Is Your Comfort Zone Shrinking?

The elastic nature of comfort and courage.

Dear Slow Sippers:

“Life shrinks and expands in proportion to one’s courage.” Anaïs Nin

In May, 2017, I embarked on my first, and last trek. Over 11 days, a group of 12 of us climbed to the walled city of Lo Manthang, Nepal, approximately 3,800 meters (12,600 feet) above sea level and 16 km (10 miles) from the Chinese border.

To say this was outside my comfort zone is a massive understatement. I couldn’t even find my comfort zone from there.

The notion that this was a good idea occurred to me while sipping wine with friends in downtown Halifax, where sea-level is a quick roll downhill from the bar. A dear friend was going through a tough time, and she wanted to do something to shake things up. She needed a wing woman. Part way through my second glass of wine, I decided to be that woman.

I’m no “eco-adventurer.” I wasn’t young and agile. I wasn’t a hiker or camper or even all that fit, for that matter.

But I had several months to train.

How hard could it be?

Turns out, pretty hard.

My 60-year-old, sea-level body wasn’t really equipped to perform at those altitudes. Inclines that wouldn't elevate my heart rate at home, felt like climbing the Himalaya’s there… WAIT, that’s what I was doing!

My delicate North American digestive system was not prepared for the invasion of foreign bacteria upon landing in Kathmandu. This triggered a violent and rapid exodus of bodily fluids through every orifice in my body. So, by the time we started trekking, I was already weak and dehydrated.

On the third day of the trek, I fell too far behind my group and watched helplessly as they disappeared from sight. For four hours, I wandered alone in the vast mountainous desert, no means of communication, no maps, no signs, and no other humans as far as the eye could see. If I took the wrong path, all I had to sustain myself was a bottle of water, a protein bar, a whistle, and a solar blanket.

The trek tested my physical, emotional, and spiritual limits.

This experience changed me.

Many things I encountered there left a lasting mark on me. The brutal landscape, rugged sand-colored mountains, harsh and striking as far as the eye could see. The early morning we sat in silence in a remote monastery as Buddhist monks performed sacred rituals.

The breathtaking murals peeking through mud and dust on the walls of a 15^th century monastery in Lo Manthang.

The shy and gentle kindness of the local people we encountered. And the stunning and humbling realization of my enormous privilege, as I struggled to endure conditions that they live in every day.

I learned that I was capable of much more than I believed possible. Exhausted, weak, in pain, I kept walking. At times, my whole universe was no bigger than a two-foot radius around my feet. I'd scan for loose rocks and will my boots to inch forward one step at a time.

When I finished the trek, I felt gratitude, relief, and a sense that my aperture on the world had widened.

Six years and one global pandemic later.

Fast forward to December 2023.

I was invited to a two-day planning meeting for the company I had co-founded. The new owners asked me to take part to share “my wisdom and window into the company’s history.” (These are the kinds of things people ask you to do when you get to a certain age.)

On day two, the meeting was to begin at 9:00 a.m. I mentioned to one of the owners that my husband needed our only car that morning and wouldn’t be able to drop me off until about 10:00.

She said, “Oh just take a cab. You can expense it to us.”

“Um, what?” I could feel a current of anxiety travel from my gut to the back of my throat.

“Take a cab. Really, no problem. We’ll gladly pay for it.”

I pondered this for a moment. Problem was, there was a problem. And it wasn’t money.

“Um… I’m not really comfortable taking taxis anymore.”

OMG, was that my outside voice?

A “WTF” look briefly traveled across her face before she could replace it with something a little less – gob smacked.

“Oh, okay,” she said quietly.

I tried desperately to make it sound less weird.

“Well, it’s just that I haven’t really taken a cab since before the pandemic. And it’s… well. I don’t know, it’s just a thing, I guess. I don’t even know who serves my area anymore. And there’s the whole, who carries cash anymore? Do they take credit? And I mean, what’s the tipping convention with cabs these days?”

The more I tried to explain, the worse it got.

“No worries, whenever you get here will be great,” she assured me before mercifully changing the subject.

So, what was this?

How does a woman who six short years ago, trekked one of the most isolated places on the planet, sleeping in freezing tents along side piles of goat dung, become paralyzed by the prospect of taking a 15-minute cab ride?

This is not new. It’s happened before.

Once, after being off work for a year, I went from being able to speak in front of large groups without breaking a sweat, to developing a phobia of putting on pantyhose.

The tricky thing about comfort zones is, if you stay inside them for too long, they shrink. Growth demands stretch. It demands that you lean into discomfort and, if not embrace it, at least be prepared to hang out with it.

Courage is not fearlessness. It’s feeling fear and anxiety, the urge to retreat and shrink back and making a choice to push forward anyway. Some days, getting out of bed in the morning takes courage.

I sometimes think of the human spirit as a kind of elastic band. We are in an ongoing process of expanding and shrinking back.

I wish I was offering you an inspiring story of how I was once afraid to summon a cab and then graduated to trekking in Nepal. But it’s the fact that the taxi phobia came after the trek that shows the elastic nature of comfort and courage.

What I now refer to as “the unfortunate taxi incident,” was actually a gift. It was an embarrassing (okay, humiliating) wake up call that my comfort zone had gotten way too small. The comfy nest in my office was cramped and suffocating.

I needed to break out.

I needed to break free.

I NEEDED TO CALL A CAB!

So, I picked up my phone and did a search for “taxis near me.”

I found Bob’s Taxi. Bob sounded friendly. Bob was probably a good guy. I could take a chance on Bob.

Turns out Bob does take credit cards. They all take credit cards and debit and maybe even Apple Pay. Bob even texts you to confirm the booking and texts again when he’s outside your door. Who knew? (Well, you probably did.)

My “Bob” was a very friendly, middle-aged man with an eastern European accent. (I don’t believe his name was Bob.) He was just the right amount of chatty and friendly.

And here I was at 8:30 in the morning TAKING A CAB TO WORK!

I arrived and knocked on the door of the meeting room. My colleague was understandably surprised that I was the first to arrive.

“I TOOK A CAB!” I announced a little too exuberantly, raising my hand slightly to receive the high five I thought I deserved. Turns out, she doesn’t give high fives for taxi rides. I quickly shoved my hand back into my pocket and gave myself a spiritual high five instead.

I’M BACK! I said to myself.

I had done it! I had busted out of that comfort zone.

I WAS A ROCK STAR!

What would I conquer next?

Hmmm.

How about pantyhose?

Where could your comfort zone use a little stretching?

Why not stretch it now and share in the comments below?