Every decision in your life that you have made so far led to you coming to my site, which is great. A lot of the decisions you have made were in your comfort zone, there are also decisions that you made from out of your comfort zone. As my homepage makes it clear: “Great things never came from comfort zones”, it is also important to make choices out of your comfort zone sometimes. Think about some great memories that you have made, were those all in your comfort zone? When you are making choices from your comfort zone, you have little to no mental resistance to do these things, which is completely fine. In this blog, you are going to read a personal story from me about how important it can be to step out of your comfort zone.
Personal
January next year I am going to study abroad for six months. This will be completely out of my comfort zone; I still live with my parents, I have never traveled alone, and I will be going on my own with no one else with me. Furthermore, it will be the first time I will not be playing football in my hometown since I am eight years old, and I will not see my friends and family for a long time. These are some solid personal reasons why I did not want to be going to study abroad, but I am still going. Let me tell you my story of how I ended up here. Some of the sentences are in bold, later you will know why.
Conversations
Throughout this year I have had a lot of conversations about my study. Most of the time it went like: “Oh you are already in your third year!” or “What minor are you going to choose?”. Every time I answered that I wanted to do a minor in psychology but I was not sure yet. One time a friend of mine said “You can also do your minor abroad!”. The way he said it appealed to me, he said it with a lot of enthusiasm. I did not think about studying abroad, it has always been a sort of dream to me, but now that dream suddenly came close to happening. That friend did go to China for half a year, he made a lot of great experiences there. I borrowed the book ‘The untethered soul’ from him, which is about making choices from your own soul and stepping out of your comfort zone. Not only did I read that book, but I also took it to practice in real life (which changed me in a positive way). The reason why I mention this will become clear later in this blog. On Christmas Eve my sister came to visit, that day we also talked about studying abroad. She is studying at the same school as me and studied in Spain for half a year. She also recommended me to study abroad, which gave me even more energy to make my dream come true.
Deadline
About half a month later after Christmas Eve, my sister told me about the deadline from school that was on the 1st of January. This made me quite frustrated, to be honest, I did not even know about a deadline. For clarity, I did not blame my sister but my school that did not e-mail me any information about studying abroad. Later, I got to know the information about studying abroad was on the school’s app, which I do not really use. A week later, 17 January to be precise, my sister texted me saying that the deadline had been moved to 1 February. This gave me a good feeling because I could still fix it, but on the other hand, it immediately gave me that feeling to just play it safe and do my study in my own country. In my opinion, I was too late, I needed to fix it on my own in like 2 weeks and did not have a clue what to do. So, my dream ended there.
Presentation
On the 21st of January I had a presentation at school with my project group for a certain subject. The presentation was planned at 09:30 AM, this presentation would be rated by group B (we were group A). When I got on the train at 08:30 AM I saw my friend Daniël. I was confused seeing him, he was in group C and needed to present an hour later than me. First, I wanted to travel alone with my music on, but on second thought I went to sit next to him to travel together. Apparently, his group had switched with group B, a girl from group B wanted that for personal reasons, which is why he was on the same train as me. While we were traveling, I suddenly thought about studying abroad and what my sister had said to me. For a few seconds, I was doubted to decide to tell Daniël everything, after those seconds I did tell him, and he was very enthusiastic to study abroad. The whole trip we talked about stepping out of your comfort zone, great experiences that you can make and how great studying abroad will be. When we arrived, we both concluded: we are going to study abroad, no matter how bad our situation is now.
Top 5
A day after the presentations Daniël texted me. He said that he wanted to hang out and do the research we need to have to study abroad. When I read his text, I was thinking “Do I really want to do this?”, in the end, I answered that he could visit me the next day. We had a nice session, it helps to get out of your comfort zone when your friends are doing it as well, it gave me a lot of positive energy. At the end of the session, we agreed to make our top 5 universities we wanted to visit. Further on that week (27 January) we submitted our top 5, which meant we made it to the deadline of 1 February. The days after 27 January Daniël texted me a few times saying that we still needed to fill in some things, I was not interested in this because we had already done the job. On the last day (31 January) I texted Daniël to have a meeting that day. When we had that meeting, we found out that I still needed to fill in some things online for studying abroad. I was very lucky that I texted Daniël the night before to have that meeting, otherwise, I would not make it to the deadline of 1 February.
Website
After our meeting in January, we continued to have meetings, this time every week. One day he showed me that he started to make his own website using Wix. I was very enthusiastic about it; these are things you do not see very often from friends. When he showed me his website, I was thinking: “I can do this as well!” Days after he showed me this, I tried making a website with different ideas. I had the idea to make an online CV or an online travel website. This did not work out the way I wanted it to be, and in my opinion, it became very boring to work on. All these days I kept thinking “I want to write an informational blog about being dependant on the time, but why would I do that and who would care?” A week later, I wrote that blog I wanted to make, which became my first blog on this website.
Comfort zone
Now you have read my story, you hopefully understand how important it can be to step out of your comfort zone. Personally, the book ‘The untethered soul’ helped me a lot with stepping out of my comfort zone, also in this story. You are maybe thinking why some sentences are in bold. The sentences that are in bold are thoughts coming from my comfort zone I could have followed, but I did not. Every sentence in bold has a huge impact on the story; if I did not talk about studying abroad with my sister, or traveled alone without speaking to Daniël, or did not plan a meeting on 31 January, I would not be going to study abroad. Now you are maybe thinking “You just needed to tell Daniël, or just traveled with him or just answered his text, what is the big deal?”. The thing is all these decisions were out of my comfort zone. To be clear: answering his text was not out of my comfort zone but knowing that by agreeing to him I will be working on the process to study abroad definitely was out of my comfort zone.
This was my personal story to you; imagine the great stories you can make by stepping out of your comfort zone! My advice to you is to start with little steps, look at how many little steps I made to study abroad. Want to speak to a friend that you did not speak for a while? Text him, there is a chance that he wants to speak to you as well. Want to start your own business but do not know where to start? Search for information online and from other persons to make it clearer. The biggest step is to start, once you get the ball rolling it will go much easier to step out of your comfort zone. Remember that every path has its ups and downs, keep following your goals by thinking about why you started the journey. Also, follow your own path, do not let others stand in your way. If you want to do it, do it :)
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