How often do you leave your comfort zone?

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 How often do you leave your comfort zone?

Discomfort is Comfortable

    Leaving my comfort zone is still a challenge for me. Everyday I try to do something that will make myself better and improve by at least 1%. Once, I was having a hard time playing too much videogames, my attention span dropped, my streaks of going to the gym, studying and focusing on my life projects were negatively affected, but I wasn't able to notice it. After a certain time, my grades were still high, I was still losing weight, but it still felt like I was living in a "passive way". I was still having good results even maintaining a consistent and quite disciplined routine of playing videogames, and, since I was younger, I didn't notice the damage that it was doing to my overall personal improvement.

    Staying in the comfort zone does not feel bad at all, but it's that type of illusion that kept me and probably a lot of people in the same place for a lot of time. I learned in the hardest way that leaving things behind only to stay in comfort has considerable future consequences. There was a time that I was totally unfocused on the things that I wanted (university, overall health, purpose etc.). I preferred to stay playing videogames instead of developing myself in an even better way, for future tests, marathons or important events. After staying in comfort for too long I noticed that things that were easy for me started to become quite demanding. This perception was clarified during my first swimming competition (I'm a swimmer nowadays), I was fatter than all my colleagues and I also wasn't able to keep up with their pace. For me that was a huge loss and it motivated me to face that initial discomfort of going to gym, studying for more than half an hour past the limit and even giving lectures and participating in debates/simulations.

    Realizing an exchange program is also another proof that leaving the comfort zone is worth it. In Brazil, I had a lot of friends and I had my own club that helped students passing through hard times. What I'm trying to say is that, I had everything consolidated there, I used and learned my mother language, I had plans for universities and there was also my volunteer job that I've participated in. However, I received a notice that everything was going to change, and I would soon move to another country, with a new language, new people and new opportunities, and for me that was a lot of pressure in just one news. I had no way to escape from it and I needed to face the fact that I would be far away from my family and friends for a whole year, while I try to learn English as fast as possible and also find a school where I could study and keep my academics level positively. While writing this blog I'm facing the discomfort of finishing a considerably "boring" task and also the discomfort of writing in a totally different language that I'm sure committed grammatical mistakes.

    To sum up this whole blog, getting out of the comfort zone is not only important for feeling good, but for also maturing and developing a better emotional control. Through life, I expect to face harder things than just moving from a country or writing a blog, so my way to train that "courage" I got to do exactly what I don't feel like doing. Furthermore, it is also really easy to understand the fear of facing the discomfort is commonly related to procrastination, making  the idea developed in this blog even more important, not just for finishing a task, but for also star a project, have more responsibilities and even open doors that you don't even know that could be opened. That's why, in the long term, I consider that discomfort is comfortable.

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