Your Comfort Zone

Staying in your comfort zone can be the most dangerous decision you can make in life.  It can be so difficult, especially if you have hardly ever stepped outside your comfort zone.  It can be a very scary proposition, especially for a person who does not want to make a mistake in life.

The rewards for stepping outside your comfort zone far outweigh the mistakes you might make.  The next time you have an opportunity to do something outside of your comfort zone, ask yourself what is the worst thing that can happen, then ask yourself what the best outcome might be?  You can be assured that the result will be something in between but never what you ever imagined.

How might you ask, do I know this.  My example is simple and upsetting.  I was on business in Chicago for the first time in my life and had only been in the United States two months.  We were at dinner in a restaurant, and I was sitting next to a very nice gentleman who asked me what I wanted to do next.  I proceeded to tell him what I wanted to do in my life, and he stopped me halfway and said in a sort of sad way, “I never thought of what I wanted to do in my life and next year I’m retiring”.  My reply was that it is never too late to decide what you want to do with your life, you still have a lot of living to do.

At that point in my life, I was 25 just starting to live in my third country and it never occurred to me that everyone else did not plan their life but just let it happen.

When I was 10, I lost my Comfort Zone, I liked my school, liked my friends, was in boy scouts, had a girlfriend next door, and a dog named Tinker, life was good.  One day my dad and mum told me we were going to move.  This would be my 4^th move, but it was the one that changed my life forever and took me out of my Comfort Zone. 

At 10 years old I had never been away from home now I was going to boarding school for 4 years. The first 2 years I was very unhappy, by the last 2 years I had adjusted.  At 14 I felt I could go anywhere and do anything.  I went on to study furniture design at the Technical College for the furnishing trades, in London, emigrated to Canada, then to the USA and designed computer furniture, kitchen cabinetry, showrooms in the Design Centers in NY City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, etc.  Being forced out of my comfort zone gave me the ability to enjoy every day to the fullest wherever I find myself, one cannot ask for any more than that. 

1954 Fonthill Preparatory Boarding School