Leaving the Comfort Zone

Comfort Zone – let me back in. I like the comfort zone – hence the name, I know. But while my rational side knows it’s good to leave it, a big part of me wants to stay or resents the force pushing me out. TriJack at MyDailySpin has a great entry about this.

Anyway, I have a student intern that started today. I like giving back to the profession and know having a student makes me stronger, but it messes up the routine. If I’m painfully honest, though, I’ll say that my routine can be more than boring, it can be lazy. The student pushes me when I push the student. I get stuck in a rut with patient treatments and now I have to justify to the student why I do what I do. I can’t ask her why I shoudl do something if I don’t know why myself.

Now we all know that work isn’t the only comfort zone. There are zones for home, friends, hobbies, athletics, etc. I (literally) ran across my comfort zone on my lunch run today. I was running with Doza and we had a pretty good pace going. I was thinking “This is kind of fast, we should slow down.” Then I wondered “why? – Why can’t I go fast? What am I afraid of? Am I afraid of running out of steam or afraid of being good?” Well, I let it fly and it was awesome! We just kept gradually picking up the pace and it continued to feel good. It was our best time yet and my fastest pace: 3.25 miles at 8:30 pace. For me, that’s really, really, good. So sometimes, it does feel good to leave the comfort zone.