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By Joan Washburn
Mix it Up!
Recently while doing research
for an article I was writing I
Googled “comfort zone”. As you
can imagine, pages and pages
of quotes, articles, even t-shirts
come up.
Simply put, your comfort zone is
a behavioral space where
your activities and behaviors
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a routine and pattern that
minimizes stress and risk. It
provides a state of mental
security. You
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in obvious
ways: regular happiness, low
anxiety, and reduced stress.
While routines make you feel
at ease and in control, what a
constant routine really does is
dull your sensitivities. Think about
the times in your life when you’ve
driven the same route repeatedly:
after a certainnumber of trips, you
start tuning out most of it. Have
you ever had a trip to the
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where you barely remember
what happened after you got in
the car?
If you don’t get out of your comfort
zone, you might
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yourself
tuning out much of your life in the
same way on a daily basis.
I think it’s a pretty easy
connection to make between
living life full-out and getting
out of your comfort zone. But
what really intrigued me was a
study that showed the value of
mixing our everyday routine with
the novel and how it relates to
creativity, enhanced memory,
even happiness!
When you go out of your way to
experience new things, or when
you let new things happen to
you, your brain creates brand
new neural pathways that fuel
your creative spark and enhance
your memory.
In a recent study researchers
tested thememory of participants
by showing them images which
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Personal Growth Strategies