When you spend most of your childhood in the same place, your comfort zone becomes real small. Same house, same neighborhood, same friends, same school. You know what to expect each day, every week, every month. The biggest changes are when your sibling gets married, and you have to learn how to accept a new person into your day to day life. Many people can live inside this comfort zone, thrive inside it even, but I knew pretty early on that this wasn’t for me.
Overlooking the small town I grew up in.
“Life begins at the edge of your comfort zone.”
-Neale Donald Walsch
When I was 13 my brother and I were looking for for a way to make a little money in the summertime. My dad was a professor at a local college and one of his students had grown up on a farm. Turns out, the farm needed extra hands for the summer. So my brother and I packed some bags and were driven the 4 hours up into northeast Washington to work the hay fields. About 10 miles from the Canadian border on the banks of the Kettle River there was a little farm. We spent five weeks living in a caravan that got only two radio stations, learning how to drive any farm equipment necessary for the plowing, planting, fertilizing, harvesting, baling, and delivering. It was so long ago, I’ve forgotten much of what I learned in those fields, but I know this for sure; it was outside my comfort zone.
When I was 15, I was again looking for work for the summertime. This time, on the promise of becoming a ranch hand I packed my bags and headed to northeast Oregon. Upon arrival, I was told that I was not going to be able to work on the ranch, but instead I could wash dishes in a local restaurant. Already having come this far, and not wanting to return home, I took up the offer. The restaurant sat on the rim of Joseph Canyon, 35 miles from the nearest town. I was given a room in a farmhouse with a few college aged guys, about five miles away. Every morning, I would get up and walk the five miles to the restaurant. When it wasn’t busy, I spent the early afternoons scraping paint off the outside walls prepping for a new paint job. After climbing ladders in the sun for a few hours, I would spend the next 6-8 hours standing at a sink in the kitchen washing plate after plate. I have tons of stories and memories of that summer, but the one thing that stands out more than anything… It was outside my comfort zone.
The next summer, when I was 16, I bought a plane ticket and flew to the south for a month and a half. I visited friends and explored as much as I could around Virginia, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. I took a train - one of the only I’ve ever taken in the United States - from Atlanta to Birmingham. I spent weekends at basketball camps with people I had never met, and walked up and down the beach in Florida alone. It was a bit more comfortable because every week or so I’d see people that I knew, but it was still outside my comfort zone.
At 18, I packed my life into a couple suitcases and a few boxes, flew across the country, and got dropped off outside a dorm building on a college campus that I had seen one time in my entire life. Somewhere that I knew exactly four of the people on campus before arriving. To say it was outside my comfort zone would be an understatement.
At 21 years old I climbed onto a plane headed for South Africa for three months. I didn’t know anyone in the country, or even on the entire continent. At this point, what even was my comfort zone?
Overlooking Camps Bay, South Africa
At 22, I moved my entire life to a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific…
At 24, I quit my full-time job with salary and benefits in order to chase a dream I had…
At 26, I moved my entire life (AGAIN) to an unknown country in southeastern Europe…
A number of years ago, I came across a YouTube channel called Yes Theory. One of the things that drives the channel is the idea of seeking discomfort. Video after video they push themselves - and sometimes strangers - to push past their bubble of comfortability and see what kind of freedom lies on the other side.
“When we started Seek Discomfort, the lightning bolt quickly became a representation of the movement. It’s the spark that ignites when you dare to step outside your comfort zone. A sudden jolt of excitement within you when you move through fear. A flash of clarity when you realize that life is limitless.”
- Yes Theory
If life begins at the edge of our comfort zone, I want to be crossing that edge any chance I get. I’ve already been doing it for almost two decades without fully realizing it. Just looking for the next adventure has caused me to seek discomfort repeatedly. I don’t want to live a life that is too comfortable. By pushing that edge, my comfort zone grows and so do I.