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Farewell, comfort zone?

Are you expecting some monotonous, repetitive article on comfort zone? Hang on! This is different. Actually, I will share an experience which will tell about how even the small things help us to exit our comfort zone.

I have been a staunch advocate of not writing in my books. I don’t mean academic books, those are fine; I am talking about the books we read to gain knowledge of the world like novels and motivational stuff and travelogues and the like. The only mark of ink on my books can be seen on the first page: I sign my book and write the date I bought it on. Other than that, it is clean, I mean, used to be.

Ever since I started using the Kindle, I started highlighting lines I liked (Kindle has an option of highlighting lines or words). I realised that I could find them quicker and I could also remember them better after using the feature. The thought started to hover in my brain. I thought that I should use a highlighter while I am reading any book (physical copy) and mark things that I like. Of course, easier said than done. I thought of it for nearly two months and it took me a lot of convincing to convince my own self that there is nothing wrong. Of course, I couldn’t digest the thought at first. It was as if I was committing a crime! I even got my highlighters out of my pouch and kept them handy but didn’t really do it.

After two months when I was reading the book ‘The leader who had no title’ by Robin Sharma, I came across many lines that I wanted to highlight and I finally did it. It was a dramatic moment, no doubt. As said in the book ‘Who moved my cheese,’ that “What you are afraid of is never as bad as what you imagine. The fear you let build up in your mind is worse than the situation that actually exists.”

You would think me crazy if I tell you that I even went to the extent of googling about marking in books and here I was, doing it easily and regularly whenever I was reading a book. After all, books are to give knowledge along with entertainment and one way of getting the best of both worlds is marking in them. Isn’t it obvious?

Observe if any such minor thing is trying to push you out of your comfort zone and if it is, come out as soon as you can because… comfort zone only expands when you come out of it. The more you quit your comfort zone, the more comfortable you are going to be with the newly developed good habit.

So… which comfort zone are you expanding today?

And hey you! Thanks for being here. Means a lot. If you liked reading this, do share it with others, comment your thoughts on it and help share the optimism.

Comments

  1. Suhani Khandeshe11 July 2021 at 21:02

    It actually feels like committing a crime😅 but....getting out of comfort zone only increases it 😀

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown15 July 2021 at 16:56

    So well expressed 👍

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sameer Anil Thite16 July 2021 at 10:54

    A comfort zone is a psychological phenomenon, in which we are at ease and in control of the environment that leads to minimum stress.

    However, if we consider a religious order of monks (Sanyasis or a renunciants), they have been taught not to remain at any place for more than three or five days. This automatically discards any possibility of creating a comfort zone.

    If I think of myself being a diehard traveller, I too need to keep my comfort zone at home while setting off for a new destination. Travel has taught me this and designed a sort of monkhood though not in my physical appearance but surely in my mental approaches.

    Nothing can be attained unless we throw it away.

    ReplyDelete

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