295. When Your Comfort Zone Is Your Prison Cell (aka Running Nowhere Fast)

When your comfort zone has turned into a prison cell, it's time to reevaluate your life. It might be time to start running away.

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I got injured right as I started training for the New York City Marathon.

I’m not surprised.
My wife wasn’t surprised.
My friends weren’t surprised.
Nobody was surprised.

It’s the type of thing I do - I injure myself at the most inopportune time in the most ridiculous way.

I once tripped on the sidewalk and broke my back in two places.

I once slipped off a cliff and hung on for dear life until someone came by with a rope to pull me to safety.

But back to the NYC Marathon.

It turns out I strained my lower leg. It was the right soleus, for those of you who paid attention in physiology class.

After weeks of rest and care, I still couldn’t run more than a few blocks without debilitating pain. It sucked.

But being unable to run never stopped me from running, and it surely wasn’t going to stop me now. So I went to the gym.

I soon discovered that I could train on the elliptical machine with little to no pain. Yay me.

I also soon discovered that this experience would lead to an important life lesson that snuck up on me and clobbered me out of nowhere.

More on that in a second.

Running Nowhere Fast

The thing about the elliptical machine is that no matter how fast you run, you end up in the same place. Regardless of the effort, despite the pain, and the mental obstacles of prolonged elliptical-ing, when all is said and done, you’ve gone nowhere.

But it was my only choice.

So for 4 days per week over the next 3 months, I was on that elliptical, working hard and going nowhere.

One day I even elliptical-ed for 26.2 miles without a rest.

In the end, I made it to the NYC Marathon. I even finished the race in a better-than-expected time, all things considered.

And this brings us to that important life lesson I mentioned up yonder. It’s a lesson about running away.

A Lesson About Running Away

There are two types of people in this world:

Some people run away from their problems by packing up and leaving. Other people run away by staying in the same place.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not the type of person who stays in the same place when I’m unhappy.

I run.
That’s why the elliptical experience was such an eye-opener in my life.

During one of my elliptical sessions, I had a kind of epiphany. I think it was an epiphany. I’d never had one before so I don’t really know how an epiphany is supposed to feel.

You know what, let me explain what happened and you can decide if it was an epiphany or not. Here’s what I realized:

Back when I was 25 years old, I made a commitment to myself that I’d only work with people I respect, and only do things I’m passionate about.

In order to do this, I had to take control of my career. So I became an entrepreneur. I charted my own course in life.

I started my first company while in my mid-20s. Built it, sold it, and then started a new company in a different area of passion.

No regrets, right?

Well, now here we are, a few decades down the train tracks, running to nowhere on an elliptical with an injured leg, and I’m wondering whether I chose a career because I was running toward something I wanted or because I wanted to run away from something I feared.

Justifying Your Unhappiness

As an executive coach, I naturally come across people who seem unhappy in their jobs.

“Why are you still working there?” I’ll ask.

I’m interested in their answers, not so much for the reasons why they stay in their unhappy job, but to learn how they justify their unhappiness.

“I need the money and benefits,” some say.
“It will get better eventually,” some hope.
“What if another job is worse?” others justify.

Do any of these sound familiar to you?
Have you said the same things yourself?

Do you try to justify your emotional safety?

The Prison of The Comfort Zone

Maintaining emotional safety is a critical component of a happy life. Emotional safety grounds us.

Whatever the situation and no matter who you are, you will always - eventually - gravitate back to your comfort zone to feel safe.

But just as the comfort zone is our emotional sanctuary, it can also be a prison cell.

<cue foreboding soundbyte>

The more that gravity pulls you towards your comfort zone, the greater the force that’s needed to escape it.

This is why, if you are in an unhealthy environment, it can be really hard to run away into the unknown.

Those excuses that I mentioned above - the ones where people justify staying in a job they don’t like - those are the words of people who have turned their comfort zone into a prison cell. They’re trapped in familiarity and petrified to leave.

So let me ask you again… is that you?

The Prison Cell of Comfort

There are a few reasons why it’s hard to leave the comfort zone when your comfort zone is riddled with pain.

First, there is fear of change. Change is hard. Change is scary. Change means running away from your comfort zone because you believe there is a better comfort zone somewhere else. But you could be wrong.

The reason fear of change exists is because we find comfort in the familiar. When you knowing something, when it becomes familiar, you get a sense of stability - even if the stability is itself unstable. It’s that old “devil you know vs the devil you don’t” scenario except in this case, the devil is your emotions.

We justify staying with “the devil we know” by convincing ourselves that the emotional cost of staying is less risky than the potential benefits of leaving.

If any of those three things resonate with you, then you’re the type of person who runs away by staying in the same place.

Welcome to your own personal epiphany.

Running Away

It takes a lot of courage to run away, and more than a modicum of insanity. It involves:

1. Understanding what makes you happy in life

2. Creating long-term goals to strive towards

3. Assessing how your current situation is leading to #s 1 and 2 above

4. Building tools to help overcome the fear of change (like, say, a coach. Or a strong support network)

5. Setting actionable goals and timelines

6. Holding yourself accountable

So let me ask you:

• What would you do if fear wasn’t a factor?

• Are you staying because it’s easy, or because it’s right?

• What would your life look like if you stepped out of your uncomfortable comfort zone?

Running away is hard. And as I realized in my elliptical epiphany, the decision to do so isn’t always black and white.

You may never know if the future you risked living is better than the past you risked leaving.

But that’s what we call “life”.

Is It Time for You to Run?

I get it - running away might sound like a cop-out. But it’s not. At least not how I’m referring to it. Running away is sometimes the bravest move you can make in life.

The most important part is to understand if you’re already running away by going nowhere. Are you building your own prison with the bricks of comfort?

Sure, the elliptical helped me run the NYC Marathon, but on the elliptical of life, you’ll never make any progress. You’ll simply push yourself through life and get nowhere in the end.

Maybe it’s time to jump off.
Maybe it’s time to chart a new course to a new comfort zone.
Maybe it’s time you became the future you that you want to be.

Oh, and if you need a guide on the journey, I know a good coach you should talk to.

Your move.
Keep running.

Do you have departments that are siloed? Do you wish you had a more integrated and effortless team dynamic? We should talk.

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