The expression "get out of your comfort zone" is silly and annoying. It's far from a meaningful act of thoughtful expression tailored to an interlocutor you care for. Instead, it's a platitude disgorged in fits of verbal incontinence, a conditioned reflex like saying "Bless you" when someone sneezes. To be fair, though, at least "Bless you" is kind and polite. "Get out of your comfort zone" is neither.
On top of being filled with about as much insight as the average mass-manufactured ready-made political slogan or fortune cookie one-liner, it's also highly unhelpful. In this post, I'd like to make the case that it sucks, and it's high time we start dabbling with alternatives.
Before I get started, I'd like to avoid any misunderstandings. I'm strongly in favor of personal development. Growing as a person and improving your life are central topics of my writings. They're also one of the main reasons I publish consistently in the first place since doing so pushes me to become more confident and articulate.
So, to be very clear, I'm not saying that going outside your comfort zone is a bad thing and that you shouldn't do it. I'm saying that you should stop saying "Get out of your comfort zone" because it's a worthless statement.
Why? First off, this injunction is void of justification in itself. It doesn’t give us any reason or objective to explain why following its instructions would benefit us. By omitting any specific ultimate purpose, it turns a trite means into an overblown end. It’s akin to saying to someone, “You need to get stabbed by a scalpel” instead of “You need to get heart surgery”. Is it a required part of the process? Sure. Does it make any sense once it’s been uprooted from its context? Nope.
Second, it’s positively brimming with specificity, and on its face, it might not be the best of advice. I’m sure proudly strutting in a rainbow T-shirt with the caption “I’m a Gay Jew” written in bold letters at a neo-Nazi rally would be out of most people’s comfort zone. Does that mean you should do it? Personally, I think that’d be a pretty bad idea. What about sending unsolicited nudes to your boss? Sucker punching a police officer in the nose? Or perhaps driving in the opposite direction of a highway lane?
So, I think we can all safely agree that indiscriminately going out of your comfort zone is completely asinine.
Third, it plays into our society’s curious fetish for suffering. We just love the aesthetics of pain, sweat, and blood. All work and no play makes Jack a good boy. Getting constantly blasted in the face with adversity without ever whimpering is proof of strength and valor. Go to the gym, agonize, get shredded. Rip and tear, until it is done.
I’m not exactly sure where this distasteful trend comes from. Perhaps it’s part of our Christian cultural legacy, with its fancy for martyrdom and self-flagellation. About anything you can think of doing is a terrible sin, but you can keep on keeping on. Feel free to indulge as long as you feel terrible about what a wretched, dirty little sinner you are afterwards. If you whip yourself hard enough, you can win back eternal salvation without actually having to embrace virtue. Pretty good deal if you’re a sadomasochist.
Unfortunately for me — and everybody else who shares this predicament — that’s not my case. If I have a choice between achieving the same goal through means that either A) require discomfort or B) do not, I’m opting for B every single time. I don’t really get the craze around pointless suffering.
I’m not saying you should avoid it at every turn, either. If it’s required to do something meaningful and worthwhile, then sure, endure to your heart’s content. I simply don’t think suffering is noble in and of itself, and it’s probably better to avoid it when it serves no purpose.
To get back to the topic at hand, the entire framing behind the saying in question is pretty patronizing. There’s nothing inspiring or compassionate about it. At its core, that sly expression is using shame as its main source of fuel. Come on, get out of your comfort zone! What are you? A sissy? A loser? Real men™ get out of their comfort zone.
Well, I don’t believe shame makes for good motivation fuel. It can almost always be substituted for something better, like aspiration.
I’m aware different people have different styles of motivation, but this type of “tough love” definitely ain’t mine. In my case, getting lambasted, humiliated, harassed, or bullied is counterproductive at best.
Lastly, it’s too broadly sweeping, as well as invalidating, and therefore unhelpful. As I already mentioned, this little catchphrase doesn’t take into account any end goal. It doesn’t have any consideration for why tackling this endeavor is difficult for your interlocutor. And it doesn’t help them make any tangible, constructive progress on their specific struggle.
Plus, everyone and their mother already knows they need to “get out of their comfort zone”, duh. Sure, some simple truths bear repeating manifold to fully permeate and sink in. The general idea behind this one might belong to that category, but definitely not with that phrasing.
Alright, so what can we replace it with then?
Several years ago, I went to a talk by Oussama Ammar, a well-known French entrepreneurship pundit. Since it’s been a while, I don’t remember much about it, except for this one segment because it was notably spot on. At some point, he shared that — just like me — he had always disliked the expression “Get out of your comfort zone”. He thought that a much better framing was to “expand your comfort zone”.
See, the idea is not to vacate your comfort zone willy-nilly just to suffer like the good little glutton for punishment you are. The goal is to temporarily explore beyond it so you can colonize and domesticate a wild area of discomfort and bring it into the fold of civilized comfort so that it stops standing in the way of your aspirations.
Yes, this is one of the exceedingly rare cases where I’ll sanction unbridled imperialist expansionism. You want to transform something that was daunting up until now by turning it into a manageable endeavor, if not second nature. Your driving purpose should be to transmute an area of life so that it doesn’t cause discomfort anymore.
For example, say you ardently desire to give rousing speeches but currently find the prospect very scary. In order to get there, you will have to expand your comfort zone by iteratively practicing public speaking until it’s not disproportionately intimidating anymore.
When you were a toddler, the act of walking was outside your comfort zone. You had to strive and struggle to master it, and now it’s snugly within your comfort zone. That’s the spirit! Toddlers are based. They’re too young to have been worn down by our “conventional wisdom” nonsense yet.
More generally, if you want to offer this type of advice and promote courage, here are a few good rules of thumb to follow. Take into account the goals of the person you’re trying to motivate. Do they even want to do what you’re pushing for in the first place? If not, you’ve got more pressing concerns than finding the perfect one-liner. Take into account the challenges they are encountering and the worthiness of their endeavor. Strive to be specific and encouraging.
If you want to help someone whose life is being hindered by procrastination and avoidance, try something like, “In order to achieve this thing you care about, there’s no alternative but to be courageous and take action in spite of some discomfort, but it’ll get easier in time with practice”.
Don’t hesitate to lavishly wax poetic on the benefits to be gained by doing so, in contrast to the downsides of complacency. The process itself should be the thing you focus the least on, except if they’re looking for concrete how-to advice, in which case that’s what you should actually give them instead of platitudes.
Alternatively, if you want to encourage someone who’s already engaged in the process but is having a hard time and bitching about it, something like “Keep going, I know it’s scary, but you’re doing the right thing” would be a definite improvement.
To conclude, for the love of all that is good and sensible, please stop saying “Get out of your comfort zone”.
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