Moin Jungs,
a) Ja, ich habe mich nach 2 Jahren abwesenheit hier wieder eingeloggt, um etwas zu posten, weil mich von einigen Leuten die Meinung dazu interessiert. Ob diese Leute, überhaupt noch hier aktiv sind, weiß ich nicht
b) Der Beitrag ist auf Englisch, weil ich ihn noch anderen Leuten zeigen möchte, die kein Deutsch sprechen.
c) Es endet nicht wirklich mit einer Frage, sondern einem Denkanstoß. Ich weiß gar nicht, ob man daraus überhaupt eine Diskussion anleiern kann, aber ich würde mich freuen.
Es geht um die Vorteile der Comfort Zone vs die Vorteile wenn man aus ihr ausbricht und, wie sich beides verbinden lässt.
While I was cycling today, I started this weird thought-chain of the definition of comfort zone and what it means to be out of your comfort zone, what it achieves and why it is not always the best. These thoughts were in my head in a different form for a very long time. When I started travelling, I realised that experiences are priceless and that you get a lot of them while being somewhere in another country with strangers. I had a ‘discussion’ or more an exchange of opinions with a friend who loved to tell me that a week traveling only lasts a week, while his new TV (around the same price) lasts him 3 years.
Now that is something that a million word could not take from him. He just would not understand. You cannot grasp what is behind the horizon. You have to go out there and discover it. Push it to the limit and evolve.
You will realise that I will mix up routine, habits and comfort zone a lot. In my opinion, all those terms describe the same, so please be patient with me when you read on and see me mixing it all up.
A lot of that comes down to a term we love to use, comfort zone. Being out of your comfort zone (by my understanding) is kind of the opposite of living your live in habits. Never changing anything, because you’re happy how it is. Here is a second thought for you: If you always live your little life, are married to a woman you met in Kindergarten and with two adorable kids. Your two weeks holidays each year are spend on Norderney (a very nice German island for young families in my opinion). The rest of your annual leave is spend to build or renovate. You are happy on a sustained level. Your negative days/periods are not very negative, but your highs and happy moments, are also simple.
In the end of your life, what really counts (again, in my opinion) is how happy and content you’ve been throughout life and how happy you are in the moment before death.
I think that person described above can be very happy. Opposite to that, we got a young adventurer. He’s been to Australia with 19 for a year, spend 3 years back in Germany to study and get a B.Sc. but then leaves again. Patagonia and South America this time. He tries different jobs, never based on his studies/career, but he gets by. Minimalistic with not too much money to spare and also not a lot of security, but he soon realises that all the misfortunes and downsides in his life keep revolving around minor issues and he becomes more relaxed and gets by. Let’s push this example to the max and say he never experiences true love. He meets lovely, breathtaking, beautiful girls, but he never stays long enough with them to really get to know them and his next adventure is always more important than whomever he is dating.
Is this person happier/more content than the first person in the end?
This is a question I have asked myself a lot and recently formed a thesis (with a friend, over coffee in Melbourne) that makes me think that both people can be content with their lives on the death bed, but I think the quality of life and the peaks of the highs were higher for the Adventurer than the Dad. The lows of life, might in the beginning drag the adventurer down and they re by far deeper than the lows of Dad, but over time it stabilises and the low peaks may even reach low, but they are over a very short time, before the Adventurer focusses ahead and starts anew.
Now, I am very aware that I am biased towards the Adventurer, because I am living the life described above, however, I have also been on the other end. Playing a lot of computer games (and I am talking about at least 50-60 hours/week) because it was easy and I knew what awaited me. I had my challenges, mind you, but it didn’t really matter whether I failed or not.
At the end of my studies (6 years Mechanical Engineering) I had average marks, been quite good on time, and considered myself above average in all the soft skills. But what I lacked was something special. I was just average everywhere. So I wanted to try and take my last shot, my graduation thesis, to get experience abroad. By chance the topic I wanted to graduate on was with a partner institute, in Sudan.
Sudan?! To be bluntly honest, when my professor asked me if I wanted to go, I didn’t even know that Sudan was in Africa. My face must have been blank while I tried to decide if I tell my professor that I had no clue where Sudan was, or not. He mistook that blank face and told me that the assault on the German embassy was known before and not as critical as German media stated it. That didn’t help at all.
I asked for a week to consider, but from that moment that I was told about Sudan I knew I wanted to go.
My life afterwards was pretty much the same. I made every decision on a whim. Within a day or two, without considering the negative aspects or the effects of failure. I only saw possibilities.
Until now (3 years later) I have always been lucky and it somehow worked out. Everything I really wanted came true…. That is actually not true, some things didn’t work out like my naive mind wanted it, but I coped and went on. I failed, I was down. I wanted to go home and just live a ‘normal life’. I missed home, I missed my friends. But I kept going. It was always alright the next morning, everything seemed better and I was able to last a little longer. What I got out of it was a massive amount of experience and a sheer endless amount of optimism.
You may ask yourself why I tell you this. It has to do with the reasoning pro- or contra staying in your comfort zone. I am pretty sure we can agree, that my life mentioned above was lived out of my comfort zone a lot. My comfort zone grew, but there were a lot of fresh starts and a lot of breaks, where I had to throw out every one of my habits and start new. Right now I am in Cairns for two months for work. I realised that I do not care overly much about my (usually very balanced and nutritious) diet. I also just started consuming without considering the effect (not saving money, my primary goal of coming up here). It’ll somehow work anyways. But those shifts in my behaviour come from being taking out of my daily life and routines.
If you read between the lines you probably realised the positive aspects of change or a moment out of your comfort zone. You have to push hard to get out there and it is awkward and hard, but after the struggle is over you realise that you’ve grown. You have matured, became a little wiser and realised that it was worth it. You probably do not realise straight away, but there comes a moment when you notice and you keep going again. You’ve been somewhere new, you have adapted. And after a few times out there, after a few changes and falling back to routines, you realise what is important to you and what is baggage. It is not an easy way until you realise, but change is good, if you survive the change. You built habits, few but you do and after you recovered and settled a little again you filter. You (kind of) streamline your life. And even the realisation that the life of the Adventurer is nothing for you and you are happy as a Dad is fantastic, but at least you realised because you have tried the Adventurer’s shoes and discovered that you value stability more.
Now, why is the comfort zone good, if everything mentioned above sounds fabulous and we should just evolve and all be super awesome!
I think that we only grow when we evaluate and reflect. And we can only do that when our brain is secure and does not have to cope with new impressions. So I am saying that we need the Out-of-comfort state to grab the seeds to grow, but we need the comfort zone to actually grow.
And I have another reason why I think the comfort zone is great. Only in your comfort zone can you maximise your performance. Yo may grow it and adapt quicker, but only when we know that we are safe, is it possible to reach peak state. In my example I want to use my last season in Ultimate Frisbee. I knew my work roster, I knew (after a while of arguing with my boss) that I had all the tournament weekends off and I could plan with that. I managed to appear at every club training, I knew that Thursdays were my sprint training days. I could plan my diet, my rest days, I knew when I was able to meet with friends to switch off and I could execute a 12 weeks plan to get into an optimal state for the last tournament. We did have an official goal, but I think we decided at one point that Top 8 was a good outcome. After the second day that goal was reached and we had a quarter final against an opponent we had lost to in the Regionals final. The whole team knew we could beat those guys and finish somewhere in the top 4. We beat them and I can still remember the pride I felt. And not just the pride of accomplishing something, but also the knowledge that I had 18 other players that felt the same and that we came a long way together.
This feeling was the best feeling in my life so far!
Of course one can argue, that I had to push myself. I had to fight the devil inside me, telling me to not go sprinting today. To skip a training, because of a hard day at work. But in the end I managed because of stability and routine.
Our coach used to say, that you can only learn from mistakes. So he wanted us to throw throws we were not used to and run ways we wouldn’t know if it works or not. But be attentive and aware and realise why it didn’t work. I think that applies for every aspect in life and everyone should be aware of it.
So I think living inside your comfort zone most of the time is great, as long as you take some shots at something unknown. And it doesn’t have to be moving to Australia. It can be something subtle, like changing your annual Norderney to a different location each year.
a) Ja, ich habe mich nach 2 Jahren abwesenheit hier wieder eingeloggt, um etwas zu posten, weil mich von einigen Leuten die Meinung dazu interessiert. Ob diese Leute, überhaupt noch hier aktiv sind, weiß ich nicht
b) Der Beitrag ist auf Englisch, weil ich ihn noch anderen Leuten zeigen möchte, die kein Deutsch sprechen.
c) Es endet nicht wirklich mit einer Frage, sondern einem Denkanstoß. Ich weiß gar nicht, ob man daraus überhaupt eine Diskussion anleiern kann, aber ich würde mich freuen.
Es geht um die Vorteile der Comfort Zone vs die Vorteile wenn man aus ihr ausbricht und, wie sich beides verbinden lässt.
While I was cycling today, I started this weird thought-chain of the definition of comfort zone and what it means to be out of your comfort zone, what it achieves and why it is not always the best. These thoughts were in my head in a different form for a very long time. When I started travelling, I realised that experiences are priceless and that you get a lot of them while being somewhere in another country with strangers. I had a ‘discussion’ or more an exchange of opinions with a friend who loved to tell me that a week traveling only lasts a week, while his new TV (around the same price) lasts him 3 years.
Now that is something that a million word could not take from him. He just would not understand. You cannot grasp what is behind the horizon. You have to go out there and discover it. Push it to the limit and evolve.
You will realise that I will mix up routine, habits and comfort zone a lot. In my opinion, all those terms describe the same, so please be patient with me when you read on and see me mixing it all up.
A lot of that comes down to a term we love to use, comfort zone. Being out of your comfort zone (by my understanding) is kind of the opposite of living your live in habits. Never changing anything, because you’re happy how it is. Here is a second thought for you: If you always live your little life, are married to a woman you met in Kindergarten and with two adorable kids. Your two weeks holidays each year are spend on Norderney (a very nice German island for young families in my opinion). The rest of your annual leave is spend to build or renovate. You are happy on a sustained level. Your negative days/periods are not very negative, but your highs and happy moments, are also simple.
In the end of your life, what really counts (again, in my opinion) is how happy and content you’ve been throughout life and how happy you are in the moment before death.
I think that person described above can be very happy. Opposite to that, we got a young adventurer. He’s been to Australia with 19 for a year, spend 3 years back in Germany to study and get a B.Sc. but then leaves again. Patagonia and South America this time. He tries different jobs, never based on his studies/career, but he gets by. Minimalistic with not too much money to spare and also not a lot of security, but he soon realises that all the misfortunes and downsides in his life keep revolving around minor issues and he becomes more relaxed and gets by. Let’s push this example to the max and say he never experiences true love. He meets lovely, breathtaking, beautiful girls, but he never stays long enough with them to really get to know them and his next adventure is always more important than whomever he is dating.
Is this person happier/more content than the first person in the end?
This is a question I have asked myself a lot and recently formed a thesis (with a friend, over coffee in Melbourne) that makes me think that both people can be content with their lives on the death bed, but I think the quality of life and the peaks of the highs were higher for the Adventurer than the Dad. The lows of life, might in the beginning drag the adventurer down and they re by far deeper than the lows of Dad, but over time it stabilises and the low peaks may even reach low, but they are over a very short time, before the Adventurer focusses ahead and starts anew.
Now, I am very aware that I am biased towards the Adventurer, because I am living the life described above, however, I have also been on the other end. Playing a lot of computer games (and I am talking about at least 50-60 hours/week) because it was easy and I knew what awaited me. I had my challenges, mind you, but it didn’t really matter whether I failed or not.
At the end of my studies (6 years Mechanical Engineering) I had average marks, been quite good on time, and considered myself above average in all the soft skills. But what I lacked was something special. I was just average everywhere. So I wanted to try and take my last shot, my graduation thesis, to get experience abroad. By chance the topic I wanted to graduate on was with a partner institute, in Sudan.
Sudan?! To be bluntly honest, when my professor asked me if I wanted to go, I didn’t even know that Sudan was in Africa. My face must have been blank while I tried to decide if I tell my professor that I had no clue where Sudan was, or not. He mistook that blank face and told me that the assault on the German embassy was known before and not as critical as German media stated it. That didn’t help at all.
I asked for a week to consider, but from that moment that I was told about Sudan I knew I wanted to go.
My life afterwards was pretty much the same. I made every decision on a whim. Within a day or two, without considering the negative aspects or the effects of failure. I only saw possibilities.
Until now (3 years later) I have always been lucky and it somehow worked out. Everything I really wanted came true…. That is actually not true, some things didn’t work out like my naive mind wanted it, but I coped and went on. I failed, I was down. I wanted to go home and just live a ‘normal life’. I missed home, I missed my friends. But I kept going. It was always alright the next morning, everything seemed better and I was able to last a little longer. What I got out of it was a massive amount of experience and a sheer endless amount of optimism.
You may ask yourself why I tell you this. It has to do with the reasoning pro- or contra staying in your comfort zone. I am pretty sure we can agree, that my life mentioned above was lived out of my comfort zone a lot. My comfort zone grew, but there were a lot of fresh starts and a lot of breaks, where I had to throw out every one of my habits and start new. Right now I am in Cairns for two months for work. I realised that I do not care overly much about my (usually very balanced and nutritious) diet. I also just started consuming without considering the effect (not saving money, my primary goal of coming up here). It’ll somehow work anyways. But those shifts in my behaviour come from being taking out of my daily life and routines.
If you read between the lines you probably realised the positive aspects of change or a moment out of your comfort zone. You have to push hard to get out there and it is awkward and hard, but after the struggle is over you realise that you’ve grown. You have matured, became a little wiser and realised that it was worth it. You probably do not realise straight away, but there comes a moment when you notice and you keep going again. You’ve been somewhere new, you have adapted. And after a few times out there, after a few changes and falling back to routines, you realise what is important to you and what is baggage. It is not an easy way until you realise, but change is good, if you survive the change. You built habits, few but you do and after you recovered and settled a little again you filter. You (kind of) streamline your life. And even the realisation that the life of the Adventurer is nothing for you and you are happy as a Dad is fantastic, but at least you realised because you have tried the Adventurer’s shoes and discovered that you value stability more.
Now, why is the comfort zone good, if everything mentioned above sounds fabulous and we should just evolve and all be super awesome!
I think that we only grow when we evaluate and reflect. And we can only do that when our brain is secure and does not have to cope with new impressions. So I am saying that we need the Out-of-comfort state to grab the seeds to grow, but we need the comfort zone to actually grow.
And I have another reason why I think the comfort zone is great. Only in your comfort zone can you maximise your performance. Yo may grow it and adapt quicker, but only when we know that we are safe, is it possible to reach peak state. In my example I want to use my last season in Ultimate Frisbee. I knew my work roster, I knew (after a while of arguing with my boss) that I had all the tournament weekends off and I could plan with that. I managed to appear at every club training, I knew that Thursdays were my sprint training days. I could plan my diet, my rest days, I knew when I was able to meet with friends to switch off and I could execute a 12 weeks plan to get into an optimal state for the last tournament. We did have an official goal, but I think we decided at one point that Top 8 was a good outcome. After the second day that goal was reached and we had a quarter final against an opponent we had lost to in the Regionals final. The whole team knew we could beat those guys and finish somewhere in the top 4. We beat them and I can still remember the pride I felt. And not just the pride of accomplishing something, but also the knowledge that I had 18 other players that felt the same and that we came a long way together.
This feeling was the best feeling in my life so far!
Of course one can argue, that I had to push myself. I had to fight the devil inside me, telling me to not go sprinting today. To skip a training, because of a hard day at work. But in the end I managed because of stability and routine.
Our coach used to say, that you can only learn from mistakes. So he wanted us to throw throws we were not used to and run ways we wouldn’t know if it works or not. But be attentive and aware and realise why it didn’t work. I think that applies for every aspect in life and everyone should be aware of it.
So I think living inside your comfort zone most of the time is great, as long as you take some shots at something unknown. And it doesn’t have to be moving to Australia. It can be something subtle, like changing your annual Norderney to a different location each year.