Jayden+V’s+2017+OpEd+Article

= = **__Comfort Zones__**

When was the last time you had any noteworthy success from your comfort zone? If so, how great of an accomplishment was it? It’s very unlikely it was if you’re operating from the comfort zone. Everyone’s comfortable there, except for successful people. Success: “the accomplishment of a goal”. A goal: a “desired result” to attain something not already owned or accomplished. Therefore by definition, achieving any degree of success would require having to make some sort of effort beyond one’s comfort zone, because no goal should ever be in known territory. In a race, no goal should never be the starting line, but the finish line. Anyone whose goal is the starting line- in a track race, or in the race of life, will accomplish nothing besides throwing away their potential to be great.

Even the feeling of accomplishment is stronger when a task outside of your comfort zone is completed. Tasks within one’s comfort zone are typically something one has done multiple times and lose all meaning over time. Why do we celebrate a baby standing up and walking for the first time, and not celebrating our first steps of the day when we wake up? Because we’ve taken millions of steps throughout our lifetime. It’s the same way a drug addict has to continually use more and more of the same drug to reach the same high. It’s the same way we feel bored after continually playing a video game on easy over and over: there’s no challenge. It’s the same way a book is slightly less exciting after a second read, or why we feel less rush the second time on a roller coaster: we know how it will turn out. One must constantly expand and move outside of their comfort zone. Successful, ambitious people need to explore uncharted territory and expand their own capabilities to feel as if something is worth their time.

Excuses to remain in the comfort zone include procrastination, fear of risk, and downright denial of a goal’s importance to one’s happiness or success. None of which are valid excuses should the goal or task be truly important. Don’t want to try out for a middle school sports team because you told yourself you’d try out next year? Don’t want to try out for a high school sports team because you’re you might get injured against more athletic players? Don’t want to keep playing because it’s not as important as your AP classes? Well, you didn’t try out in seventh or eighth grade like you planned to. However, you did try out in high school despite fear of injury and did end up injured often, but not enough to keep you off the court. And turns out playing was important for you physically and mentally.

The truth of clichés is that they are often used because they are true, but aren’t taken so seriously unless experience has proven that a cliché is correct. Afraid of skydiving? In the great words of the Nike slogan and Shia Labeouf, “just do it”. Want to open your own business? Just do it. Afraid to ask someone out? Just do it. Afraid try out for a team? Just do it. I’m afraid to write a muckraker project on the comfort zone because I might not be able to make a good argument? I’ll just do it. Because whatever goal I have in my life, I’ll just do it.