Your comfort zone is the comfy jumper. The hot chocolate on the lounge while it is raining outside. The Milo Jersey if you grew up in New Zealand. It is the place where you feel safe and you feel like you. And there is nothing wrong with it, until you realise you have been wearing it for so long that you have forgotten what was underneath.
Comfort zones do not feel like a problem until you notice you have not moved. That is the trap. Nothing is broken. Nothing has gone wrong. You are just standing inside the hula hoop, and you have been standing there long enough that the floor has worn smooth.
Here is the truth I keep coming back to. If you stay in your comfort zone, you will not grow. You will not get that thing you said you wanted. The body you said you wanted. The friend you said you wanted to make. The book. The business. The conversation. The trip. None of it lives in here. All of it lives one hula hoop out.
"Stuck is just scared in slow motion. You are always one decision away from a different life."
The gym car park story
Let me tell you what stepping out actually looks like, because it is not glamorous.
Years ago I had been planning to start at the gym for weeks. Packed my bag the night before. Drove there in the morning. Sat in the car park with the engine off, music playing, manufacturing increasingly creative reasons why this was a bad day to go in. I was tired. I had eaten the wrong thing. My shoulder felt funny. The class would be too crowded. I would start tomorrow. Tomorrow would be a better day for it.
That is what a comfort zone sounds like from the inside. It does not say no. It just keeps offering a more comfortable yes.
Sitting in that car park, I had a small private conversation with myself. Three breaths. Two options. Ten minutes inside, or drive home and accept I had just spent a morning being a person who drove to a car park to think about a workout. I picked ten minutes. I got out of the car. I did a mediocre forty-minute workout. I went home as someone who had been to the gym.
"You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Getting out of the car was a vote."
That is the whole game. The car park is not the gym, but it is closer to the gym than the lounge is. And every time you get out of the car, you are casting a vote for the person who shows up.
The 3-2-1 Done framework
This is what I use, and it is what I teach. It is not complicated. That is the point. The harder it gets, the simpler it needs to be.
Three. Two. One. Done.
Three breaths. You are not breathing in some new-agey way. You are giving your nervous system a beat to get out of fight or flight long enough to think.
Two options. Just two. Not seven. Not the universe. Two clean alternatives. Go in, or go home. Make the call now, or sit with it another week. Send the email, or do not. Two.
One decision. You pick one. You do not negotiate. You do not phone a friend. You do not check the planets. You decide.
Done. You do the thing. The deciding and the doing are joined up. Otherwise it is just a wish with a deadline.
"You can have any goal you want. You just need to back the version of yourself who is going to live with the result."
Busy is a disguise. A very good one.
Here is the part I want to be honest about. My biggest comfort zone for years was being busy.
I was a coach. A good one. I had clients, I had results, I had things to say. And for four years I could not make myself step on a stage to say them. I was busy with renovations. Busy with the Pilates studios. Busy with property management. Every reason was real. Every reason was true. And every reason kept me exactly where I was.
Then on an ordinary Tuesday, in the middle of something ordinary, I had one of those quiet thoughts. Not a thunderbolt. Just a small clear sentence. If I do not back myself properly, right now, this never becomes what it could be.
So I joined Toastmasters. I missed two sessions in three years and only because my father died and I got sick. I joined a mentoring program. I hired an acting coach. I hired a speaking coach and I told him, you get first, I will get second. He got first. I got second. And both of those results were on the other side of an ordinary Tuesday where I finally stopped letting busy stand in for stuck.
"Busy is a very effective disguise for stuck. Look at yours."
Where to point this
Right now, before you finish reading, pick one thing you have been not doing. Not the big one. Not the ten-year goal. The next one. The phone call you keep not making. The email you keep not sending. The class you keep not booking. The conversation you keep deflecting.
That is your car park. That is the thing that is keeping you sitting inside the hula hoop. And the way out is not to think about it more. It is the opposite. It is to think about it less, and decide it sooner.
Three breaths. Two options. One decision. Done.
One more thing
Comfort zones grow. That is the bit nobody mentions. The hula hoop gets bigger every time you step out of it. The thing that felt terrifying becomes the thing you do for warm up. And the things that used to scare you live inside the comfort zone now.
I started by wanting to learn to teach Pilates. Ended up building studios, training teachers, manufacturing equipment, making DVDs, selling the business. None of that was on the original list. All of it lived on the other side of three breaths and two options and one decision, repeated.
"Whatever your goal is, more opportunities come because you start making yourself more lucky."
So this week. One car park. One decision. Done.
Your reflection
What is the gym car park version of the thing you have been not doing?
When you imagine stepping into the next hula hoop, what is the comfortable yes that keeps stopping you?
If you applied 3-2-1 Done to it right now, what are your two options? Pick one before you close the page.
P.S.
If you want the full version of the 3-2-1 Done framework, the gym car park story is unpacked in Chapter 12 of my book, and the full Bounce Back Better episode on comfort zones goes deeper into the hula hoop, the Toastmasters journey, and what comes next once you start.
Hilary x
