What's Here Now? Step Into Your Comfort Zone
Our transformation and growth often come as a result of stretching beyond where we’re comfortable. As a coach, my job involves helping people chart a course toward something they want in their lives—a goal, a vision, a dream.
This almost always means choosing to move away from what feels familiar and safe. Step outside your comfort zone is a phrase we hear (and say, in some form or another) all the time.
Trying new things is an important way we learn about ourselves and get clues about where we want to go and what we might want to do when we get there. When we make ourselves uncomfortable on purpose, when we push beyond our limits, we expand what’s possible in our lives.
This doesn’t mean we always need to be pushing. Sometimes I hear my clients beat themselves up for being content, or berate themselves for not feeling ready to take a leap into something new. The story they tell themselves is that they are lazy, or a failure, or that there’s something wrong with them. If you feel that being content in a place, a relationship, a job, isn't holding you back, great! There's nothing wrong with liking (and hanging out) where you are. Sometimes, that is the very goal.
Then there are moments like the one we’re in now. Most of us, in one way or another (and another and another) have been in a pretty constant state of discomfort for a long time. We didn’t choose this. We're a year into the pandemic, with many hundreds of thousands of people sick and dead, grieving and out of work. We’re politically at odds and estranged from each other, and on top of all that, throw in domestic terrorism fueled by white supremacy. Oh, and here’s a polar vortex and frozen pipes and a flooded living room. It’s a lot, on top of a lot, atop even more. A massive, unappetizing lasagna, if you will. Layer upon layer upon layer of things we don’t want and didn’t ask for.
Most of us are just trying to get through the day. We have our good moments, and many report positive things made possible by the pandemic. But we are also sad and anxious, weary and worried, lonely and not alone enough, frazzled and burnt out. Many of us are downright crispy. We don’t have bandwidth, we’re irritable, we can’t focus, our oomph is on the loose. We are in serious need of some comfort (and probably a haircut).
Comfort: A state of physical ease and freedom from pain or constraint. The easing or alleviation of a person’s feelings of grief or distress.
One of my main jobs this last year has been comforting myself.
I’m not talking about things that numb or help me avoid what’s happening in the world (although I’ve had my numbing/avoiding moments—yes, Netflix, I AM STILL WATCHING!). I’m talking about things that help keep me going, that help me ride out the uncomfortable moments until I feel better. Things that help me actually be with my discomfort, make sense of it, give it (and myself) some compassion.
I’m a worrier. Early on in the pandemic, my worrying was of EXTRA proportions. I will not tell you about the spreadsheet I created to track how many meal’s worth of food we had in the house at all times. Instead, I will tell you that jigsaw puzzles helped calm the anxiety I felt about what was happening and what we didn't yet know. Jigsaw puzzles up till then had always irritated me—too slow, too precise, too much patience required. No thank you. But now, stuck at home, doing puzzles served as a kind of meditation. Everything else disappeared when I was in puzzle mode, and this calmed my nervous system and all I had to worry about was which piece went where. I was grateful for the hours of focus, which helped give me the capacity to be in the limbo of the early months of the pandemic.
I also wanted to watch shows or movies from a time that was far from this one. I found comfort and solace in, of all things, The Bob Newhart Show from the 1970s (Taxi, too). And once I spent time in that decade, I felt more capable to return to the current one.
In late summer, my mom died. The first thing I did after getting the news, was sit on my bed with boxes of photos, shuffling through them and the accompanying memories while listening to Neil Diamond, who always reminds me of good times with my mom. Bringing my mom’s presence alive in this way brought me comfort, not by distracting me from my feelings, but by amplifying them. I also felt an overpowering need for poetry. I combed our bookshelves for any poetry we might have and flipped through the pages of each, searching for some profound passage that would deliver solace.
A couple of weeks after that, here in the Bay Area, we woke to eerie, orange skies straight out of a sci-fi movie. Apocalyptic skies and bad air from the wildfires, on top of all the other things 2020 was giving us, it was all too much in that moment. I just wanted to crawl up into the lap of some maternal figure and be there there'd until I felt better. That shit was scary and when you're scared, even when you're fifty years old, sometimes you just need your mom—a mom, any mom will do! Instead, we got our first take out food of the pandemic, fried chicken from one of our favorite neighborhood restaurants (FRIED CHICKEN IS OUR MOM NOW!). It didn't make any of the awful go away, but it helped us feel a little normal (the world is not ending if there is still fried chicken). This helped us regroup and feel like we could meet the next day with a little more resilience. (I also had a good crying jag, which helped a lot, HOORAY, CRYING!)
Flannel shirts, fuzzy blankets, good books, a bowl of rice with lots of butter and soy sauce, the voices of my friends, my dog’s head on my lap, my husband laughing at my jokes, familiar music, old movies, aimless walks, stupid comedies, saying no to things I didn’t have the energy for, gazing up at the sky—these are all things that have brought me comfort and have kept me going all these months. As has reminding myself that this is all temporary. Maybe a loooooong temporary, but this time will come to an end at some point. My mind has often wandered to the people of history who have made it through tragedy, trauma, disaster, and hardship (including my own ancestors), and this has maybe been the biggest comfort of all for me. If they could keep going, so can I.
Being INSIDE a zone of comfort is necessary sometimes. It’s a form of self-care, it’s self-compassion, it can even help us survive.
The next time you notice you’re feeling funky or despairing or low or agitated, check in with yourself. What’s going on with me right now? What do I need? What would bring me comfort—Rest? Action? Connection? Alone time? Which of the five senses do I want to engage? Do I want to make some art? Howl at the moon? Do I want to be entertained? Do I want to put on that old cozy sweater with the rip in the armpit? Do I want to dance around the living room? Cry in the shower? Do I need a change of scenery? Have a bowl of soup, a cup of tea? Write a letter? Clean out a closet? Ask someone for help? Kick out the jams? Walk amongst the trees? Tell someone (maybe the trees) how it is for me? Pancakes for dinner?
Then give yourself that moment comfort if you can. Step INTO your comfort zone.
Tell the trees.
Kick out the jams.
Make a stack of pancakes.
Repeat as necessary.
This originally appeared in my Winter 2021 email newsletter. To get on the list and receive this and other goodies in your inbox from time to time, sign up at the bottom of the home page pamdaghlian.com .