Crossing Thresholds – Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone

Quote of the day:“Never have I found the limits of the photographic potential. Every horizon, upon being reached, reveals another beckoning in the distance. Always, I am on the threshold.” —  W. Eugene Smith

On the Threshold

If you are learning, growing, and changing, you are always crossing thresholds into something new. That something can be as momentous as a new job or role (like becoming a husband or wife or parent or grandparent). Or it can be as mundane as taking a new route to work.

You grow through building your skills, connecting with others, and challenging your bodies and brains.  Through mastering new experiences or learning from your failures, there is no end to the ways that you grow and change.

Change Can Bring Loss as Well as Growth

You also lose loved ones, your job, your health, or physical capabilities due to illness or accidents. You lose homes, businesses, and communities due to major catastrophes. Things happen over which you have very little control.

Change happens. Life happens.

You can initiate change or change can be thrust upon you, as Super-storm Sandy was thrust upon coastal areas of the United States. You don’t always get to choose. But you do get to choose how you respond to change and if you’re lucky you have the resources available that let you start changes that help you grow.

Learning to cross thresholds of change with grace is a lifelong journey.

I am on the threshold of a journey to Hawaii for several months. While I am excited and ready for the challenge of traveling and living on my own for a while, I’m also feeling occasional fear. Getting out of my comfort zone is a way that I embrace life and change and seek to learn and grow.

It’s easy to get comfortable and stop taking risks, stop seeking new experiences, and seeking to stay in a comfortable rut. Discomfort is a part of life. We all experience it. And while I don’t actively seek discomfort, I don’t limit myself because I’m afraid of a little pain.

If you are a woman who has borne a child you may recognize that moment during delivery when things get really hard and you want to scream, “Stop! I changed my mind. I don’t want to have a baby after all!”

Change can be like that. Some transitions are smooth and some are difficult. I vividly remember laboring to deliver my first daughter and reaching the point of not knowing what would happen next, not knowing whether I could do it, fearing the tremendous responsibility I was taking on, and fearing failure. Stopping the process was not an option. The only way out was through.

That is true for life. The only way out is through. And none of us get out alive or without experiencing pain. So why not take a chance, do something you’re afraid of, cross a new threshold today?  Life is not about living in your comfort zone. Step out. Do something new. Do something you’re afraid of.

It will help you stay open to life. No matter how hard you try, you cannot keep change from happening.  Embrace it. Embrace your fear. Cross the threshold.

The threshold between ocean and sky