Should You Get Out of Your Comfort Zone?

Have you ever been bored in your daily life? Doing the routine tasks of waking up your family members, making breakfast, preparing school lunch boxes, or completing your daily office work?

If you solely follow the same routine every day, without any new challenges, not learning anything new, it’s likely that boredom may ensnare you. It’s also possible that if you’ve been doing the same thing for years you may get comfortable and may not want to change your routine due to the extra energy required to make the transition. Not to mention the risk of failure. When you are secure in your lifestyle and when your income is sufficient, why would you want to get out of you comfort zone?

It turns out that if you remain in a “comfort zone” for too long it may have unfavorable effects on your life. If you are too comfortable you may never feel that anything is wrong in your life and you may not be creative because you do not dare to try new things. What if your business that you have run for years becomes bankrupt or your profit decreases because your competitor is more creative? Or what if the money that you usually receive from your husband suddenly stops when your husband becomes ill and cannot support your finances, or if he gets laid off from his office so that it ultimately may affect your family life (may Allah forbid)?

The possibility of such misfortune occurring is a good reason to prepare ahead of time by being flexible and willing to have an open mind when it comes to your daily routine. Being willing to change and to learn new things can also prevent the stress that can arise when your environment is constantly changing. Getting out of your comfort zone is something that is recommended!

Quoting Alan Henry in Lifehacker, when you get out of your comfort zone you will receive 4 benefits:

  1. Increased productivity. Convenience can shut off your productivity because you feel there is nothing creative in you and you can lose ambition to do more. Laziness can also develop when nothing new is introduced into your life.
  2. It’s easier when dealing with something that you do not expect. Life is not always comfortable. Allah, Subhanahu wa Ta’ala, tests people with fear, pain, hunger, and loss of loved ones. Ramadan fasting is in order to train us to be sensitive to the environment, that there are people who are hungry around us who we may have been negligent of. With tests we can measure whether we can pass His exam. Do we practice patience, sincerity, and do we remain grateful to His exam?
  3. It is easier to break down / push the limits of your comfort in the future. When you train yourself to always be prepared, to broaden your horizons, and to learn new things it is easy to come out of your comfort zone. For example, if you are used to being served because you have a housekeeper at home and all chores are handled by her, you get used to eating food that is already available on your table. Your clothing is always neat and clean ready to wear, but how will you feel when your helper goes away? Many would panic, worry, and be fearful of having a messy home. You may even become angry with the whole family because you are tired of working all day after taking on the housekeeper’s responsibilities, right? Staying involved in your home can prevent such an occurrence from rocking your world. Get down to the kitchen, wash your own dishes, wash and iron your own clothes. It can be tiring indeed, but your confidence will definitely grow and you do not have to be afraid when your housekeeper leaves home.
  4. It will be easier to brainstorm and utilize your creativity. If you are forced to learn something new, or are forced to be self-employed, you will definitely be more creative. You will refresh your old ideas because when you learn new things you will be able to innovate or modify them. One day my blender was broken, the machine was not working anymore, and I sent it for repair to Arabia. The cost of the repair was around one third of the price of my blender! So I decided to just throw away the blender and bought a new one. By adding two-thirds more money I was able to get a new blender. Unfortunately, here in Arabia, my old blender is useless, only a few people want to take advantage of second-hand goods. I am sure, however, that in Indonesia for instance, my broken machine could have been made into something useful. Its spare parts could have been removed and assembled into another blender machine that could still be useful because people in the country are accustomed to surviving with what they have – to using garbage to produce a new useful product: to finding opportunities and trying to survive despite having low income.

Finally, if you feel that within the last few years there has been no achievement or new goals and that your life hasn’t had any changes, then try to join a new community, look for a new hobby, try a new business or modify your existing business.

May your life be more creative, more energetic, and more beneficial to other people.

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