If you’ve been in the entrepreneur bubble for any length of time, you’ve likely heard about mindset work. Over the years, we’ve seen mindset work weaponised by coaches and gurus and used as a manipulative tactic to increase sales, create urgency, FOMO and fear in potential customers and clients.
In spite of this, self development is still a wonderful tool for online business, as many of the experiences we have are impacted by our mindset, beliefs and childhood experiences. It’s important for me to say at this point, I am not a trauma informed coach and everything I am going to discuss here is based on my own experience of entrepreneurship.
One of the quotes we hear a lot is:
“Nothing grows within our comfort zone”
Folks, it’s 2022 and we’ve just lived through the most scary, chaotic and eye opening two years. We not only need our comfort zones, but we are craving them — and we can absolutely thrive within this space.
I visualise my comfort zone as a fluid circle, always in movement, ebbing and flowing as I move through life, and to be honest, I really like my comfort zone.
As someone who grew up trying to fit in, and spent most of my adolescence trying to mold myself into the perfect social constructs of popularity, I have a hard time being visible outside of my comfort zone.
We create our comfort zones with both conscious and subconscious boundaries. There might be some areas left over from childhood, some areas created by societal norms and others we’ve intentionally created to protect ourselves.
I visualise my comfort zone as a fluid circle, always in movement, ebbing and flowing as I move through life, and to be honest, I really like my comfort zone.
But, if we are actively working on personal development, using self inquiry as a tool to expand our understanding of ourselves and others, and become increasingly self aware: is the comfort zone still a problem?
Does it still hold us back?
Or do we construct these zones to keep us moving forward towards our goals and intentions without the impact of burnout, hustle culture and criticism?
And, is any of that truly a bad thing?
As we continue on our self development journey, our comfort zones will ebb and flow, we will throw out old societal constructs, dissolve relationships, and remove language or behaviours that we consider to be harmful to ourselves and others.
We tend to replace these things with loving and open relationships, self compassion, self inquiry, activism and advocating for our own needs. As we gain a deeper understanding of who we are, our view of society adjusts accordingly.
I understand why we are told that everything we ever wanted is outside of our comfort zone, because sometimes we hold ourselves back, we can sabotage our goals and opportunities because we are afraid.
But what if some people need to function within their comfort zone in order to be “successful”, what if our comfort zone no longer holds us back and is instead a unique perspective of how we explore the world with people and things we love?
You can actually THRIVE in your comfort zone.
So, what are your thoughts? Do you need fear and discomfort to thrive? …or is that just another part of hustle culture?