, more sick, and more tired.
Most of us chose sobriety because what had become our comfort zone was causing us pain.
My belief is that sobriety is an opportunity to expand the defined edges of your comfort zone. When you commit to that as part of your sober lifestyle, there is no telling what is possible for you!
Sobriety was a choice, and meaningful growth can also be a choice.
The thing is, growth happens at the edge of your comfort zone, and guess what? There is going to be some discomfort!
One of my mentors from Authentic Relating, Rick Smith, describes that boundary between your comfort zone and growth zone as “the tender edge”.
This movement into your growth zone can happen in a few ways:
Through an invitation you accept
Through action you initiate
A combination of both
All of these can be planned, or spontaneous.
Often I intentionally step into my growth zone, willing to accept the pain that I anticipate. I did this last year at a retreat when I noticed I was feeling a lot of shame about not being able to learn people’s names as fast as other people. After making a concerted effort to use memory devices, I requested the chance to attempt to say everyone’s name in the circle, and revealed to everyone that this was a big risk for me.
How did it go? Well, I called someone by the wrong name– and it was the person who had given me a two hour ride to the retreat! I cried a little from embarrassment, and on top of that felt embarrassed that I was crying. But as a result, I feel more confident making social mistakes because I survived.
Another way to grow is to accept an invitation that is out of your comfort zone.
My brother is really good at extending these types of invitations, which is how I found myself in a team competition on the 4th of July in my hometown of Douglas, Wyoming– flipping tires, pushing a bed down the street, doing tug of war against men with giant muscles, and playing dodge ball with water balloons. (Our team took last place, but no one got hurt, and we won the team spirit award.)
I’m the first to admit that for years, my default answer to most ideas other people proposed was “No”. I wanted to feel like I was in control of what was happening. Not only was I obviously not in control, but that’s not the way it works in the growth zone.
Now I either respond “My first reaction is no, but let’s talk about it,” or “I’m feeling some resistance, but sure, I’ll try it!”.
Your growth zone opportunities could be big and obvious, but are often momentous only to you. You won’t always make a conscious choice to move into your growth zone; sometimes you just end up there! What then?
In Authentic Relating, one of the underlying principles is “Welcome Everything”. It means to open yourself up to the reality of what’s happening around you. “Welcome Everything” has been helpful for me when I welcome the discomfort that arises in me. Then I can make an informed choice as to whether I need to do something about the discomfort because it’s in response to something harmful, or determine that the discomfort is in service of growth and discovery, in which case I can sit with it, and allow it to do it’s work of helping me expand.
The last thing I want to add, and I think it’s just as important:
Growth is a dance between going outward to experience, and inward to integrate. Experiences need to be digested just as much as food does. So rest and digest your experiences.
That means real rest, not fake iPhone or Netflix rest, when your brain has to take in information coming in even faster than normal human pace.
What is real rest? Go on a boring walk, lay on the couch and stare out the window at a boring tree, put on some soft music and do some boring stretches, take a boring bath.
When you recuperate this way, it gives you the mental and emotional energy it takes to expand in a meaningful way.
In my drinking and pot-smoking years, I knew that my comfort zone was holding me back from fulfilling my potential.
“If we stay where we are, where we're stuck, where we're comfortable and safe, we die there... When nothing new can get in, that's death.”
― Anne Lamott, Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers
In sobriety, I’ve been pushing the boundary of my comfort zone in so many ways. It’s opened me up to new experiences, new connections, new ways of seeing myself, and even new feelings. I now believe that just about anything is possible for me, and it’s possible for you too!
At almost 4 ½ years sober, I can’t imagine saying that sobriety is making me bored. If anything, I feel more alive, because as I expand my comfort zone, I expand my experience of myself, and the way I experience this incredible planet.
How can you avoid the trap of stagnation, and embrace the opportunities sobriety has to offer?