Learn to leave your comfort zone so you can actually grow

Thoughts on change and the book Helen of Nowhere.

Walking outside, I felt the first morning rays hit my shoulder so I paused for a beat to soak it in. My brain was still waking up, but my body knew the route well: left towards the boulangerie, past the early morning neighbours with cigarettes already burning, then down the cobblestone side street toward the dog park. The grass has wilted throughout summer but it’s still the easiest spot for Mika to pee. Function trumps form in this case.

Although the boulangerie on the street corner is good, I prefer the one with the small attached cantine so I head there to pick up their pain du jour. Coming to Paris, I had my sights set on trying all of the various pastries I could, yet somehow sourdough is what ends up coming home with me every time.

Bonjour. Oui. Merci. Bonne journée. Au revoir. The tiny script my limited French allows.

After lunch, both Mika and I get a little restless so I pack my tote with my laptop and her treats and we head to our favourite café. This has been our routine for the past couple of months. Despite moving to a brand new city to expand my world, it’s like I packed up my regular routine and transplanted it here instead. Even in a new place, I make decisions that feel familiar.

I recently finished Helen of Nowhere and while I can’t say I loved the book, it did have me contemplating my last relationship. Lots to unpack there, but those thoughts ultimately led me to question why I always end up picking what’s familiar.

Like finding books that feel so apropos for the moment or like I was meant to read them in this particular era, sometimes it feels like the strings of my life are being pulled by someone else. And while I’ll always have a woo woo part of me that believes everything happens for a reason and that law of attraction is on my side, I do also love figuring out how things work.

On one of my recent wonder days, I learned that our brains have a built-in filtering system called the Reticular Activating System (RAS). The RAS processes millions of data points every second, deciding what actually reaches our conscious awareness. It’s why whenever you learn a new word, you suddenly start seeing it everywhere. Or why, after you start thinking about a certain kind of life, person, fear, or desire, evidence of it shows up all around you.

So if my brain is wired to notice what already feels familiar, what does that mean for the way I date, work, create, travel, and imagine my life? I started thinking about all the ways I’ve been living on autopilot. The sourdough, the routine café, down to the familiar type of person I’m drawn to before I’ve even had time to ask whether they’re good for me.

It’s easy to just say everything good happens outside our comfort zone. But to be fair, I don’t think comfort is inherently bad. Some comfort is necessary. It’s what helps us feel safe and make a foreign place feel like home. Sameness gives our brains a break so that we can use our limited capacity to focus on other areas.

Comfort becomes dangerous when it turns into stagnation. Living our lives on autopilot feels dangerous because it doesn’t always show up as laziness. Sometimes it looks like conviction. Standards. Tradition. Doing something the “proper” way. Sometimes it looks like being the kind of people who know exactly what they believe and refuse to be swayed. When we reject the possibility of change and hold onto what our brain deems safe or familiar, are we still allowing ourselves any room for growth?

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The main character of Helen of Nowhere is a misogynistic professor and writer who’s struggling with his fall from relevance and the failure of his marriage. After many years of admiration from his peers and students for his way of teaching and published writing, his inability to adapt ultimately left him and his ideas in the past.

Instead of looking inward, he clings to his need for things to stay the same and shifts the blame outward, toward the way education has changed since more women have joined the faculty. This projection also turns toward his wife (who was once his student, may I add) as she gets fed up with downplaying her own career to support his.

“She annihilated me by knowing things I didn’t know. My desire was something about her I could control, and ultimately, marrying her was the greatest revenge against her brilliance.”

“And yet with time, the lower I felt, the brighter she became, though to me that brightness felt punishing, like exiting a theatre at midday.”

You’ll never catch me on the wrong side of patriarchy but I did start to wonder how his character could’ve avoided the spiral. Communication would’ve been a great place to start. Keeping an open mind, a close second. But it’s that exact aversion to change that becomes his executioner. With his ego so closely tied to his work and success, letting go of control wasn’t an option but holding on caused everything to fall apart.

He’s not a character that I see myself in but there are certain flaws that do feel familiar: namely that urge to protect the version of life I’m already familiar with. It shows up in the routines I recreate and the type of men I’m drawn to. I don’t want to confuse peace with predictability. For someone who gets excited about change, I sure do grasp familiarity a little too closely.

I’ve been trying to be more open-minded even with books I don’t entirely love. Sometimes a story that looks nothing like mine can still leave a meaningful impact. That’s the whole reason we read, no? To understand the human experience through perspectives different from ours.

Lately, I’ve been trying to think about choices before I make them.

Does this feel aligned or does it feel familiar?

How can I shift this decision so that it helps me grow?

Am I choosing this because it supports the life I want, or because it asks the least of me?

Does this comfort help me feel rooted or is it keeping me still?

I’ll still buy sourdough tomorrow and take the same route to the dog park. Not every familiar thing needs to be abandoned. Some routines are how we make a life feel like ours.

But maybe I’ll also pick up a new dessert for dinner. Or take a different road home after work. I’d like to spend a little more time identifying the new experiences I want to have during my chapter in Paris so that I’m not missing out on the change this period of my life has to offer.

Comfort is beautiful, but change is too. Here’s to making room for both.

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Angel xo

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