Are You Feeling Stuck in Your Career? | Advice From an Engineering Manager! [Escape Your Comfort Zone - Part 1 of 2]
There's one reason why you continue working extra hours in a soul crushing job without ever asking for a raise or pushing for a promotion.
And it's the same reason why you miss out on a lot of things in your life. The reason is called your comfort zone, and if you stay in it for too long, it will ruin you.
But don't worry, because in this video I'm gonna explain why your comfort zone is holding you back and what you can do to change that. Stay tuned.
Before I begin, I want to quickly introduce myself just in case you're wondering who I am or why you should listen to me.
I'm Doug Howard. I'm a licensed structural engineer and I'm also an engineering manager, mentor and career coach. And in my personal experience, it's never technical skills that are holding engineers back. So I started this YouTube channel to help you develop all the non-engineering skills that you need to create your own opportunities and take control of building the career that you want.
I release new episodes every week. So if you're an engineer who wants to put your career on an accelerated path hit that subscribe button right now. In today's episode, I'm gonna clear up a few misconceptions about your comfort zone by explaining what it actually is.
I'm also gonna explain how your comfort zone can ruin you if you stay in it too long. And at the end of this episode, I'm gonna tell you the only three ways to escape your comfort zone.
As an engineer, you are probably not comfortable with going outside of your comfort zone because you most likely prefer it when things are predictable and risk adverse, but I'm here to tell you that this is holding you back because going outside of your comfort zone is the best way to grow, gain perspective, discover new opportunities, and enhance the overall quality of your life.
Think of it this way, every day you're either getting better you're getting worse. You're either growing or you're dying. You're either moving forward or backwards, and because you're watching this video, I assume you're interested in self-development and personal growth and moving forward, and if that's the case, then you should watch my episode called Three Ways to Improve Your Patience.
Just click on the link to check it out. Now, as I was saying before, you're either growing or you're dying. I mean this literally, and it's because of your comfort zone.
The 3 Zones You Live In
Your comfort zone is your worst. staying in your comfort zone is actually dangerous to your personal development and your overall health. I'll explain why later in this video, but first I wanna explain what the comfort zone actually is because it's hard to notice it when you're in it. It's disguised as your friend, but it's really holding you back from reaching your full potential and it prevents you from new experiences and from moving on to bigger and better things.
It's the reason you play it safe, and it's because of your dna. You see, humans are hardwired to seek pleasure and comfort, and we're also hardwired to avoid pain and discomfort. In other words, we're programmed to play it safe. Now for hunter gatherer humans, this was a good thing because this trait kept us safe by, avoiding unnecessary risks, such as taking a nap in a lions.
But today we don't have to worry about getting eaten by a lion, and we don't have to worry about eating poisonous berries in the wild or anything like that. So this trait of ours actually has a negative impact on us now. Instead of keeping us safe, it's preventing us from growing. Now to better understand this idea, think of it this way.
The Zombie Zone
You know, everyone lives in one of three zones. I call the first zone the zombie. stagnation is the main theme in this zone. This is where everything you do requires going through infinite mundane and permissions and things that just stifle creativity and independent thought.
It's so mindless that it literally fries your brain and drains your. and it, it feels like it's crushing your soul. The reason that this happens is because it's part of our dna. if we're understimulated and if we're not using our intelligence, we suffer and we feel it. When you're living in this zone you feel like you're a prisoner.
You feel like you're being held against your will and unable to make your own choices. And if you live in this zone too long, you eventually become complacent and you switch on autopilot mode to avoid the pain. All of a sudden you're going through the motions every day without any goals on the horizon and without any end in sight.
It's the most painful of the three zones I'm gonna talk about. But sometimes this zone can lead to positive changes because it's so painful and there's so much discomfort that it actually forces you. Recognize that there is a problem and it can actually motivate you to make changes in your life and inspire you to take action so that you can escape the zombie zone. By the way, if you want me to create more videos on these topics, let me know by hitting that like button.
The Comfort Zone
The next zone is the main zone we're talking about in this episode, which is the comfort zone, and this is the zone that most people live in. The main theme in this zone is order. Another way to think of this zone is the, “if this, then that” zone, although that's pretty hard to say, I call it that because the majority of the things you do when you're living in this zone have a predictable outcome.
You can easily predict how each day is gonna go. from how the traffic on your daily commute is gonna go to the meals you're gonna eat this week, the conversations you're gonna have with coworkers at the water cooler.
You're able to predict all of these things with a high degree of accuracy. You know, Almost like the movie Ground talks there with Bill Murray. It's difficult to detect the comfort zone when you're in it because it isn't really painful or stress. It's just predictable because there's very little variation, when you're able to accurately predict the outcome of something, it provides you with a sense of comfort. but this is what makes the comfort zone the most dangerous of the three zones, there's really nothing to motivate you to get out of it.
Earlier in this video I mentioned how we as humans are hardwired to seek pleasure and comfort while avoiding pain. This isn't just physical pain, it also means mental pain, which means we clinging to our comfort zone to avoid dealing with fear, anxiety, stress, This is why you wanna watch favorite movies from your childhood.
This is why you crave things like this, when you're under a lot of stress.
What's really going on here is that you're craving predictable outcomes. This is where the term comfort food comes from, actually. Now, don't get me wrong, there's a time and a place for comforting yourself, but if you avoid your problems instead of facing them, they don't go away.
They just build up inside, ends up making you crave the predictability of your comfort zone even more. And as it continues, you end up becoming dependent on your comfort. and it doesn't end there either. Here's the real problem with the comfort zone. If you stay in the comfort zone too long, long enough to where everything is becoming predictable, then you continue thinking about everything the same way.
And this is what can ruin you. Because when something remains the same, it's no longer growing. In fact, it's more like a slow death because now order is limiting the way you think and. It's actually preventing you from gaining new perspectives and learning new things and evolving as a person. So from there, it's really hard to break the cycle because it feels well, it feels pretty comfortable.
Are you enjoying this episode? Do you find these insights useful and helpful? If you do, then make sure to subscribe to my newsletter, because I post new episodes like this every week.
The Growth Zone
The third zone is the one you want to be in. This is the growth zone. In this zone, outcomes are anything but predictable. So the main theme here is complexity and discomfort. Now when there's complexity and discomfort in your life, This means you need to learn, you need to adapt, you need to problem solve. And this is the ideal state for us to be in as humans. Because as humans, we're natural problem solvers. It's part of our dna. Our mind needs to be active, engaged, and challenged.
When we resolve problems and resolve challenges, it actually sends reward signals to the brain. It makes you feel good about yourself and it lifts your. . So by leaving your comfort zone and changing the order you're familiar with, it actually puts you in a continuous state of growth. But when you stay in the comfort zone, you're actually avoiding your problems, and that includes your stresses, your fears, and your anxieties, and you're also avoiding unknowns and risks, which means there's literally no problems for you to solve.
And without any problems or challenges, it's basically impossible for you to learn, grow, and reach your full potential.
In fact, when this happens, we actually turn inward by creating fake problems to solve just so that we have something to occupy us.
Figuring Out Which Zone You're In
Now that you're clear on this concept, what zone do you think you're in right now? Are you in the growth zone where you feel like you have a healthy dose of variants and challenges in your daily life? You feel like you're learning and growing and changing, and evolving. Or do you think you're in the zombie zone?
This is where you feel like you're running on autopilot. You almost feel like you're a prisoner held against your will without the ability to make independent thoughts and judgements,
Or are you like the majority of people, which means you're stuck inside the comfort zone. This is where things aren't necessarily bad, but they're predictable, they're boring and stagnant, and you're not really growing.
If you're stuck inside the comfort zone, don't worry, because I'm gonna teach you how to break the cycle.
But before I do, I wanna know what zone you think you're in and why? Let me know in the comments.
3 Ways to Escape Comfort Zone
The most dangerous part of the comfort zone is that you don't realize when you're in it, which is why there's only three ways to escape it. The first way is that it's forced. , something that you can't control or something that you can't prevent from happening, something like that happens to you and it instantly changes the order of your life by adding new complexities.
Some examples of how this can happen is, getting fired from your job injuring yourself badly, getting diagnosed with a limiting. Or perhaps losing a loved one. Okay. The second way to trigger the growth zone is through someone else helping you get there. If left on your own, people will consciously and subconsciously select comfort almost every time, and this is why you need to be pushed into complexity and pushed outside of your comfort zone, pushed into experiences that you wouldn't seek out on your own. You need to be pushed to these things in order to grow throughout your lifetime.
This role of pushing you outside of your comfort zone, this role is played by your parents, teachers, managers, friends, coworkers. I actually play this role for many engineers as a mentor and as a career coach by helping them uncover their blind spots and helping them learn. . Some other examples of this are, maybe your boss moves you onto a new team where you're working on projects with increased complexity and you're working alongside experienced veterans that you can learn from.
Another example is, your best friend guilt tripping you into going to a party that you would never go to on your. , these types of things. These are where outside forces push you outside of your comfort zone and influence you to go outside of your comfort zone. The third way to escape the comfort zone is to trigger complexity by yourself. This means taking a look in the mirror, recognizing that you're living inside your comfort zone, realizing that it's holding you back. And then from there, it means you proactively taking it upon yourself to go outside of your comfort zone. Now, this is really hard to do on your own, and if you're not sure how to do this, don't worry. I'm gonna give you practical exercises and simple experiments that you can use to get comfortable with going outside of your comfort zone.
But this video is getting pretty long, so I'm gonna break it. Be sure to check out part two of this episode. It's called 10 Ways to Get Comfortable with Going Outside of Your Comfort Zone. I included a link to this episode in the description.
