How the comfort zone is ruining your life - Summary

Summary

The speaker shares their personal experience of pushing past their comfort zone in their freshman year of university, which led to increased happiness and energy. They explain that the comfort zone is a mental boundary that separates things we find easy and comfortable from those that are difficult and uncomfortable. However, the comfort zone is not a reliable guide for making decisions, as it prioritizes short-term comfort over long-term growth and well-being.

The speaker notes that the comfort zone can shrink if we don't challenge ourselves, making it harder to take risks and try new things. To overcome this, they suggest making values-based decisions, focusing on what kind of person we want to be, what traits we want to adopt, and what skills we want to learn. By living according to our values, we can expand our comfort zone and make positive changes in our lives.

The speaker concludes that discomfort is not a real obstacle, but rather a mental barrier that can be overcome. By disregarding discomfort and living the life we want, we can increase our potential and achieve our goals.

Facts

Here are the key facts extracted from the text:

1. The speaker noticed a phenomenon where the more they subjected themselves to discomfort, the happier they were.
2. This phenomenon became apparent to the speaker during their first year of university.
3. The speaker forced themselves outside of their comfort zone to reinvent themselves on a social skills basis.
4. The speaker believes that everything people are physically capable of doing falls into one of two categories: inside the comfort zone or outside the comfort zone.
5. Things inside the comfort zone are easy to do, comfortable, take little or no effort, and have no mental resistance.
6. Things outside the comfort zone are difficult, uncomfortable, and have mental resistance.
7. The comfort zone is not a reliable guide for telling people what to do with their lives or what activities are useful to them.
8. The comfort zone is concerned with keeping people inside of it and will shrink if not challenged.
9. To keep the comfort zone from shrinking, people need to do things that are outside of it.
10. The speaker suggests making values-based decisions as a more reliable guide for making decisions.
11. The speaker rented a Sony FX9 camera, a Netflix-approved cinema camera, to film the video.
12. Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes covering various topics.
13. Skillshare offers an annual membership for less than $10 a month.
14. The first 500 viewers who click the link in the description below get two months of Skillshare premium for free.