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Do often feel afraid to try new things because you’re nervous or scared?
If so, then one strategy that can help is regularly push past what’s known as your “comfort zone.” And the simplest way to do this is to build a habit where you regularly introduce comfort zone challenges throughout your week.
In this article, we will cover 21 comfort zone challenges you can try.
But first, let’s start with a quick definition.
What is a Comfort Zone?
Your comfort zone is an emotional, psychological, and behavioral construct, where one feels things are familiar and has control over the surrounding environment.
These things that seem familiar makes them feel safe, which can include routines and habits. When one is in their comfort zone, they don’t feel any stress or anxiety, which often comes from pursuing life goals.
While a comfort zone is a stress-free state of mind, it can have many adverse side effects on your ability to meet life goals. It causes you to fail to think outside the box, which can be a stumbling block to your development.
These personal growth challenges are unique, and they have relationships with all aspects of our lives.
To learn more, here is a 7-step process on how to get past your comfort zone. And if you prefer to watch instead of read, take a few minutes to watch the video:
But now, let’s take a look at the 21 comfort zone challenges you can try on your own.
1. Developing a New Skill
The ability to develop a new skill is not always easy. Any useful life or career skill is beneficial because it helps one navigate through various challenges in life.
However, people face the challenge of finding proper areas or disciplines to direct their focus. More so, the other aspect of developing a new skill is dedicating time. Combining all these factors can boost your self-growth goals and make you efficient.
There are many courses and programs you can enroll in today. The good thing about these courses is that they are readily available online on Udemy and YouTube platforms.
While they might take quite a bit of your time, they are beneficial courses. You can use it as the right time to learn a new skill such as art crafts, database management, time management, and more.
2. Choosing a New Hobby
In your quest for self-improvement, have you neglected hobbies? As children, we are experts in choosing hobbies. We play outdoors, play musical instruments, and collect unique items such as souvenirs.
However, somewhere along the line, many people lose the motivation to try out new things. Most of their focus goes to their careers.
Not many people have the right portfolio of hobbies, which is a significant hurdle towards self-growth. Hobbies are essential for self-growth because they help you spend your time right, and they also make you feel happy.
It gives you something to look forward to doing during your free time. People without hobbies are likely to engage in poor social tendencies. A recent study showed that people with Social Network Addiction give low priority to hobbies.
3. Keeping up with Self Improvement Goals
Self-improvement is an ongoing activity that starts when people are still young. Usually, teachers, parents, and the environment have a crucial role to play in this process. Somewhere down the line, we become adults and have to become responsible for our development.
However, identifying the right self-improvement goals and finding ways to stay accountable for them is not always easy. Besides that, nobody is born perfect, and we still have to find convenient ways to improve. These include improving aspects such as our social, physical, and mental challenges.
4. Giving Back to The Community
Your ability to give back to the community around you can be an excellent way to step out of your comfort zone. Giving back lets you step out of your ordinary boundaries and show love to other people.
However, not many people can remember the last time they shared a meal with an underprivileged person. Or, no one remembers the last time they visited a local charity home.
Giving back helps you encounter the challenges and experiences that other people face in life. Through this perspective, you can better appreciate your life and the importance of using opportunities to pursue goals.
5. Meeting New People
Not many people are willing to break out of their social comfort zones to meet with new people. They would instead socialize with people they know, such as friends and family alone.
The notion that all people are either rude or too busy to respond positively to you is not good. Step out of your normal boundaries and explore all the benefits of meeting new people.
Breaking the ice is perhaps the most challenging aspect of meeting a new person. Once you get through this step, talking to a new person can be an exhilarating experience.
Whether it’s a lady, an elderly couple, or even just the shopkeeper, always make an effort to meet someone new. You will notice your sense of well-being improves, and you may even meet a lucrative business client.
6. Waking Up Earlier
Practicing healthy sleep and rest habits can have many benefits for your self-growth. It can help you become more productive and enforces the values of discipline in your life. The issue with most people is that they don’t have regulated sleep patterns, and this can be a hurdle to self-growth.
Recent studies have shown that over 90% of executives wake up as early as 6 am during weekdays. Plus, various successful people worldwide emphasize waking up early. A few notable ones include:
7. Eating Healthier
No doubt, eating healthy can have many benefits for the quality of your life and your well-being. The issue is that keeping up with healthy eating goals is not easy.
Broccoli, raw tuna, spinach, or cod liver oil – the ugly truth is that healthy food is not always tasty. While healthy food is not often delicious, you can modify your healthy recipes, and such foods will improve your life quality.
Eating healthy is not easy when you don’t have the right options. Plus, you may also not enjoy cooking them, because preparing the same food each week can become tiresome. So, it's right for you to try out a new recipe every once in a while.
Recipes tend to be diverse, and they are beneficial in expanding your knowledge base in cooking. Experimenting with various types of recipes gives you the freedom to diversify your diets.
8. Showing Gratitude
The definition of gratitude by Dictionary.com is that it involves showing thankfulness of appreciation in return for kindness. However, how many times have you taken the time to show gratitude to anyone in your life?
Be it your parents, teachers, employers, or neighbors. Taking your time to show appreciation, especially in return for kindness to someone, can be an excellent way to grow personally. It helps you step out of your usual social boundaries and helps foster strong social bonds.
How much of a difference can a few weeks make to your life? Well, if it's several days of showing constant gratitude, then it could have a significant impact. The benefits of gratitude, and specifically, when practiced consciously, can have many benefits.
9. Making or Building Something Useful
Have you ever wondered why your father always had your help with building furniture or even repairing the car? Or why your mother still has had you helping her with cooking or sewing a few torn clothes?
Well, these are all useful skills that can improve the quality of your life. However, not many people have the time to develop these skills even as they become adults.
These skills can teach you various excellent values and make you comfortable trying out new ventures in life. So, you still have to find ways to make or build something as an adult.
The best suggestion would be to try making something that can be useful in the home. An excellent example of this is furniture. You get to move around your body as you work, and it also helps develop your problem-solving abilities.
You will feel a sense of accomplishment at the end of it, mostly if you did the project right. Consider making or building an item that relates to your hobbies or likes.
The hands-on skills that you gain from such projects can be useful for various other challenges or aspirations you have in life. It can also be an excellent way to spend leisure time with your child or with a loved one.
10. Modifying Your Routine
Routines are key to getting things done efficiently. Particularly if you have demanding work assignments. However, job descriptions, the scope of work, and personal life aspects often change regularly.
Thus, many people face the challenge of modifying their routines to make them more productive at work. It’s a process that involves keeping track of your movements and activities every day.
A good recommendation for you would be to list out any patterns and trends in your routine. Then, come up with unique ways or techniques through which you can improve the given routine.
Remember to keep track of this routine because things are likely to change your life in the coming months.
11. Cutting Down on Negativity
On average, people have about 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day. Surprisingly, scientists have shown that around 80% of those thoughts are negative.
Your mental well-being heavily depends on your thoughts. And as a result, any negative thoughts can drag down your personal lives, relationships, and career.
Negativity compromises your potential to become great and enjoy a fulfilling life. It’s a harmful habit that has tangible side effects on our health as well. Recent evidence has linked people who cultivate negative energy to illnesses, stress, and more.
Plus, they are less likely to access opportunities throughout their lives than optimistic people. Your ability to manage negative energy can have many benefits for your health.
Deciding to make each life circumstance positive has a snowball effect. While negative energy will always occur, it’s the ideal chance for you to step back and reflect on your life.
12. Choosing the Right Entrepreneurship Challenges
Entrepreneurship, in this sense, does not necessarily mean that you start a business. While it can, the reasonable meaning in this sense would be a way to challenge yourself to develop creative ideas.
It’s a venture that helps you cultivate various positive traits, including creativity, choosing solutions, and innovating.
The issue here is that not many people are willing to think outside the box regarding entrepreneurship and personal development.
The fear of the unknown means that they prefer staying employed in uncomfortable professions or life circumstances. However, taking on the entrepreneurship challenge relating to any aspect of life can have many benefits.
A few ideas include:
13. Taking a Social Media Break
How many times do you use social media or find yourself checking any of your social media profiles?
Social media can be time-consuming, and it's right for you to take a break from using it. Even if it may be challenging to take an off from social media, such as when you use it for business, it's still possible.
Using this approach to self-development will improve the time you have available in your hands. You won’t have the time to focus on other people’s lives or make any irrelevant comparisons.
There are many positive ways you can use social media-fasting periods. You can use such free time to engage in various other positive activities such as various hobbies.
14. Take Cold Morning Showers in The Morning
The road to self-growth is about addressing all the relevant details. And this can go all the way down to your showering habits. Each morning, Tony Robbins gets up and dives into a 57-degree Fahrenheit pool of water.
For many, this is not a pleasing way to wake up, but he is doing it for more than just wakefulness. He is also doing it as a measure to enjoy the various benefits of cold showers.
This approach helps activate the body's natural healing capabilities and helps encourage self-discipline. You wake up early, and this discipline flows to various other areas of your life.
A few of the health benefits it provides will be for the lymphatic, circulator, and digestive system. If you don’t have access to an immersion pool, cold showers should suffice early in the morning.
15. Meeting Physical Fitness Goals
Maintaining optimal physical health will help you battle stress, disease, and it produces feel-good hormones. People often find excuses to avoid engaging in intense physical health exercises.
The common ones include lack of time, tiredness, lack of the proper gear, and more. However, these are poor excuses, and physical exercise is imperative in any self-growth journey.
Find ways to stay accountable for your physical health goals. Consider using a health or fitness app on your phone to keep track of your results. There are plenty on the iOS or Android stores. Keep track of your performance metrics and determine whether you can make improvements.
16. Managing Finances
Are your finances healthy? When was the last time you evaluated your financial data?
It’s the same as getting a physical health check, which you have to undergo regularly. Many people struggle with keeping track of their finances, and they only do so when they are about to go into debt.
It’s a bad habit that can encourage laziness and drive you into poverty if you are not careful. Being careful will improve your ability to manage your money and even make wise investments. Plus, the discipline you enforce in this aspect of your life will also flow to various areas.
Furthermore, a financial health check will help you determine how well your finances are running. You also get the benefit of knowing the things you have to work on to achieve your goals.
If you are not where you want to be in managing finances, the options are many. Consider the following good money habits.
17. Traveling to A New Place
When was the last time you traveled out of state or out of the country? If you rarely do so, you are part of the many people who don’t realize the importance of traveling. It's crucial for your self-growth in many ways.
Traveling to a unique location at least twice each year can be a fun and mind-opening experience. It's fun because you get to visit new places and engage in many different leisure time activities. Furthermore, it's also mind-opening, because you meet people from different cultures.
Plus, you also learn about different ways of life, and you get exposed to unique experiences that can help improve your life. These can include foreign languages, worldviews, people, and more.
18. Creating Specific Goals for Each Month
Goals are often an essential aspect of any constructive list that one can use to improve their quality of life. However, not many people have the right insight to develop goals that relate to self-growth.
Life goals are as important as a blueprint is for a property development project. It helps guide the use of resources such as your mental skills, time, and more. Creating monthly goals helps you stay on track.
The best approach for this would be for you to start with a self-growth chart. Use the growth chart to keep track of the struggles and visions you have for the future.
If it's possible, enlist the help of a professional mentor with goal-setting procedures. Why? They will help you stay accountable for the goals you have set and to make better decisions.
19. Reading Books
Reading lets you travel from reality and into another world. Between the pages of a book, one often becomes immersed in the activities of the fictional characters. Thus, reading books makes up an excellent way to learn about a different culture and broaden their creativity.
Plus, books are also an excellent source of knowledge. Professional writers publish thousands of books every day, which means you have multiple choices.
Plus, you don't need to read in a specific niche. Reading wide can have more benefits than you might think for beating comfort zone challenges. You open your mind to new perspectives and gain useful information you can leverage in various aspects of your life.
20. Practicing Active Time Management
The ability to manage your time right can have many advantages for your self-growth journey. A common excuse people mention when it comes to failing to meet goals would be practicing active time management.
People who fail to manage their time right are often complaining about deadlines, enormous loads of work, and even stress.
So, developing a coherent time management structure can have many benefits for your self-growth. Having free time will ensure you are stress-free, on time with your work, and more.
21. Keeping a Life Journal
We are likely to come across new people, experiences, places, cultures, information, and more throughout our lives. Finding a suitable way to keep track of all these activities in our lives is not always easy.
As such, some of the most precious moments in our lives often fade away with time. They become forgotten memories, and this includes various useful life lessons.
An excellent way to keep track of these activities would be to keep a journal. Not many people can follow through with their journals daily or even keeping organized.
Here are some resources to help you get started:
- How to Start Journaling and Stick to It [The Ultimate Guide]
- 20 Best Daily Personal Journals and Notebooks
- 59 Things to Write About in Your Daily Journal
Final Thoughts on Comfort Zone Challenges
There are many ways through which you can achieve your life goals. Among some of the most useful techniques is to learn how to maneuver comfort zone challenges so you can experience some eustress.
These challenges vary, and it's good for you to be savvy with a whole list of ideas. It’s an excellent solution because you learn about concepts, which have benefited people from all walks of life.
And if you're looking for more resources that'll help you challenge yourself, be sure to check out these posts:
- 169 Fun 30-Day Challenge Ideas for Personal Growth
- 9 Personal Challenges to Advance Your Self-Growth
- 100 Day Challenge Review: Will It Help You Achieve Goals?
Finally, if you want to take your goal-setting efforts to the next level, check out this FREE printable worksheet and a step-by-step process that will help you set effective SMART goals.
