Your Best Life: Benefits of Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone

Whenever I talk about building our best and most colorful lives, I always talk about the necessity of continually pushing ourselves out of comfort zone, to be open to new and unfamiliar experiences aka adventures. These experiences develop risk stamina and make our personalities stronger and lives more interesting.

I have not always been open to the idea of stepping outside my comfort zone, but life forced a few of my first experiences, and then, as with everything, if you do it once, you are more likely to do it again, and my pattern of pushing myself out of my comfort zone continued.  I had to leave my home and my country, then, completely broke, so I could support my family, I borrowed a lot of money to go to law school while I was still learning English. Completely disappointed with my job as a lawyer in a law firm, I quit my first job and started my own practice, and at the same time, to feed my creative side, so I threw myself into the world of children’s book publishing (you can find my books here!) and later blogging… All these experiences contributed greatly to my personal growth, strength, and quality of life. The best part is that at every stage of my life I met amazing (AMAZING!) people who became my life long friends who enrich my life every day.

Periodical Challenging Yourself Helps You Grow and Make Change

And that is true in every aspect of your life, whether it is personal or professional. Honestly, quitting my job at the law firm and starting my own practice was probably one of the most difficult decisions I had to make (on an ‘out of comfort zone’ scale 1 through 10, I would give it a 9.6!). The reward was great, though. I was able to spend the most valuable time with my kids and set up time for my creative side projects.

You Start to Worry Less About a Failure and Feel Excited About the Journey

Failure is given, but the more you can embrace and learn from it, the better off you will be. Yes, disturbing your comfort zone, i.e. disturbing your least stressful condition, opens you to vulnerability or a failure, a very uncomfortable feeling. Every time I publish a post or a photograph, I open myself to a possible rejection. But if I don’t post, then I shut down my creative outlet. So I keep posting, and concentrate on being excited about blogging and creating this new community with you.

Stepping Out of Comfort Zone Broadens Your Points of View

As you continuously expand your comfort zone, you meet all sorts of different people you might not otherwise, you try different career paths to find the one that suits you the best, and you travel to unexpected places. But all these experiences broaden your horizons. This one is probably the most important one for me, because it helped me be receptive to the autism diagnosis of my son, and be creative and proactive in my search for help and treatment. He is now my great partner in pushing his limits and expanding his endless horizons.

Have you stepped out of your comfort zone? What did you do? How did it help you? Would so love to hear your stories!!

♡ Zuma

Motionless mountain view

Flowers do find their way to grow in dry and lifeless Death Valley

In this story:

Thread & Supply ‘Outsider’ field jacket

Ann Taylor ‘City’ shorts

Agg Australia slip on sneakers, old (similar by Vans here and here)

Straw panama hat