For decades, we have been taught that growth is a result of a linear process that looks something like this:

  • leaving the comfort zone
  • breaking through the fear zone
  • challenging yourself
  • and then experiencing growth as a result
A depiction of the traditional approach to the comfort zone, challenge and learning zones, and personal growth zone.

This process resonates with us because, as a society, we have been taught that growth only comes from the fruits of our labor and that for growth to be meaningful, it must have been an arduous process.

Not only is this conventional depiction incomplete, but parts of it are dead wrong, and others are contributing to our poor relationship with our own emotions.

So in preparation for our Integrative Breathwork Experience tomorrow (and simply to help in general), I wanted to share the approach I use with my clients to help them dream bigger, reach further, and create lasting personal evolution.

My approach (I call it the comfort expansion model) differs in three key ways:

  • Growth comes from expanding the boundary of your comfort zone, not living in a persistent state of discomfort and distress.
  • We leverage our comfort zone as our foundation of confidence, embarking on a bite-sized series of small experiments to get uncomfortable, grow our comfort zone (and feel comfortable again), and then repeat.
  • We build a strong relationship with our emotions, to help us identify our personal fuzzy boundaries between comfort and confidence, discomfort and uncertainty, and fear and distress.
The Comfort Expansion Model is an evolved approach to personal growth.

But first, what is personal growth?

I like (part) of the definition from the Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research, where personal growth “relates to the process of becoming better in a personally meaningful way.” Here is why I believe this definition is fruitful for us:

  • Personal growth is a process. There should be a start in the process AND there should be an end to the process.
  • Becoming better. It might be a coaching mindset thing, but I always begin with the belief that they are enough as they are. We all want to be better at something and improve, but we should celebrate that we have such a great starting place.
  • Personally meaningful way. This part denotes a personal measurement scale for what is meaningful change. And so many of us try to become better WITHOUT a way to tell us, objectively (and with certainty) that we did indeed achieve our goal. Instead, people change their goal and make it bigger and harder, instead of letting themselves achieve it and celebrate it.

Growth is domain-specific and happens when we expand our comfort zone.

Wait, what the heck does domain-specific mean?

Think of a domain as simply a part of your life. Let’s pretend that you are an artist, for example. You are pretty shy. You are physically active, but never got along with sports because the whole hand-eye thing was hard (and THAT I can personally relate with).

These three “domains” might look something like this:

Notice that each zone looks different, reflecting differing levels of comfort, discomfort, and distress. As an artist, you feel really comfortable with illustration (reflecting the many years of hard work learning, practicing, sketching, failing at drawing a human-looking face so many times, etc).

When it comes to growing within “illustration” as a domain:

  • You can try something new and have a lot of confidence to build upon.
  • Growth takes less emotional labor.
  • You rarely feel the presence of fear and anxiety when working within this domain.

But let’s say you want to grow your presence within the local community, and you want to do that through an installation at a local gallery.

Part of this experience is giving a speech in front of those who gathered. But when you think about that, you are paralyzed with fear. 😰

It’s because, within the public-speaking domain of your life, there simply isn’t that much of a comfort zone. And so, most of the time, public speaking is a distressing experience.

Now, maybe you throw yourself in and do it anyway because, for the sake of our careers, we sometimes just need to jump into the deep end (and because the only availability in the next year for a gallery show was in a month).

Great - that experience with the right mindset, no matter what happens, can expand your comfort zone. But let’s be real, distressing yourself regularly for the sake of growth is not a sustainable strategy. Constantly throwing yourself into distress can create negative associations between your art and distress, it can decrease your motivation because the process of growth always feels so arduous and terrible, and it can decrease your available energy for other activities (and then burn you out).

A better approach is to consider the edge of your comfort and discomfort range as a reference point and gradually widen that range over time. By leveraging confidence from your comfort zone, you can strengthen and nurture your growth over time.

When our emotions, like anxiety and fear, can be leveraged as signals on the comfort-to-distress continuum, we can more fluidly navigate our personal growth.

So let’s do that together at Embrace!

Preparing for Embrace

Our linked breathwork experience, Embrace, is a safe place to explore the boundaries of your comfort zone, discomfort zone, and distress zone, and how our emotions can play a useful role. This can be a particularly useful experience for those who have anxiety. Together, we will:

  • Bring our audacious dream and vision to this experience.
  • Identify our foundation of comfort, and connect with what safety and confidence feel like.
  • Explore our discomfort to learn about how our next step can move us forward, and then use our breath and confidence to ease any anxiety and stress.
  • Understand that growth is a fluid process that we can influence. We CAN grow, feel confident, and navigate any discomfort, anxiety, stress, and fear that comes our way.

This integrative breathwork experience is active, leveraging four breathing patterns and two of my unique breathing sequences.

You can best prepare for this experience by thinking about your big audacious dream and the vision you built in our last breathwork experience. If you didn’t attend - that’s okay! Simply bring focus to what you want your 2024 to look like, with the different accomplishments you experienced along the way.

Most importantly, bring yourself, just the way you are. This experience will meet you where you are and partner with you to help you reach where you want to go.

Breathwork+ subscribers have OnDemand access to this and other guided experiences. Access OnDemand through our community or click here.