Don't let comfort zones overtake you!

As human beings, all of us have feelings and emotions that concern ourselves and others. As far as we are concerned, we have the power to choose.

We can choose, for example, to be rich or poor. We can save money or spend every bit of what we earn and then regret for it when it is too late. We can avoid any friendship with others, and still live. Or, we can go all out and make friends with others, and feel sorry when they do not reciprocate to the extent we expect them to.

Similarly, we also have what can be called as "comfort zones". What is this, and what can this do to us, at any point in time?

Comfort zones are a particular level of comfort that our body is very comfortable with. In other words, we program ourselves to do something to some extent, and nothing more. We have tremendous amount of mind control in all this, and we are very happy with it.

The precise point is that only when we consciously recognize that we have some comfort zones that are totally different from what they should be, we can start acting.

This self-awareness can come from our own understanding of our strengths and weaknesses or from others in whom we trust.
These "others" should obviously be those whose lives are better organized than ours, those who have succeeded against heavy odds, and those who have a real control on whatever they do.

For instance, have you noticed many who get out of their beds right when the alarm rings? And ofcourse several thousands (this author included, at times though), who slam the alarm and continue sleeping? We do this because we are very comfortable with sleeping, it gives us pleasure, and we are very happy with it. However, if our sleep will take away precious moments when we should be actually doing something more concrete, we have virutally surrendered ourselves to our comfort zones and are just not doing what should be done.

Similarly, in relationships with others, it is wise not to promise someone something, since we are very comfortable giving such promises. When we are not able to honour even one percent of such promises, we loose all our credibility, ofcourse, with disastrous results.

This is the crux of the whole thing. Let us not have any comfort zones. When we do something, there is always something more to be done. If we have helped the poor, we would still be having something more to be done.

If for some reason, you have some special affection for someone, and derive a huge amount of emotional support from that relationship, go all out and make a big success of it. Never have any comfort zone here. I have known several people who are well over fifty years old, but have good friends in people fit enough to be their daughters or sons. This happens when the younger persons appreciate the good intentions of the elder people, and are very much tuned to accepting their advise, their help, their emotional support and their guidance.

Comfort zones are very dangerous and can ruin us. However,we should have comfort zones in certain matters. For example, if we have Rs.30,000/-, and we wish to invest it somewhere, it is wise to invest one third of it in some good mutual fund, the rest of it in a good fixed deposit with a nationalized bank, and the rest of it in the share market. It we were to invest the entire amount in the share market, we would have lost quite a bit, in the event of a crash(which happens quite often).

Hence, let us understand the limitations of our comfort zones, and change them for the better, by doing far better things. Comfort zones are very much needed in several things, like being faithful to one's wife or husband,children and to colleagues in the office. However, we should always realise that the most dangerous comfort zones are hugely personal, and are based on our convenience. We should have a tremendous control over it, and break it with vengence.

For instance, if one is doing an MBA course, it is a very happy comfort zone to read only the text books, stick to the syllabus, and happily pass every paper of the course, with minimum effort. However, the world is harsh. There are several autonomous B-schools that do not have the restrictions of the Universities, and run the UGC and AICTE recognized PGDBA course, which is recognized as equivalent to the MBA. These B-schools are more open to change, impose a huge restriction on students to read much more than their text books, are very liberal in terms of guest lectures by experienced people from the industry (where the action really is), and generally give their students far more exposure than what they can get from the text-books.

In general these PGDBA students are far better than the conventional MBA students, and the latter are victims of their own comfort zones. The MBA students would do well to break out of their comfort zones, try everything novel, like reading the Harvard Business Review, understand the real world context for every single concept and so on. This is the only way in which they can succeed and go ahead in life.

In today's dog-eat-dog world, it is wise to break out of comfort zones and do all that is possible to be different. Hard work does pay dividends. We should always be aware of the most dangerous personal comfort zones and break them at will. This is the only route to success, in both the short term and the long term.

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