Comfort zone

There are two topics that go a long way in this moment between TV, press, web and social media, and they are those of “resilience” and the “comfort zone”.
On the first, everything and more has been said. Rivers of real and virtual ink have been spent to tell this state of mind that seems particularly akin to the historical and social moment we are experiencing and, frankly, also because I don’t feel it particularly mine, I don’t want to add anything about it. .
The comfort zone is different. This is a topic that intrigues me a lot because I link it a lot to the concept of “possibilities” and “opportunities” that each of us can grasp or not grasp in life. It is therefore worth introducing it by explaining what is meant by comfort zone. I borrow a definition found quickly on Google according to which the comfort zone is “the mental condition in which the person acts in a state of absence of anxiety, with a constant level of performance and without perceiving a sense of risk”.
There are comfort zones in every facet of human life: in the family, in feelings and in work.
For many people, the comfort zone is an important therapeutic element of existence. A dear friend of mine, for example, often confesses to me that for him leaving the comfort zone means going into panic attacks with very important physical symptoms related to anxiety and fear.
It is therefore not a topic that can be treated superficially. In fact, the comfort zone does not have so much to do with a sort of “laziness” as some mistakenly believe, but rather with a discourse of “personal safety”, which is a very delicate key to act on.

Me

And me? Well, if you hadn’t understood from reading my posts so far, I, in particular, have organized my entire existence with the precise method of constantly eliminating any comfort zone. It is not something that I did knowingly, it simply happened perhaps because of what my disposition is always devoted to change.
But this does not mean that I am not sometimes a victim of it. I am human, we are human, and there are and have been stages in life where a part of me voted to leave everything as it was, even when heart or reason (two types that don’t always get along) , they told me to turn elsewhere, to change direction, to take a new and different path.
This is where the comfort zone borders on fear. When we feel that a situation that has consolidated over time begins to hold tight, there is the fear of change. It is a normal and legitimate feeling that arises from that part of our brain that presses to leave things as they are in order not to attempt the unknown, the new, the unexplored.
Dispassionate advice: never make the mistake of following that part of the brain! Believe me, and I say this with a certain experience of life as well as I am no longer a young man, I do not know a single person who has made a wise choice when he has decided to stay, out of fear, in his comfort zone.
Whether it was relationships or work situations, having insisted on the old road did not lead to anything good. Relationships and jobs that continue only because they are the expression of a personal comfort zone lead, over time, to regret and frustration.

The change

So what is outside the comfort zone? There is change! A very intriguing topic, exciting if you like, because it mixes fear and opportunity, bitterness and sweet, tension and enjoyment.
Those who live in the comfort zone are afraid of change, they feel unsuitable for change. Yet, and here is the basic mistake, he forgets a very important thing: change is part of us, and has always been part of our life, except that we often did not notice it and perhaps for this reason it scared us less. .
Think of the transition from childhood to adolescence: one day we don’t know how to see this side of cartoons and our toys, the next day we feel our first sexual appetites being born in us. That too was a change … And what a change I would say …

Then over time, as we grow up, we forget that we can easily manage the change, and we take refuge in the comfort zone. Only in this way we stop growing, living, evolving.
Instead, we should all become aware of the fact that yes, change is a big question mark, which can lead to improvements or worsening in our lives, but which is also the only great chance we have to meet the beautiful. If you think about it, if you do the count and the list of all the beautiful things that have happened to you in your life, the most beautiful, the ones that you will be able to remember even when you are old, you will discover that all of them, in one way or another, are born from a phase of change.
From this point of view, the change is like a wonderful sea, with magnificent backdrops, in which we have to dive starting, however, from a rock at a height of 15 meters. It is a dive within everyone’s reach, you don’t need physical preparation to face it, but how many of us would have the courage to dive from such a high springboard?

Only the brave

Those who do it, however, as the English would say “only the brave” (only the brave), are lucky enough to enter a wonderful sea that is that of “opportunities”. Change and opportunity are in fact two concepts linked in temporal consecution to each other: change is in fact the cultivation ground for opportunities, and the less space we give to change, the less opportunities we will give ourselves.
When, on the other hand, the essence of living is all there, in the number and quality of opportunities that we have managed to create; and, believe me, it is not an economic issue but an emotional drive that we either have or do not have, but which, if you are in the latter case, you can improve over time.
Even today, every morning, waking up, I try to imagine the day that awaits me according to what will be the opportunities that I will have built in the first place, or secondly by chance and luck. Perhaps also for this reason, when the days end, I rewind the tape of what has been with a great sense of gratitude which is one of the figures of my “proverbial serenity”.
Do I let myself be carried away by the change? Yes, without limits I would say. And, mind you, that every time I “get on that raft” I never know where it will take me. But that is exactly what makes it all the more exciting and is, on balance, a decidedly convenient attitude.