The Comfort Zone

I like to simplify things, and if I had to simplify writing, I would say it’s about learning the difference between the comfort of the right word, sentence, or story, and the discomfort of the wrong word, sentence, or story. In this way, writing is a continuous and deliberate aligning with comfort and effortlessness. I am tempted to say it is a search for comfort, but this would suggest a finite destination. Rather this comfort is like balance, something I find again and again and again. But maybe you’re familiar with the phrase, “Getting out of your comfort zone.” This seems like good advice. Quit paddling around the same old pond. There’s a whole world out there, if you’d just be willing pick up your boat and drop it in some new river. When I was feeling very stuck in my life many years ago, my wife suggested I try one new thing. “Just one,” she pleaded. So I took a writing class.

I was not a fan of writing instruction. I’d been writing all my life and I preferred hands-on learning to classrooms. Yet it was just the experience I needed. I had created a kind of cocoon for myself, within which I was safe from other people’s opinion of my work. I believed I would crumble if someone told me they didn’t like something I’d written. Turns out it was not such a big deal. In many ways, that class was the first of many changes that led me to this essay I am writing today.

I do not think, however, that the class took me out of my comfort zone. It was actually leading me toward my comfort zone. I had grown so consistently uncomfortable that I began to call it normal. Gradually, I started noticing the kind of story I felt comfortable writing, and the kind of story I was making myself write. Gradually, I decided there was no actual benefit in making myself do anything.

The beauty of true comfort zones is that they are not stationary. Growth is life’s constant, inevitable result. I couldn’t stop myself from growing any more than I could command my apple tree to stop bending toward the light. So I must wake up every day and find again what I found – or, sometimes, did not find – the day before. Though it has moved slightly, the experience of aligning with it has not changed at all. It always feels like coming home, a place where I can comfortably remember who I am.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual and group coaching.