One of my resolutions last year (generally speaking, not for New Years’) was to continue to step out of my comfort zone a bit more. We all have a little circle we draw invisibly around ourselves. Sometimes it’s a very tight circle, leaving very little space between you and your self-imposed boundaries. Sometimes it’s much wider, allowing for much more movement and latitude. I think I’m somewhere in the middle. But I decided that I didn’t want my comfort zone to hold me back from doing anything. For me, it can be any number of things, both big and small, that might hold me back. But that’s just it. I didn’t want anything to hold me back. And more to the point, I think it’s an important lesson for the kids as well. That sometimes we might be scared or nervous or just plain uncomfortable about something, but if we take a deep breath and “suck it up,” as I tell Nick a lot, we might even find something we enjoy that we once viewed as being outside of our comfort zone.
For me, the lesson to push myself more is perhaps equally important as I know the kids take their cues from me. If Mom isn’t comfortable doing something, how can I expect them to be? And being a single mom, I don’t have a lot of room to fall back on someone else to do something that makes me uncomfortable. Case in point: since we’ve moved back into this house, I’ve found two dead mice. Thank goodness they were dead first, but talk about outside of my comfort zone! Normally, The Husband would have taken care of it, and I wouldn’t have to give it a second thought. Not so much now. I swear, when I tried to pick up and dispose of the first mouse, the neighbors surely heard me shrieking. Nick was really bummed he wasn’t here to see said dead mice, so not only did I summon up enough gumption to get the mice out of the house, I also took a picture of them and sent it to him.
The two kids are very different from each other, and their comfort zone radius’ are just the beginning. Madeline will stand at the edge of a pool and dive into the water, where it’s four feet deep, without giving it a second thought. And then go again and again and again. Nick will ask 20 questions, weigh the pros and the cons and maybe forty-five minutes or so later, will wade in, inch by inch. While this particular scenario applies to the pool, it definitely extends to how they view things as a whole. She will seriously dive in, head first, to anything. He will question. Worry. Think. And may or may not do it.
I don’t want him to be scared. To worry. He’s seven! His list of worries should be very small, if in existence at all. I definitely push him. A lot. To break him out of his comfort zone a bit, to widen the circumference of the circle. Mostly because I don’t want him to miss out on something he might otherwise enjoy. As I explain to him, the more he does something, the more comfortable he will be, and he might find out he even likes something new. And I try to lead by example.  Dead mice and all.
Somewhere, between the two of them, the devil-may-care attitude and the cautiousness, there lies a happy balance. The trick is finding it.
So how do you step out of your comfort zone? Baby steps.  You wade in, little by little, until your boundaries reset. And you get comfortable again. And you wade out again, little by little. Pause. Reflect. Reset.
…