Comfort Zone and Safety Zone

By now I hope you accept that the majority of our automatic day to day decisions are affected by cognitive biases.

In this lesson we’re going to discuss the effect that our perception of comfort and safety has on our lives, because here’s something most people don’t realise. Comfort and safety are not the same thing. Not even close. And confusing them could be the most dangerous mistake you make.

I’m sure many of you will have heard the story in Greek mythology of Icarus and his father, the master craftsman Daedalus. The story, if you remember, tells of their attempted escape from the Island of Crete using wings they’d constructed from feathers attached to their bodies with wax.

Prior to their escape, Daedalus warned his son Icarus of not being overconfident or complacent. He told him not to fly too high, as the rays from the sun might melt the wax, or fly too low, where the water could waterlog his feathers.

The story goes that Icarus didn’t heed his father’s advice. He flew too close to the sun. The wax melted in his wings, and he fell into the sea where he drowned.

Many say the moral of the story can be attributed to hubris, pride, overconfidence, or even complacency. Traits commonly found in the young, you may say. But these aren’t the themes we’re going to talk about today. Instead, we’re going to use this story to discuss your comfort zone and your safety zone.

In this example, Icarus, despite falling from the sky to his death, had stayed inside his comfort zone. His ability to fly comfortably made him overconfident, and he flew higher than was safe. Unfortunately for him, he’d left his safety zone without realising. It’s when you leave your safety zone that disaster can hit, and this was exactly what happened to Icarus. This was the real cause for his downfall.

Comfort zone and safety zone are both commonly used terms. The majority of people who haven’t really thought about these two concepts tend to regard them as the same thing. Yet in reality, they’re two totally different concepts.

In this lesson, I’m going to explain why it’s important for you to understand the difference between these two concepts. I’m going to tell you the importance of each, and some of the common traps people get themselves into when they get these concepts mixed up.

The definition of comfort zone is that it’s a behavioural state within which a person operates in an anxiety-neutral condition, using habitual behaviour to perform tasks to an acceptable standard. When you’re in your comfort zone, you usually feel fine. Your stress levels are low. You can even switch off, zone out, function almost automatically.

For a business, it may mean doing things in the same way you always have, operating in the same marketplace, selling the same products, delivering a service to the same customers.

For most of us, comfort zone is living in today’s society doing what’s expected, stumbling along in life, chilling out, taking it easy, never really questioning the need for anything different.

I believe your comfort zone is also a type of mental conditioning, one that you create. It causes you to operate within self-imposed mental boundaries. Yet these self-imposed boundaries are dangerous for two reasons. Firstly, they create a sense of security which may be unfounded. Secondly, these boundaries are limiting to what you think you can achieve.

When you’re in your comfort zone, you’re on autopilot. You’re following old routines, old habits. You get by doing what you’re used to doing, applying what you already know, doing what’s easy. You keep doing it because it feels good, stress free, and safe.

Although being in your comfort zone feels safe, nothing could be further from the truth. Additionally, the self-imposed mental boundaries cause a closed mindset, closed to new growth, new things, certainly one that doesn’t prepare you for opportunities and challenges when they arise.

Staying in your comfort zone may not always be beneficial, and it can leave you at a disadvantage despite how comfortable it feels. In addition, your life in your comfort zone could be causing you problems later in life that you’re just not aware of yet.

Your safety zone, on the other hand, is where you’re doing something in a safe environment. Unlike your comfort zone, your safety zone is relative to factors in your external environment, as opposed to your comfort zone, which is generally about how you feel internally.

Perhaps you’ve never really thought that feeling good internally may be blinding you to what’s really going on around you, may be blinkering you to what is actually safe.

Some of us go through most of our lives without leaving our comfort zone. Whether it be comfort eating, chilling out, sitting back, aiming for average, taking our foot off the gas, or just coasting along through life. The trouble is, sometimes our comfort zone and safety zone diverge.

For a while, you may feel comfortable smoking, drinking too much, or just doing next to nothing to cause any stress in your life. But too long in your comfort zone can be a dangerous thing.

When your comfort zone and safety zone diverge and move apart, to stay in your safety zone, you’ll often need to move out of your comfort zone to keep safe. This may mean changing some of your habits, changing your peers, looking after yourself a bit more, doing things differently. It may also mean you need to start thinking about learning new things, building new skills, growing as an individual, or changing the way you think.

The trouble is we’re too easily conditioned to stay in our comfort zones. It feels good. It takes little effort, stress, or energy to stay there. But this is also where complacency sets in, and like Icarus, we fail to see we’re leaving our safety zone as we get ourselves into trouble.

At the very least, we need to recognise that our comfort zone and our safety zone are totally discrete concepts that sometimes, often, overlap. We also need to recognise when our comfort zone no longer lies in our safety zone. This is when change needs to happen in your life.

There are times when you can no longer live life on autopilot, when you need to leave your comfort zone, to grow, to learn, to take risks, to change the way you do things if you’re to succeed or get what you want later in life.

Some people believe the quote that “life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” For these people, their norm is to push the envelope, to raise the bar, to stay clearly outside their comfort zone to challenge themselves to be better.

Being outside your comfort zone means there are heightened levels of stress, and to a point, this can lead to optimum performance. Yet too much can lead to burnout, so there’s definitely a balance we need to strike. It’s worth remembering that excess will take you out of your safety zone just as much as not enough.

The point I’m trying to make is that there will be a time when living a life in your comfort zone, putting in minimum effort, doing what you’ve always done, will not get you what you want. Your situation can change. It may be the kick up the arse you need. It may be a traumatic or nasty experience. Or things may change gradually without you realising, as it did for Icarus.

There are times when your environment can change, and staying in your comfort zone may no longer be a safe place to be.

The question is, are you living a life right now that’s going to cause you to coast out of your safety zone at some time soon? The message I’m giving you in this lesson is that letting your life pass you by and coasting along may not be safe.

So perhaps it’s time to start making those uncomfortable changes in your life that you know you really need to make. Perhaps you need to start stretching yourself too.

Because the most dangerous place you can be is somewhere that feels comfortable but isn’t actually safe. And you won’t know the difference until it’s too late.

Further reading

The Second Order Effect

The Drug Mis-Influence Tendency

Threshold: The Line Between Knowing and Doing

Feedback

External Validation

Causality, and the Moments in Life That Define Everything

Further reading

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