18th February 2025
The Comfort Zone is a psychological state in which we feel safe because it fulfills our need for Certainty, one of the most powerful ‘6 Human Needs.’
When we’re in our comfort zone, we know what to expect & we know how to react. We feel that we have some control over the situation. All of our immediate needs are filled & we feel at peace.
Living life in our comfort zone has obvious benefits: low stress, reduced anxiety & general feelings of well-being.
But it can also make you feel like you’re in a holding pattern, that’s because uncertainty & growth are also human needs.
It’s a paradox: Too much certainty & we won’t fulfill our need for growth & new experiences, But too much uncertainty can lead to anxiety & lack of productivity.
The ability to move out of our comfort zone in regular, positive ways allows us to strike the right balance between certainty and uncertainty.
As we push our personal boundaries, our brain gets trained to adapt to new situations & create new neural pathways that make us a better problem-solver, decision-maker & leader making us truly become unstoppable.
Let me share a tale to illustrate the role of comfort zone & why we need to move out of it to grow.
Once there was a king who received a gift of two magnificent peregrine falcons, the most beautiful birds he had ever seen. He gave the precious birds to his head falconer to be trained.
Months passed & one day the head falconer informed the king that though one of the falcons was flying majestically, soaring high in the sky, the other bird had not moved from its branch since the day it had arrived.
The king summoned from all over the land to tend to the falcon, but no one could make the bird fly.
Having tried everything else, the king thought to himself, “May be I need someone more familiar with the countryside to understand the nature of this problem.” So he cried out to his court, “Go and get a farmer.”
In the morning, the king was thrilled to see the falcon soaring high above the palace gardens.
He said to his court, “Bring me the doer of this miracle.”
The court quickly located the farmer, who came and stood before the king.
The king asked him, “How did you make the falcon fly?”
With his head bowed, the farmer said to the king, “It was very easy, your highness. I simply cut the branch where the bird was sitting.”
We are all born to fly — to realize our incredible potential as human beings. But at times we sit on our branches, clinging to the things that are familiar to us.
The possibilities are endless, but for most of us, they remain undiscovered. We conform to the familiar, the comfortable, and the mundane.
So for the most part, our lives are mediocre instead of exciting, thrilling and fulfilling.
Let us learn to destroy the branch of fear we cling to and free ourselves to the glory of flight.
Let’s move out of our comfort zone, soar high & Stay blessed forever!