The Importance of Trying New Things & Pushing Yourself Out of Your Comfort Zone

Have you ever heard complacency breeds contempt? It basically means that you become so familiar with your environment or the people around you that you take it for granted. It’s really easy to get settled into routine and familiarity. Not that being comfortable is a bad thing entirely (you need times of comfort where you can rest and relax). But, you can’t stay there forever, or you will become stagnant and not grow. 

This is where the importance of trying new things and new skills comes in. When you try something new or outside of your familiarity, you change things up and create the right the right environment to grow. If you’re fine with staying in the same place forever, that’s ok. But, if you’re reading this blog, it’s my guess that you don’t want to stay where you are…and if that’s the case, you have to be willing to get uncomfortable. 

Try New Things Often

In order to keep yourself growing, you have to learn new things or try new things. This could be as simple as picking up a new hobby, trying new food, thinking of new ideas, or reading books. Growth will naturally happen when you do things you haven’t done before because it causes you to be more aware of your situation. It gets you away from complacency and provides incredible benefits to your mental health. 

Pushing yourself to try new things will mean you have to figure situations out. Those experiences of meeting different people, seeing new places, and learning something new will add to your overall development of being a human being. It will also help you to live a more meaningful and healthy life.

Need a positive influence of simple things to try? Check out the 30-day challenge to do new things every day from Myrelle Oliver. 

Push Yourself Outside of Your Comfort Zone

Pushing yourself is often where the magic happens. It’s like working out because you are stressing your muscles, which causes them to tear and then rebuild to protect themselves. 

You developed life lessons when you do things that make you uncomfortable and get through them. It automatically builds your confidence, because you know you got through it once so you can do it again. Your mindset grows, and you develop callouses that help you push through other uncomfortable things. 

Prepare in Advance For Hard Things

One of the benefits of pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone is that it can help you prepare for hard things that you can’t control. By training your mind to get through the hard things you choose to do, you can push through mental battles, difficult circumstances, and unexpected things in life. 

Start small and work your way up…one of the things I do to push myself outside of my comfort zone is to take cold showers. No one wants to be in freezing water (especially in the middle of a New Jersey winter). But, I am training my mind to push through the discomfort the same way I would if I were increasing the weight I was lifting.  

Use Those Experiences to Become Version 2.0 of Yourself

Pushing yourself to try new things helps you to change your identity. It makes you be the person that does things they don’t want to do and be ok with it. 

My wife, Jill, and I recently took a big road trip with our three girls. We hit all three of these growth methods while we were away:

1. Some of what we did was outside of our comfort zone, like figuring out how to work from the car and hotel while our girls did virtual learning, and it worked.
2. Parts of the trip were challenging because we had to figure out where to eat with diet restrictions.
3. But, a large part of the trip was just experiencing different things like meeting new people, visiting historic and tourist spots, and driving on different road systems. 

Our trip helped us get away from everyday life and grow individually and as a family. We showed our girls how to be spontaneous, fun, and work together as a team. Since we did it once, we know we can do it again. 

Key takeaways:

• Try new things often
• Push yourself outside of your comfort zone
• Start small and work your way up
• Change your identity