We all need to feel safe, sound and secure. What is familiar can be quite comforting. Yet, if all we do is allow ourselves to remain in the same spot, at what point do we start to feel stagnant, stale, or perhaps bored? The Comfort Zone can be very wonderful, but at some juncture to continue growing we may find it wise to extend it’s boundaries.

Over the eons scholars, authors and celebrities have dropped tidbits about how the Comfort Zone has affected their lives. Recently an actor said on a talk show, “It feels nice and safe to continue playing the same role over and over, but after a while it can trap your creativity.” He went on to say “When you decide to make changes in your life or career, forces seem to come out of nowhere to stop you from going forward.” An author said recently “Life is like an air flight….before you get to cruise control where everything runs smoothly, you hit pockets of turbulence.” As we can see, to move forward, it sometimes can take a touch of bold determination.

Do we have to always choose between comfort and growth, or comfort and stagnation? Or, is it change itself that we have to come to grips with? The trick seems to be to allow change to become part of the Comfort Zone. Not an easy task indeed, but very possible. Ages and stages are parts of life, each one bringing it’s own challenges to be overcome. We are supposed to know more and be better people at forty, then we were at twenty…if not, then we wasted some of our precious time. Can it be said that we can only hold on to yesterday for so long, until we have to let it go? Tomorrow can be an enemy, or a friend…how we deal with it is up to us, both inward and outward. The Comfort Zone can be a place of growth and knowledge, as long as we let the winds of change blow through it.

May the winds prevail,

love, Jennifer Avalon
© 2004 Jennifer Avalon