Here I was, cresting the wave of this high I’ve been on lately. Smooth sailing all the way, with nothing but the open seas before me. When all of the sudden I run smack-dab into the wall that is my Comfort Zone. Actually, I’m not much of a boating person; this is only a metaphor. The wall? That’s a metaphor, too. My Comfort Zone, however, and me needing to be on the outside? That’s all too real.
What actually constitutes a “Comfort Zone”? According to Alasdair A. K. White in his research paper “From Comfort Zone to Performance Management”:
The comfort zone is a behavioural state within which a person operates in an anxiety-neutral condition, using a limited set of behaviours to deliver a steady level of performance, usually without a sense of risk.