#63: In defence of your comfort zone
You know that remaining in your comfort zone is basically a psychic crime, right? Like, only losers do that. Successful people are out there pushing boundaries and loving life. Bummer that, by definition, they have to spend their entire time in discomfort, but whatever. Who needs comfort when you've got self-actualisation?
Sorry pals, but this is all daft nonsense. Join your Imperfectionist friend for some truth bombs about comfort zones and a guilt-free pass to tossing that stick that you've been using to beat yourself.
Episode transcript:
You’re listening to The Academic Imperfectionist. I’m Dr Rebecca Roache. I’m a coach and a philosopher at the University of London, and week by week I’ll be drawing on philosophical analysis and coaching insights to help you dump perfectionism and flourish on your own terms.
Hey friends. How are you doing? I’m a bit .. rough. Sniffly and croaky. Last week I was rushing to meet a cluster of deadlines, which I managed (yay me), but then I immediately got ill. That always happens, doesn’t it? Apparently - and I only know this as a result of my obsessive listening to the Huberman Lab podcast - a drop in adrenaline is to blame. Life just isn’t exciting enough at the moment, I guess. But I’m excited to be here, talking to you again, and this time I want to talk about something that’s come up a few times in coaching sessions. It’s about comfort zones. Do me a quick favour, would you? Do an image search for ‘comfort zone’. I’ve just done that myself, and look at all those pretty diagrams. Let me give you a quick description of the first one that comes up, just in case you can’t or don’t want to do the search yourself. So, the first comfort zone pic that comes up for me is a diagram - they’re all diagrams, really - made up of concentric circles. At the centre is a small circle called ‘comfort zone’. This, according to the diagram, is where you feel ‘safe and in control’. Around that centre circle is a larger circle called ‘fear zone’. That’s where you start feeling less confident, worry about what other people will think, and try to find excuses to get back to your comfort zone. If you can push beyond that fear zone, then according to the diagram, you can level up to the ‘learning zone’. That’s where you learn new skills, deal with problems, and eventually expand your comfort zone. And then beyond that, the final, biggest circle is the ‘growth zone’. That one’s peppered with great captions like ‘find purpose’, ‘live dreams’, and ‘set new goals’. The general message here - and it’s a common theme in all of these comfort zone diagrams - is that the further you get from your comfort zone, the better life gets. If you truly want to realise your full potential, prepare to feel pretty uncomfortable. Thinking about this, I’m getting an image in my mind of someone on the stage having just accepted an Oscar, while also writhing around as if their clothes are full of itching powder. Ugh, why didn’t anyone tell us that self-actualisation was going to be so itchy? Like, congratulations on smashing your way through the glass ceiling, now here’s your new mattress, which is made completely out of smashed-up rocks. Have this pillow too - it’s woven from stinging nettles, with an impressively high thread count. You’ll never sleep again in your life, but think of all that personal growth!
In case you haven’t guessed, there’s something that bothers me about all this. I mean, about the idea that living your best life is incompatible with comfort, and that you have to suffer in order to grow. Remember that description of the comfort zone on the diagram? ‘Feel safe and in control’, it says. What do these diagram-designers have against feeling safe and in control? Can’t we feel safe and in control, but also grow and have all the good stuff we want? What’s with all the self-flagellation?
I’m being a little bit facetious here, I’ll admit. There is a valuable message here, and it’s this: sometimes an unwillingness to feel uncomfortable can stand in our way, and when that happens it’s good to be able to push through and do the things we need to do in order to succeed despite the discomfort we feel, because it will all be worth it in the end. I’m fully on board with that part of it. But, having spent quite a bit of time now talking to people who are trying to work their way towards the lives they want, I know that people aren’t always taking away that healthy, sensible message when they think about comfort zones. In fact, their ideas about it being bad to stay in their comfort zones are doing a lot of damage. I want to talk about some of the things we need to be on guard against when we think about comfort zones.
The first is this. Even well-meaning attempts to encourage people to leave their comfort zones play right into the hands of our inner critics. It’s largely thanks to the inner critic that the area beyond the comfort zone is uncomfortable, of course - because when we stretch ourselves and try new things, our inner critic is standing behind us screaming at us to watch out and be careful, danger lies ahead. But if you’re tempted to think that your inner critic will therefore be satisfied with you staying in your comfort zone, think again. That would be to ascribe too much rationality to your inner critic. So, yeah, she screams at you when you try to leave your comfort zone, but she’s going to be screaming at you when you stay there too. Well, maybe not screaming at you, but nagging. You’ll be sitting there trying to enjoy all that safe and homely comfort, but your inner critic will be there telling you how lazy and cowardly you are. Look at you, snuggled up there under a nice soft duvet of self-doubt. What a big old scaredy cat. Why can’t you be out there thinking outside the box and pushing past your limits, like those other people you’re always comparing yourself miserably against? So, yeah, you might look at those comfort zone diagrams and see positive, motivating, affirming things, but your inner critic looks at them and thinks, oh great, another stick to prod you with. And, not only is it unpleasant to get prodded with a stick, but it also stops you thinking clearly about your choices.
The second problem I see with talk about how positive it is to leave our comfort zones is this. Leaving our comfort zone is - by definition - uncomfortable. And that means exhausting, stressful, draining. This is a worry because progress towards big goals - a new career, a positive self-image, a better work-life balance - is usually a long game. You’re going to need to expect to work towards things like this for months, or even years. And that means you need to find a way of working towards these goals that you can sustain consistently, without burning out. You’re running a marathon, not a sprint, and as I explained in episode #48, you can’t run a marathon at sprint pace. So, yeah - granted that it’s important to be able to leave our comfort zone, but how often are we meant to do it? Once a week? Once a day? Perhaps we should leave our comfort zones and never go back? These comfort zone diagrams don’t provide any guidance here. And, in the absence of explicit guidance, I know what you’re like - you’re going to go all binary on me, aren’t you, and conclude that you’re either stuck in your lazy cowardly comfort zone forever or you’re permanently cast out into the zone of self-flaggelating-success-hunger. (Don’t bother looking for that particular zone on any diagrams, I just made it up.) You can’t keep that up for months or years. You have to be smart about where you spend your energy, and how much discomfort you can handle before you need to rest and recharge. That might mean picking one thing a week or one thing a month that pushes you beyond your comfort zone, and then retreating back to comfort afterwards until the next time. That way, you stand less chance of burning out and throwing in the towel. Can I do a running analogy here? I know you’re rolling your eyes, but will you indulge me? I’ll take that as a yes. Now. Let’s say you’re a runner, and you’re looking to improve your pace or your endurance, or both. It’s widely accepted, based on empirical evidence, that you’re most likely to see success if you take an 80/20 approach. That means that 80 percent of your runs should be easy. Like, super easy. Experienced runners and coaches are constantly moaning about how novice runners don’t make their easy runs easy enough, so whatever you think is easy is probably not easy enough. By contrast, only 20 percent should be hard. ‘Hard’ means uncomfortable, of course - it means going faster than is really enjoyable, for longer than is really enjoyable. Recreational runners are notorious for not following this 80/20 approach. Instead, they don’t do any easy or hard runs, and they do everything at a moderate pace. That means they don’t improve, and it also means that they don’t have the resources to go hard when they need to, because they’ve misspent their energy. 80/20 is a rough guide, of course - according to an interview I read in the latest issue of Runner’s World, Eliud Kipchoge, the best marathon runner ever, follows something more like 90/10. What’s the lesson here? Well, when it comes to improving as a runner, you need to spend 80 percent of your time inside your comfort zone, and only 20 percent outside of it. That’s the way to see growth. And that’s an important thing that the overriding message about comfort zones gets wrong. Because the widespread rhetoric about comfort zones would have you believe that growth happens when you leave your comfort zone, and stops when you’re inside of it. But if we want to draw a lesson from the 80/20 approach to running, it’s that growth happens when you strike the right balance between comfort and discomfort. Too much discomfort and you end up injured and exhausted. Just enough and you thrive. It’s about balance.
Right. What else? Ok, here’s my third and final gripe about comfort zone rhetoric, or at least the final one I’m going to talk about here. It’s this: discomfort isn’t always valuable. Growth isn’t always valuable. Here’s an example. I’ve never spent hours shut in a small windowless room filled with tarantulas, but I’m pretty sure that I’d find it uncomfortable. I think it’s safe to say that it would be a gateway to my fear zone. Would I learn and grow by forcing myself to do that on a regular basis? Well, maybe. It would certainly be a way to - let me quote one of the captions on that comfort zone diagram - ‘deal with challenges and problems’. Because maybe, on my fourth or fifth visit to my tarantula cupboard, I’d start to develop strategies to remain conscious and perhaps even manage my panic. I might even - to quote a ‘growth zone’ promise - ‘realise aspirations’. In this case, the vague aspiration I sometimes have to get over a fear of absolutely massive spiders. Now, given all this growth I’m doing outside my spider comfort zone, is doing the tarantula-torture-cupboard thing a good thing? Absolutely, categorically not. I’m fully confident of my answer here. I mean, yeah, getting over a fear of tarantulas, and learning to manage my panic when I’m shut in a room full of them would be positives, I suppose. But they are massively outweighed by the negatives of what I’d need to endure to get there. I don’t really need to get over a fear of tarantulas, after all. I don’t live in the south American rainforest. And I don’t think there’s a significant risk of getting trapped in a cupboard full of huge spiders - at least, I hope not. So, no thanks, I’m not interested in investing my energies in learning and growth in this area. Now, I’m sure none of you are hanging out with huge spiders in dark cupboards. But I do know that some of you are doing other uncomfortable things that are not really worth your while doing, and that if you stopped for a moment to think about it, you’d realise that it’s not worth your while doing them. But you don’t stop and think, because your inner critic gets involved and starts telling you to stop making excuses and just do the uncomfortable thing, because what are you, a pathetic spineless coward? Don’t do that. Don’t exhaust yourself on discomfort about the wrong things. Respect your energy levels. Play to your strengths, and when you want to push beyond them, do that in a thoughtful and considered way, so that you’re sure it’s a good use of your time and energy. Here’s something you can ask yourself when you’re considering whether to do something uncomfortable: What would I get from doing this thing, that I wouldn’t have if I didn’t do it? And then once you have your answer, ask: Is getting this thing worth the effort? And perhaps also, Is there another, easier, way of getting this thing? Because if so, do that. And, just for good measure, ask, If I didn’t invest in working towards getting this thing, what could I be investing my time and energy in instead?
Ok. That’s me and comfort zones done, I think. I’m off for a break, which means a cup of tea with the cats and some knitting, all of which is firmly within my comfort zone. Take care friends, and speak soon.
I’m Dr Rebecca Roache, and you’ve been listening to The Academic Imperfectionist. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe on whatever podcast app you like to use. I want to help as many people as I can with these episodes, and I’d really appreciate it if you’d share the podcast with any friends who you think might find it useful, and if you’d consider leaving a review on your podcast app. If you’d like to support the podcast financially, you can do that at patreon.com/academicimperfectionist. For more information about me, the podcast, and my coaching, please visit the website - academicimperfectionist.com. You’ll find links there to The Academic Imperfectionist on Twitter and Facebook too. If you have an idea or a request for a future episode of The Academic Imperfectionist, please drop me a line, either via my website or by tweeting your idea with the hashtag #AcademicImperfectionist. Thank you for listening, and see you next time!
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