Three Strong Ways to Step Out of Your Comfort Zone

Let me first make the case for the comfort zone; it's my old profession, after all. My client isn't wrong at all: you stay where you know, the risk is low, the chance of error is small. No one can claim that being safe is a crime. My objection isn't to the circle, but to the length of the stay. A person settles down in that safe circle when they should only be a guest; yet the growing edge of life usually stands just a little outside it.

I didn't learn this from a book. Walking from a field with clear lines, like law, toward a field full of uncertainty, like cinema, was for me the very matter of the comfort zone. No one tells a person “leave the guarantee, go spend your nights behind a camera”; that voice can only be heard from within. And when it is first heard, it always asks the same question: “What if it doesn't work out?” Years later I understood that the real question isn't “what if it doesn't work out,” but “what if I never even try.”

The first way is to build small contacts instead of big decisions. If you want to move into a new line of work, for instance, you don't have to resign at once. First talk to someone in that field, take a course, try a small project, send an application. The mind fears great leaps but allows small steps more easily.

The second way is to name the fear correctly. A person sometimes says “I don't want to” when they really mean “I'm afraid I'll fail.” These two are different. If you truly don't want it, the matter is something else. But if you want it and fear it, then what needs work there isn't the goal but the courage.

The third way is to train yourself to measure the behavior, not the outcome. If everything is tied at once to success, a person cannot take a step. Making a phone call today, writing a text, going to a meeting, sending an application — these are outcomes too. Because you will have broken the old cycle.

In careers and in life, many people fall behind not because they lack talent, but because they cannot act. Sometimes thinking too much makes a person not clever but motionless. Thinking is valuable, but past a certain point one has to step onto the field.

My measure in this is simple: what is the thing that frightens you a little but that you know will make you grow? Don't try to solve it entirely. Take its smallest step today. Stepping out of the comfort zone usually begins just like this.