After somewhat longtime, one of my dear friend came in WhatsApp chat. He was my childhood friend. from my town, my village, in fact from my neighborhood. My next door neighbor.
Few lines of updating each other’s past and present situations, he was suggesting me themes and topics for my YouTube channel videos. (For your information, I run 2 YouTube channels with videos ranging from education courses to career guidance and productivity tips. One in English and the other is in Malayalam.)
Sensing the spark and his insightful thoughts, I could not stop myself from suggesting him to start a channel, or, at least share his video recording so that I can publish on his behalf, his video, in my channel, with all due credits to him. To my shocking, he resorted to a sentence, if I can reproduce, it may go something like this, ‘Difficult to get out from my comfort zone, to commit any such venture of starting a channel or even shooting a video.’ The friend in question here is a very able computer science engineer with very bright credentials. A technocrat from all dimensions. Any attempt from his end to start a YouTube channel and share his vital advises will be of great value to any of the channel video’s viewers or subscribers. Yet, here he stand in his comfort zone not ready to take the very first baby step towards a great initiative of educating and guidance. However, he assured, after sometime he will reconsider his position. And, we concluded our Whatsapp chatting. The story ends here.
But, my thoughts towards ‘comfort zone’ topic have exceeded from the WhatsApp chat till the moment I am writing this very article. Fire might have extinguished, but the smoke making me restless. The smoke of comfort.
What exactly is that ‘comfort zone’? Can we locate it? If yes, then, where? What are the reasons for the formation of this zone? How it is formed?
I also had/have such comfort zone formed inside! I am starting to feel the floor and my throat!
Let me confess in the very beginning of this investigation of locating the comfort zone, that, I am not an expert in this topic, neither I have done any deep research. Whatever you are going to read from this space is my attempt to spill out some raw thoughts and gather some shape and mass. From the very moment I got hit with the word ‘comfort zone’, late hours in the afternoon today till the late night now, I tried to focus my attention to the reasons for the formation of ‘comfort zone’. Reasons might justify the results, who knows! Strangely, but purposefully, I took the approach of understanding this topic by evaluating the opposite of this condition. That is, if we have to understand what is light, then better understand what darkness is. To realize the condition of winter, feeling of summer may help. This way, to familiarize the ‘comfort zone’, lets evaluate ‘no-comfort zone’.
‘No comfort zone’ has following components.
1. Fear Zone: Area where you find yourself helpless but to fear the outcomes of your actions, others’ actions, action of unknowns.
2. Laziness Zone: Region where you find yourself tied up from moving up or down, right or left. And, you are enjoying it. Inertia is the god for you in this zone.
3. Ignorance Zone: Zone where you do not have a clue of the process or inputs or outputs, any of them or some of them or all of them. Even, you feel helpless in finding the any leads, any information, any knowledge or know-how.
4. No-Confidence Zone: You may not be feeling any fear or laziness, and even you have the knowledge, still if you lack something that is hindering you, welcome to ‘No-Confidence Zone’.
5. Zone That Tells, ‘You Can’t!’: This zone is the combination of all such zones not mentioned above, but still constitute your situation of not ready to the task.
Lets imagine five circles. Each of these circles identifies above five zones. These circles are intersecting, and there exists a common area where all the above 5 zones co-exists. This is the famous ‘no comfort zone’.
So, when one say, he/she is in ‘comfort zone’, and cannot do certain tasks, he/she is in fact in a ‘no-comfort zone’ with respect to that task.
Congratulations!!! we have solved the puzzle! Located the ‘comfort zone’, which is actually a ‘no-comfort zone’.
LHS = RHS!!! Eureka moment!
The real task is not to locate it, but to get out of it!!!
Mujeeb Patla 