By Till H. Groß
I am not exaggerating when I say Comfort Zone Challenges changed the trajectory of my whole life.
I was about 21 when I did my first Comfort Zone Challenge, ever. Don’t get me wrong–at this point in time I was already doing well. I was earning good money with live seminars and coaching, I had given a University guest lecture, my mentors were some of the best therapists in the country, I had great friends, and a beautiful and intelligent girlfriend; but Comfort Zone Challenges took all this to another level. Now, not even two years later, I mingle with CEOs of million-dollar companies, ask future Nobel prize winners for advice, and can call some of the stars of the startup scene my close-friends. All this, while I charge more than $5000 for 30min talks, speak at international conferences, appear on national TV, get featured in newspapers, and collaborate with YouTube stars that I used to watch in awe.
Obviously behind all this is a lot of hard work, but I am very sure that my increase in courage and confidence was the defining factor that helped me to leverage my efforts. To make this clear, I believe skill is the most important thing if you want to accomplish anything in life, but courage and confidence are what leverage this skill to allow you to do extraordinary things.
Josef Penninger is about to win the Nobel Prize in medicine and ranks among the top ten scientists in the world. He happened to be my mentor during a TV show last year. When I asked him what distinguishes him from other scientists, he said: “I am very sure there are thousands of other scientists who are equally capable, but I am very courageous.” So as soon as you reach a certain level of skill, courage is the factor that takes it to the next level.
The good thing is you can train your courage and learn to become more confident!One of the most effective ways to achieve this is by doing Comfort Zone Challenges. In this article, I will explain what Comfort Zone Challenges are, where they come from, and lay the foundation for the next article where I will explain how you can use Comfort Zone Challenges to boost your courage and confidence.
Where Do Comfort Zone Challenges Come From?
It’s not clear where Comfort Zone Challenges were mentioned for the first time, but today they resemble a modern and fresh form of exposure therapy. Exposure therapy is a technique from cognitive-behavioral therapy and was first used in the 1950s as a way to cure people with specific phobias. In exposure therapy, you would expose a person to a feared stimulus (eg. a snake, a small space, crowds of people) until a desensitization would occur. Desensitization is when your body no longer responds with fear to a stimulus that before had caused a fear response.
This exposure can happen gradually, from the least fear-inducing stimulus to the most fear-inducing stimulus, which is also called systematic exposure. Alternatively, the therapist would expose the client to the scariest thing on his fear hierarchy first and thereby tackle the client’s biggest fear head on. This form of exposure is called flooding.
What happens when you are exposed to a frightening but non-dangerous (!) stimulus? Well, over time your fear decreases, and after several of these exposures the fear will vanish completely.
This concept got picked up by several self-help authors and pickup artists, termed Comfort Zone Challenges, and was advocated as a way to overcome social limitations like the fear of approaching strangers. I learned about Comfort Zone Challenges for the first time when I read Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Work Week. This is also where the now famous “Lay down on the street for 30 seconds” challenge initially comes from.
What is a Comfort Zone Challenge? The First Official Definition
There is no official definition for “Comfort Zone Challenge” on the Internet or anywhere else. So some time ago I lived up to my reputation as a budding scientist and crafted the first official definition. Therefore, I took into account what others had written about the topic and how it related to psychology, especially cognitive-behavioral therapy and exposure therapy. I also made a special effort to distinguish Comfort Zone Challenges from other courageous acts, just plain stupid things, and pranks, since the lines between these can often be blurry when there is not clear distinction. I also tried to craft the definition in such a way that it would automatically answer all the questions you guys usually ask me. Thus, I ended up with the following definition:
“A Comfort Zone Challenge is a planned action to face a fear with the primary goal of overcoming this fear or increasing your courage and confidence. This action includes a calculated risk of negative social evaluation but does not expose you to real danger or long-term negative consequences.”
Let’s take a closer look at this definition and especially why is it important to have such a definition.
Why the Definition is Important
A clear definition is important for several reasons. On the one hand, it allows you to be more effective in your endeavor to increase confidence; on the other hand, it protects you from getting stressed out by Comfort Zone Challenges, which is not the goal.
There are two parts of the definition that are tremendously important and understanding these can save you a lot of stress.
“A Comfort Zone Challenge is a planned action…”
The first part that is very important is the fact that a Comfort Zone Challenge is always a planned action.
I recently received this email from a guy who was pretty stressed out.
He started to see everything as a challenge. I have been there too. There was a time when I would sit in the subway and start thinking “What would scare the shit out of me right now,” and then I would have this mental fight as to whether I should do it or not. This is just mind fucking and stressful; there is no point going through life and trying to do as many challenges as possible, or seeing everything as a possible challenge.
In order to avoid being trapped in this mental spiral, we consider only planned actions as a Comfort Zone Challenges.
This part of the definition goes back to the roots in exposure therapy. Before every exposure, the client and therapist would plan the exposure precisely and also attempt to predict what would happen. Focusing on this can help relieve you from a lot of unnecessary stress. If you are always on the lookout for things to do that might scare you then you will only end up in a constant state of anxiousness–which is not the point of Comfort Zone Challenges. Believe me, there are so many people who start doing challenges but begin to find it hard to relax and just live their lives, because they don’t draw the distinction between Comfort Zone Challenges and random acts.
Of course, there are some badass people who do challenges all the time and consider everything a challenge, but they’re generally just intense motherfuckers. Most of us would simply end up stressed out and worse off than before.
The Basketball Metaphor
Let’s make this whole thing a bit more tangible with a little metaphor. Assume you are a basketball player. A baller lifts weights and works out to become stronger to perform better on the court. Likewise, we do Comfort Zone Challenges to become more confident and perform “better” in social situations.
When you workout you have a clear plan of what you will do, then you go to the gym and do your workout according to this plan. When you complete your last exercise, you’re done for the day. Think about it–this planned action is important. You wouldn’t walk through your daily life always looking for heavy things you could lift and then start doing curls with a couple of books or do some pull-ups at your door (though I once had this guy on my team, let’s call him Dafe, who actually did lift everything around him and was constantly in a workout mode. But that’s a different story.). It is pretty obvious that being in a constant workout mode is counterproductive. The same goes for Comfort Zone Challenges. Constantly being on the lookout for a challenge will not achieve the same results as a planned challenge; it also has a higher risk of backfiring. So instead, have a Comfort Zone Challenge routine and know when you are done, similar to a workout routine.
On to the next part of the definition:
“A Comfort Zone Challenge is a planned action with the primary goal of overcoming this fear or increasing your courage and confidence”
This part defines what is and what is not a challenge. Comfort Zone Challenges are a clear and effective tool to overcome fear and boost courage and confidence–that’s it! Due to this primary goal, there is a pretty clear line between Challenges and just plain stupid things, pranks, or real life situations.
REAL LIFE VS COMFORT ZONE CHALLENGE
Comfort Zone Challenges are a tool to prepare yourself for real life situations and should therefore be distinct from real life situations. For example, if you are at a party and you see a really interesting person whom you have always wanted to talk to but have been too afraid to approach, then this is not a Comfort Zone Challenge. This is a real life situation where your primary goal is to get to know the person – Comfort Zone Challenges prepare your for this kind of moment.
PRANK VS COMFORT ZONE CHALLENGE
Walking up to a stranger without saying anything and trying to hold the person’s hand might be uncomfortable and scare you, but when your buddy is filming it, it’s just a prank and not a Comfort Zone Challenge. The primary goal of a prank is to get a funny reaction from people, and while it is uncomfortable, it avoids the purpose of making yourself uncomfortable as a challenge.
STUPID DARES VS COMFORT ZONE CHALLENGES
Likewise, two boys who challenge each other to yell “Penis” as loud as possible, or to run naked across campus, are not attempting a challenge, but are being stupid (or funny), since the primary goal is to impress the other person and not to challenge yourselfin an uncomfortable situation.
Primary Goals
- Comfort Zone Challenge >> become more confident and courageous
- Real Life >> win a friend, get a date, get a point across, speak up, ask for what you want, go to a party,…
- Prank >> get funny reactions from people
- Dare >> impress the other person
The Basketball Metaphor
Let’s go back to our basketball player and see how this part of the definition can be explained with our workout metaphor. The difference betweens a prank, a dare and a Comfort Zone Challenge is rather clear. However the lines between Comfort Zone Challenges and real life situations might be a bit blurry from time to time so we will use the metaphor to distinguish between these two. Consider this:
Part of your workout as a basketball player might be to work on your hops; therefore, you would do a variety of different jumps with the primary goal of training the muscles in your legs to be able to jump higher. So standing in the gym consciously jumping up and down would be considered a workout because the primary goal is to train your muscles. Now, if you are on the court playing a game and you jump to grab a rebound, your primary goal is to grab the ball – so even though it is the same movement you wouldn’t call this a workout.
The same goes for Comfort Zone Challenges – you are doing them with the primary goal of becoming more confident. One of your challenges might be to approach ten strangers and ask for something, so to complete this challenge you will go to ten strangers and ask for something, like the time or directions to the nearest service station. However, if you need a tissue and therefore ask a stranger for a tissue, even though you might be scared, this is not a Comfort Zone Challenge because your primary goal is to actually get the tissue, not to challenge your comfort zone.
And the last part of the definition:
“A Comfort Zone Challenge is a planned action to face a fear with the primary goal of overcoming this fear or increasing your courage and confidence. This action includes a calculated risk of negative social evaluation but does not expose you to real danger or long-term negative consequences.”
When doing Comfort Zone Challenges, you will face negative social evaluation, but this is the point of many challenges. Thereby, you will get accustomed to rejection or embarrassment and learn how to deal with it effectively; so some degree of negative evaluation is just part of the deal.
However, by no means should you put yourself in danger, or do things that are likely to have long-term consequences.
If your challenge is to look five strangers in the eye until the other person looks away, don’t do it with guys like this, unless you can handle it if it goes south. There is no benefit in putting yourself at unnecessary risk.
The same applies to long-term consequences. I recently received an email where a girl asked me if she should do the “Howling Like A Wolf” challenge in her library.
My reply was of course she should not do this and the same applies for most other people. You are doing the whole Comfort Zone Challenge thing to become more social, win friends, gain confidence or to be more extroverted. Having your whole University believe you are nuts and maybe even getting expelled is not helpful in this endeavor. Because you might end up like this young fellow:
Therefore, I would be cautious doing challenges in places that you usually spend your time or around people you see on a daily basis. This means most people shouldn’t do challenges at their work, university, or places they frequent. Unless you are already incredibly social, extroverted, or most people know you, people will probably assume you are crazy. I can do those things because I literally don’t care what the people think and I already have a reputation. I was the guy who held a lecture in his first semester and I knew a ton of people. Of course you want to stop caring what others think, but you also want to have friends, right? So rely on your own judgment as to whether you should do challenges in your everyday environment; however, I encourage you to seek neutral scenarios.
So when you start doing challenges, do it in places you don’t frequent, avoid long-term consequences, and don’t put yourself in any real danger.
Basketball Metaphor
Our basketball metaphor unfortunately doesn’t really apply here, though I will try to make it fit: If you have a game during regular season, you wouldn’t bring your dumbbells and start a workout during halftime. So the lesson here: Differentiate between training (Comfort Zone Challenges) and game time (living your normal life) and keep them separate.
Next Step
Now you have a clear idea what Comfort Zone Challenges are, and this definition will save you a lot of trouble in the long run. In the next article, you will learn how you can use Comfort Zone Challenges to boost your courage and confidence – there is a difference between the two.
Key Points:
- “A Comfort Zone Challenge is a planned action to face a fear with the primary goal of overcoming this fear or increasing your courage and confidence. This action includes a calculated risk of negative social evaluation but does not expose you to real danger or long-term negative consequences.”
- Planned action: don’t run around like a headless chicken trying to make a challenge out of everything.
- Primary goal: differentiate challenges from just random acts, real-life situations, and pranks.
- Avoid real danger and long-term negative consequences: don’t mess with the wrong people and avoid places you frequent
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