When we talk about self development in any possible field of life, be it the development of a new skill or of a new or old and rusty trait of your character, we have to go through different stages to get there.
We all know the term “comfort zone”. This zone is where we feel at ease, where what we do feels easy, and we feel confident. This is an amazing place to be, mostly when we need some rest and restoration. But it is not where growth happens.
Development happens in a different zone, called the growth zone. Here, whatever you do is fairly new, and doesn’t feel so familiar. You need much more focus and much more energy to move within this area. If you move intelligently within this zone, you will – with time and commitment – learn new things. And – with time and commitment – these new things will become familiar and fall into your comfort zone eventually, making it bigger. This is how you literally grow.
However, growth or development does not happen so easily. There is an additional component that we have to take into consideration. Which is the panic zone. It is fairly easy to fall into this “trap”, whenever we push ourselves too much, whenever we do not take time to carefully plan our growth, or whenever we want everything immediately, burning out all our energies. When we don’t consider our current state of being – mental or physical – and we just push ourselves out of our comfort zone, we land in the panic zone. The result is, that we get either scared, or burned out. Both of which outcomes send us directly back into our comfort zone – more afraid than ever to get out again and grow.
This is where yoga can help us learn, step by step, to check in with ourselves and to understand how we are moving forward. We can ask ourselves how we are feeling today, how much we actually can commit based on our resources, and then – maybe – try something new or something challenging. As soon as we understand that we are going too far, we take a controlled step back and rebalance, so that we can keep growing without falling into the panic zone or falling back into the comfort zone.