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Stretching your comfort zone is scary enough as it is. It can be even more terrifying if you suffer from anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues or chronic illness. There’s the fear that you’ll overextend yourself and end up relapsing or having a flare-up.
But there’s a difference between stretching your comfort zone and stepping outside of it. Stretching your comfort zone involves expanding your horizons. Stepping outside of your comfort zone is like jumping into the deep end of the pool when you don’t know how to swim.
I like to think of stretching my comfort zone like stretching a rubber band. We should be stretched just enough to create some tension, but not enough that we break. Like rubber bands, we can “bounce back,” but also like rubber bands, the damage can be irreparable if we take it too far.
For me, it was time to do something different and unexpected. It was time to show myself that I’m capable of more than I think I am.
Here’s how to stretch your comfort zone without overextending yourself.
1. Commit to Figuring Out How to Make It Work
My journey started in March of this year. I quit my job of almost three years to start working for another client. We’ve known each other a long time. We’d started working for that company around the same time, but she’d moved on to start her own business. Her business was booming! And, she was offering me fewer hours and more pay.
The caveat?
She was going to challenge me in ways that I needed to be challenged.
For someone who craves stability and security, this made me extremely uncomfortable, but I knew I needed to challenge myself if I wanted to grow.
One of the first things she challenged me with was coordinating an in-person event for some of her clients. I’m a details person, but those kinds of details scare me. Call it lack of belief in myself, but being responsible for so many moving parts make me nervous, especially when I’m not feeling well. Sometimes I get brain fog and I worry that I’m going to forget something. Mistakes can feel like failures for someone who’s a recovering perfectionist.
It’s important to note that she didn’t make me do anything. I had a choice. I could have declined the position altogether, or I could have just organized the event and not attended in-person.
If I wanted to stretch my comfort zone, I needed to figure out how to make it work. Figuring out how to make things work is essential to stretch your comfort zone (my client calls this “creative problem-solving). To make this work, I scheduled some time to rest before the event, paced myself during the event, and scheduled several days to recover afterward so that I could be refreshed to return to work the following week.
And you know what?
Everything worked out just fine.
2. Focus on Completing the Task at Hand
Okay, so I’ll be honest with you…”fine” is a relative term here.
A few days before the event, my husband got into a car accident and totaled our only car. The good news is, he’s 100% fine. He doesn’t even have a scratch on him. The bad news is, well…there really isn’t any bad news if you look at things with an attitude of gratitude. Our car was fully insured, we had positive equity on the vehicle (meaning it was worth more than we owed), and the insurance company cut us a check that we were able to use as the down payment for another car.
The downside was that I didn’t handle the situation well. The night of the accident, I went into a panic and had to use Xanax for the first time in years. I felt guilty for having to resort to medication after being medication-free for so long. However, there reaches a certain point of hysteria and hyperventilating that requires something other than breathing exercises.
My emotional distress had terrible repercussions on my body. I’ve been dealing with dizziness, numbness and tingling, pain, and fatigue for the past few months. Dealing with the car accident made my symptoms 10x worse.
With my symptoms exacerbated, I knew I had to do whatever it took to get my mind and body back to a place of equilibrium. For me, this meant lots of yoga, meditation, frequent naps, a consultation with my doctor, and a trip to the chiropractor.
Sometimes, completing the task at hand isn’t about obsessing over the task itself, but putting our self-care first. Prioritizing our self-care puts us in the right frame of mind and physical state of being so that we can complete the task well.
3. Realize It’s Okay to be Boring
Again, I had a choice. I could have called my client and told her that I was sick and that I couldn’t make it to the event. This would have been incredibly last-minute and would have put her in a bind since she didn’t have anyone else helping her. She’s also super pregnant. But hey, sick is sick, right?
As bad as I was feeling, I knew the worsening of my symptoms had more to do with my emotions than with the physical causes. Giving into my feelings would have been understandable, however, it would have stunted my personal growth. I needed to show myself that I was stronger than my feelings by following through on my commitments.
This doesn’t mean that I overextended myself. I did my best, and my best included boundaries. As a recovering perfectionist with a melancholy choleric temperament, I tend to obsess about making sure everything is absolutely perfect. But with this project, I learned to accept “good enough” as being just that.
My boundaries included not staying up too late, eating snacks, taking breaks and resting, and sitting on sidelines to avoid being overstimulated. At first, I worried about what the attendees might think about me, that they might think I was boring for not being outgoing or engaging in conversation. But what I learned is that being boring is okay if it means putting our self-care first.
Stretching our comfort zone doesn’t mean that we have to cater to everyone else or worry about what they think. It means that we take steps towards improvement while understanding our limits, even if the process seems “boring.”
4. Don’t Forget about Cuddling with Your Significant Other
I’m not going to lie—I was dead tired after working away from home for three days.
Part of this was the amount of physical work involved. I’m not used to cleaning counters, washing dishes, and taking out the trash (my husband does this most of the time, bless his heart). Being around positive people helped keep my energy up despite the physical nature of the work. It wasn’t until the third day that the fatigue really hit me.
The other part was not getting enough restful sleep. Being away from home is tough! I’m especially spoiled because I work from home and I rarely travel. I missed my bed and I missed waking up with my husband next to me. My husband and I talked on the phone every day while I was away, but it wasn’t the same as seeing each other face-to-face.
I envisioned us cuddling each other and having a wonderful, romantic evening. Instead, we got into an argument. While there was definitely some cuddling involved (at least at first), I was cranky and too tired to think of anything but my own needs. After eight years of marriage, you’d think I know which relationship mistakes to avoid, but I’m still a work in progress.
It wasn’t the ideal homecoming, and if I could do it over again, I’d put my own needs aside long enough to spend time with someone who genuinely missed me and was glad I was home.
5. Make Time for Chatting with Your Friends
My husband is my best friend. After putting our egos aside, we were able to have a civil conversation to discuss our needs. Communication is one of the keys to having a happy, healthy marriage. I’m not always great at it (in fact, most of the time I let my emotions cloud my judgment), but my husband is very good about finding ways to bring us closer together. I’m very grateful to have him in my life.
Friendship can extend to other family members as well. My mom is my second best friend. However, I only recently told my mom about my health issues. I was trying to protect her from worrying about me. Of course, she was worried about me working at the event with everything else I have going on. We normally only chat on Sundays, but she called me every day while I was away. She called just to say hello, tell me how much she loved me, ask how things were going, etc. She never judged and never lectured. It was wonderful to have her support.
There were other people who checked in on me too—my younger brother and one of my good friends. Stretching my comfort zone helped me to realize that there are people in my life who love and support me through all circumstances. More importantly, that I don’t have to take the journey alone. Even if they can’t feel what I’m feeling, or go through what I’m going through, they’re there to cheer me on.
Special thanks to Sheryl at A Chronic Voice for inspiring this post. Sheryl hosts a monthly linkup where chronic illness bloggers can share their take on each month’s prompts and support each other. Click here to see the other entries for August 2018.
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