The other night on YouTube I stumbled across a TedTalk (yes, I still watch them even though I graduated high school 2 years ago) about “How to stop screwing yourself over”, so naturally, I clicked on it because I tend to constantly self-sabotage. It really made me look at the way I behave and make choices in certain situations in a different way, wanting to improve the way I think. One of my goals is to stop depending on the safety of my comfort zone. The video inspired me to write about my own personal take on what the speaker was saying during her talk.

It feels as though I have been doing the same thing over and over for the past few years. Go to school, go to work, have similar meals every day, and never break the routine. As you can probably figure, that can get pretty boring. Sometimes it may not even be noticeable of how much of a routine it actually is until we step back and examine what it is we really want out of life. I know that I don’t want to be doing what I am doing everyday right now for the rest of my life. Sometimes it just starts with little things, maybe have lunch in a park instead of at home, read a book instead of scrolling through social media, or teach yourself to play an instrument. I have tried all of these and they have significantly improved my life (well besides the fact that I let my musical ability to play the piano dwindle down to only knowing how to play “Mary Had a Little Lamb”). Of course, these are just small things to do to get used to the uncomfortable feeling of breaking a routine, bigger steps should be taken too (personally I haven’t quite gotten there yet). But, breaking these small little fragments of my daily routine allowed me to become more aware of what it is I like to do, and it can do the same for you once we get past the metaphorical emergency break in our brains.

What is this metaphorical emergency break you ask? Any time we do anything different from our normal routine, our brain likes to pull an “emergency break”. When we are in a routine we just coast along and go with the flow of what we trained ourselves to do every day, but when an opportunity arises that may appeal to us we have a jolt of energy that says “YES! Let’s do this!” But right after we think that, the emergency break gets pulled and says, “what do you think you’re doing trying to break this routine of comfort and security?”. And then we quietly sit back down, and our ideas are still ideas. A personal example is when I’m in class and want to raise my hand to answer a question, but never do because it’s not something I’m used to. It’s called a comfort zone for a reason, but nothing can get accomplished by staying there. Anything that is a break from this stability is going to require determination and action. We are chained to the want for comfort and security in our lives. While this is a great thing to have, we can never really be sure that it will be there ALL the time because of unpredictable events. We can never quite rely on it, and once we let this go we can really start to change the way we live our lives for the better.

We convince ourselves that we are fine not having the things we wish to accomplish because we have been doing "ok" without it, but why deprive ourselves of this? There is nothing selfish about wanting to be better for yourself. All of us have ideas that can change our lives for the better as well as other people’s. Why limit yourself? A lot of us may not do anything with these ideas. I know for sure I let a lot of thoughts pass my brain that I thought would be interesting to elaborate on but never thought it would be possible for me to accomplish it. How silly! If that has happened to you before, this is your sign to STOP letting those brilliant ideas just be ideas. Make them THINGS. We often forget how powerful it is that we have a choice. There’s no reason we can’t be everything we want to be, and a lot of times it is ourselves that stop us. Not anymore.

When we feel the need for adventure, it's just like wanting food when we're hungry, but rarely do we ever satisfy the need for adventure. To me, it's almost just as important as any other thing we need to survive. Treat your need for adventure like it's a hunger, make it an essential part of your life no matter how big or small of a change it takes to satisfy. Soon enough you will see life changing improvements that allow you to not pull that metaphorical emergency break anymore.

Now, I still have A LOT of work to do to improve my reliance on my comfort zone. It's different for everyone. The most important thing is to acknowledge that you WANT to change something for the BETTER, and not to be scared to allow yourself to go for it! Don't be the one to hold yourself back when you know that you are capable of accomplishing so much. You got this!