Comfort Zones: Well-Being Killers

To me comfort zones really aren’t comfortable. They aren’t because they represent places and areas of life where we’re often not willing to accept anything new or different from what we already have or know. It isn’t just where things are easy and manageable. Let me repeat that, it’s often where intentional action is taken to limit exposure, understanding or even acknowledgement of something different, unknown, challenging, etc. And this is where, although we think we’re comfortable and have found well-being, we actually haven’t.

Part of the equation for having high well-being includes our willingness to explore, discover and experience what we haven’t before. It’s called our volitional intentional activities and at its core it has to do with the exercising the will to accomplish something one hasn’t before. In other words, the focus is on new experiences – finding them, digging into them and letting them become part of one’s existence. It’s getting exposed to something unfamiliar and choosing to openly engage with it.

The benefits are clear. When we’re able to look into and engage with what we do not know and do so consistently, we develop the courage needed to not be afraid of what’s unknown. When we lessen that fear regularly we strengthen our courage muscles and find ourselves better able to deal with the unknown. This enables us to have the sense that we’ll be ok even when we’re confronted by something not in our “comfort zone”. What makes this doubly helpful is that it also opens us to being more accepting of ambiguity and the unfamiliar. And isn’t it often the lack of familiarity that causes us to shrink back from a thing rather than to reach out to try to understand it?

I see comfort zones as places where we can fence out the very approach to living that fosters high Well-Being IQ. Let’s stop playing it safe – that is in our comfort zones – and begin to do some exploring out among the unfamiliar. When we do we build the courage we need to thrive in life, and to do so with high well-being IQ.

Eric