The advice to “get out of your comfort zone” has driven more entrepreneurs to burnout than to breakthrough.
You’ve heard it countless times. Push harder. Do what scares you. Growth happens outside your comfort zone. The problem with this advice is that it assumes discomfort equals progress, which leaves you exhausted, anxious, and no closer to the business you’re trying to build.
Kristen Butler, CEO of Power of Positivity and author of The Comfort Zone, spent over half her life following that conventional wisdom. It led to repeated burnout and eventually losing her business. What she discovered through rebuilding is that the traditional understanding of comfort zones is wrong. In a recent conversation on the Deliberate Leaders podcast, she shared a completely different framework.
Coming up, you’ll learn why the comfort zone isn’t your enemy, how to expand it strategically without burning out, and the specific practices that build capacity for bigger challenges.
What the Comfort Zone Actually Is
Most people misunderstand what a comfort zone means. The conventional definition describes it as a safe, stagnant place where nothing grows. The solution, supposedly, is to force yourself into constant discomfort.
That model is broken. Kristen explains what’s really happening:
When you’re in a quote unquote comfort zone, you’re not actually in a comfortable place. You have fears and doubts and insecurities that keep you stuck and paralyzed. So you’re really not very comfortable.
Think about someone who stays in a job they hate, a relationship that drains them, or a business strategy that stopped working years ago. They’re not comfortable. They’re afraid. Fear keeps them frozen, and that paralysis gets labeled as comfort.
The real comfort zone is different. It’s a place where you feel genuinely comfortable because you’re operating within your capabilities while still growing. You’re not stuck. You’re not paralyzed. You’re engaged, energized, and expanding.
Kristen offers this reframe:
My version of the comfort zone is a little different. It’s a place that’s actually comfortable, where you are enjoying your life, but you’re also growing. You can expand your comfort zone. It doesn’t have to be this small static place where nothing grows. In fact, you want it to be as big as you possibly can.
This distinction changes everything. The goal stops being “get out of your comfort zone” and becomes “expand your comfort zone.” One approach creates burnout. The other builds capacity.
Why Constant Discomfort Creates Burnout
Kristen’s story illustrates the cost of living outside your comfort zone for too long:
I spent over half of my life living outside of my comfort zone. I always wanted to change my circumstances and be successful. I followed that advice. While I found success, I also found many bouts of burnout. I think it’s so important that we find balance in this pursuit.
When you operate in chronic discomfort, your nervous system stays activated. You’re always in threat mode. Your body produces cortisol. Your decision-making suffers. Your creativity shuts down. Eventually, you hit a wall.
Business leaders often confuse this exhaustion with dedication. You tell yourself that building a business requires sacrifice. That’s partly true. But sacrifice means choosing what you give up, not grinding yourself into the ground.
Sustainable growth requires periods of consolidation. You push into new territory, then you integrate what you learned. You expand your comfort zone, then you operate within that expanded space for a while before pushing further.
Athletes understand this. You stress the muscle, then you rest. The growth happens during recovery, not during the workout. Business growth works the same way.
The Difference Between Healthy Challenge and Harmful Stress
Expanding your comfort zone means finding the edge where you’re challenged but not overwhelmed. That edge is different for everyone and changes based on context.
Healthy challenge feels like:
- You’re slightly uncomfortable but not terrified
- You have the resources and support you need
- You’re learning and improving over time
- You feel energized after, even if tired during
- You can sustain the effort for weeks or months
Harmful stress feels like:
- You’re constantly anxious or dreading the work
- You lack the skills, knowledge, or support to succeed
- You’re making the same mistakes repeatedly
- You feel depleted and resentful
- You’re counting down until you can stop
The difference comes down to capacity. When you expand your comfort zone strategically, you build capacity before you need it. When you force yourself into situations beyond your capacity, you create damage that takes months to repair.
How to Identify Your True Comfort Zone
Before you can expand your comfort zone, you need to understand where it actually is. Kristen suggests asking yourself specific questions:
When someone is in that place, I think it’s important that we ask them, actually, what are you comfortable doing? I don’t mean Netflix and chill. I mean, like, where are your skill sets? What are you good at? What brings you joy?
These questions reveal where you have genuine capability and energy. Your answers show you the foundation to build from.
1. Map Your Current Capabilities
Make a list of what you’re genuinely comfortable doing right now in your business. This might include:
- Running team meetings
- Closing deals with a certain type of client
- Managing specific financial decisions
- Presenting to groups under 20 people
- Writing marketing copy
- Negotiating contracts
- Giving direct feedback to your leadership team
Be honest. This list shows you what’s already in your comfort zone. These are your anchors.
2. Identify the Adjacent Edges
Now look at what’s just outside your current comfort zone. These are the skills or experiences that feel challenging but not impossible. Maybe you’re comfortable managing a team of five but nervous about managing 15. Maybe you can present to small groups but large audiences feel overwhelming. Maybe you handle $500K decisions easily but $2M decisions make you anxious.
The adjacent edge is where expansion happens. It’s close enough to your current capabilities that you can reach it without breaking.
3. Recognize What’s Too Far
Some goals are so far outside your current comfort zone that pursuing them now would be destructive. If you’ve never managed anyone, leading a 50-person organization is too far. If you’ve never spoken publicly, delivering a keynote at a major conference is too far. If you’ve run a $1M business, jumping straight to $20M is too far.
This doesn’t mean these goals are impossible. It means you need to build the intermediate steps first. Trying to leap too far creates the burnout Kristen experienced repeatedly before she changed her approach.
Expanding Your Comfort Zone Strategically
Once you understand where your edges are, you can expand deliberately. The key is moving toward growth without triggering the burnout cycle that comes from pushing too hard. Here’s how.
1. Build on Existing Strengths
Expansion works better when you build from strength, not from weakness. If you’re excellent at relationship-building but weak at systems, expand your relationship-building into new contexts before trying to become a systems expert.
Kristen describes how human nature supports this approach:
When we really look at this human experience, we do want to grow innately. We do want expansion. We want to try new foods and go to new places and meet new people. That’s who we truly are. That’s what’s comfortable.
Growth feels natural when it aligns with who you already are. Force yourself to become someone completely different, and growth feels like violence.
2. Take Small, Repeated Steps
You don’t expand your comfort zone through single dramatic leaps. You expand it through repeated exposure to manageable challenges.
If public speaking feels uncomfortable, start by speaking to your team. Then present at a small industry event. Then speak at a larger conference. Each step builds confidence and capability that makes the next step easier.
Kristen talks about expanding through consistency:
When you’re consistent, over 15 years you can accomplish a lot. Day by day, it might not look like much is changing. But over the years, you’re like, my life is completely transformed just because I showed up every single day in the way that I wanted to.
Small steps compound. What feels impossible today becomes comfortable through repeated practice.
3. Create Supportive Structures
Expansion is easier when you have support. This might mean hiring a coach, joining a peer group, bringing on a consultant, or partnering with someone who has the capability you’re building.
When Kristen decided to promote her book this year, she didn’t just force herself to do media interviews. She invested in preparation:
This year I really wanted to promote my book in a big way. I was very consistent with interviews and media training. Through that consistency, I had results.
Media training gave her the tools she needed. Consistent practice built confidence. The combination expanded her comfort zone to include something that previously felt impossible.
4. Use Theme Words to Guide Expansion
Kristen uses annual theme words to focus her growth. This year, her word was “strength”:
My theme word for this year was strength. At first I thought to myself, okay God, please don’t give me too much to test my strength, right? But what it did was it really built this inner resilience to be able to handle anything that came. I launched a book. I spoke on stage. I went for in-person media interviews. I did so many things that I had never done before. But I had that inner strength.
A theme word creates a north star for the year. It helps you say yes to opportunities that build that quality and no to things that don’t serve your growth.
When you choose your theme word, pick something that represents the person you need to become to achieve your goals. Let that word guide which edges of your comfort zone you push on.
Building Inner Capacity Before External Demands
One reason people burn out is they take on external demands before building internal capacity. Kristen’s experience illustrates this pattern. She chased success for years without building the inner resources to sustain it.
After hitting rock bottom, she reversed the order. She built capacity first through daily practices:
I started with gratitude. As I began to adopt these positive lifestyle habits, everything just started to get better and better in every area of my life. I’m very consistent about what I do, and I do things that recharge me and nourish me. I exercise, I journal, I have positive affirmations, I also love learning. I’m always studying and reading at least five to ten pages a day.
These practices build resilience, clarity, confidence, and energy. They create the internal foundation that allows you to handle bigger external challenges.
You want your comfort zone to be as big as you possibly can so that no matter what happens in your life, you are ready to tackle it and handle it, instead of feeling scared or worried about what’s going to happen.
This is the reframe that matters. Instead of constantly pushing yourself beyond your limits, you build your limits outward. You increase capacity so that what once felt overwhelming now feels manageable.
Recognizing When You’re Stuck Versus When You’re Consolidating
One challenge with expanding your comfort zone is distinguishing between healthy consolidation and fearful stagnation.
Healthy consolidation looks like:
- You recently expanded into new territory
- You’re integrating lessons and building competence
- You have a plan for the next expansion
- You feel engaged and energized by your work
- You’re making progress, even if it feels slow
Fearful stagnation looks like:
- You’ve been doing the same thing for years
- You feel bored, frustrated, or trapped
- You avoid thinking about what’s next
- You rationalize why change is impossible
- You feel stuck and resentful
Kristen addresses this directly:
When you feel like you’re in this stuck and paralyzed place, this current comfort zone that people feel like, it’s really important to see what it is that you like to do, what would be fun for you, what would bring you joy, what’s work that you feel like you can contribute to the world. When we go within and we really understand our preferences, that’s usually what helps us get unstuck.
If you’re in healthy consolidation, stay there. If you’re stuck, the path forward is clarity about what you actually want, followed by small action toward that direction.
Action Creates Confidence, Which Expands Comfort Zones
One reason comfort zones stay small is that people wait to feel confident before taking action. That order is backward. Confidence comes from action, not before it.
Kristen explains how this worked for her:
When we take action on something we feel good about, it just starts to build. That’s how I believe we can expand our comfort zone. When I was at rock bottom feeling stuck, I went to gratitude. Then I also did things that built my self-confidence. I had very low self-confidence. When we can work on these things, we can create better impact in the world and in the work that we do.
She didn’t wait to feel confident. She took small actions that gradually built confidence. Each small success expanded what felt possible.
This applies to any edge you’re working on. You take one small step. You survive. Your brain registers that as evidence that you can handle it. The next step feels slightly less scary. Over time, the accumulation of evidence expands your comfort zone without requiring you to live in constant anxiety.
The Role of Mental Health in Comfort Zone Expansion
Kristen specifically mentions that her approach is valuable for people dealing with mental health challenges:
I feel like it’s a really great mindset shift, especially if someone deals with mental health issues or anxiety. I think it’s just a great mindset shift if we can learn to expand our comfort zones.
When you’re managing anxiety, depression, or other mental health conditions, the traditional “push yourself harder” advice is dangerous. It creates overwhelm that triggers the exact symptoms you’re trying to manage.
Expanding your comfort zone through gradual capability-building respects your nervous system. It gives you wins that reinforce your ability to handle challenges. It creates a upward spiral instead of a crash-and-burn cycle.
If you’re dealing with mental health challenges, the expansion process might be slower. That’s fine. The goal is sustainable growth, not speed.
Leading Teams Through Comfort Zone Expansion
As a leader, you’re responsible for helping your team expand their comfort zones without burning them out. The same principles that work for personal growth apply to team development, but you need to account for individual differences. Your role is to match challenges to capability while providing the support needed for people to succeed.
1. Understand Individual Edges
Each team member has different capabilities and different edges. What’s comfortable for one person is overwhelming for another. Your job is to match challenges to capability.
A new manager might be ready to lead a project team of three but not ten. An experienced salesperson might be ready to close bigger deals but not to train others. A strong operator might be ready to speak at a customer event but not to lead a company-wide town hall.
Know your people well enough to see where their edges are. Push them slightly beyond, not dramatically beyond.
2. Provide Support During Expansion
When you ask someone to expand their comfort zone, give them the support they need to succeed. This might include training, coaching, resources, mentorship, or simply more of your time during the transition.
Kristen’s example of media training before doing interviews applies here. If you want someone to take on a new responsibility, prepare them for it. Don’t just throw them in and hope they figure it out.
3. Celebrate Incremental Progress
Expansion happens through small steps. Celebrate those steps. When someone does something they’ve never done before, acknowledge it. That reinforcement builds confidence and makes the next step easier.
Recognition expands comfort zones. Criticism shrinks them. Most leaders under-recognize and over-criticize, which keeps their teams operating in fear instead of growth.
4. Model Your Own Expansion
Your team watches how you handle new challenges. If you model panic and overwhelm, they’ll internalize that as the cost of growth. If you model preparation, support-seeking, and gradual expansion, they’ll do the same.
Kristen’s leadership around positivity demonstrates this:
Having a positive mindset as a leader can get you through any challenge. It’s something you want to amplify in your own life and be a great leader for the rest of your team to also develop that characteristic trait.
When you work on expanding your own comfort zone through healthy practices, your team sees that growth doesn’t require self-destruction.
Common Mistakes That Keep Comfort Zones Small
Understanding what doesn’t work helps you avoid wasting time on ineffective strategies. Many leaders and entrepreneurs unknowingly sabotage their own growth by repeating patterns that feel productive but actually keep them stuck. Here are the most common traps and how to recognize when you’ve fallen into them.
1. Comparing Your Comfort Zone to Others
What feels comfortable to someone else is irrelevant. Your comfort zone is shaped by your experiences, capabilities, nervous system, and context. Trying to match someone else’s comfort zone ignores all of that.
Build your comfort zone based on where you are, not where someone else is. Expansion is personal, not competitive.
2. Ignoring the Need for Recovery
Expansion requires recovery. If you push continuously without consolidation, you create burnout. Give yourself time to integrate new capabilities before pushing to the next level.
This applies to your team as well. After a big push, create space for recovery. Let people operate in their newly expanded comfort zone for a while before asking for the next expansion.
3. Avoiding Discomfort Entirely
The opposite mistake is never pushing your edges. If you only do what’s already comfortable, your comfort zone shrinks over time. Capabilities you don’t use atrophy. Challenges you don’t face become scarier.
Sustainable growth requires regular, manageable challenges. Not constant overwhelm, but consistent stretching.
4. Expanding in Too Many Directions Simultaneously
Focus matters. If you try to expand every edge of your comfort zone at once, you’ll overwhelm yourself. Pick one or two areas to focus on for a season.
Maybe this quarter you work on public speaking. Next quarter you focus on financial literacy. The quarter after that you develop your strategic thinking. One area at a time compounds better than scattered effort across everything.
Practical Steps to Start Expanding Today
Theory only helps if you apply it. You can understand every concept in this article and still stay exactly where you are if you don’t take action. The difference between knowledge and transformation is implementation. Here’s how to begin building your capacity starting tomorrow, with specific steps you can take right now.
1. Identify One Edge to Expand This Quarter
Look at your business goals for the next 90 days. What capability would most help you achieve those goals? That’s the edge to work on.
Make sure it’s adjacent to your current comfort zone. Not too easy, not impossibly hard. Just beyond what you can currently do with ease.
2. Design Small, Repeated Exposures
Break the capability into small steps. If the goal is to be comfortable leading a 20-person team and you currently lead five, the steps might be:
- Lead a cross-functional meeting with ten people
- Present quarterly results to your extended team
- Facilitate a planning session with 15 people
- Run an all-hands meeting with 20 people
Each step builds capability for the next. None of them alone is overwhelming.
3. Create Accountability and Support
Tell someone what you’re working on. This might be a coach, a peer, a mentor, or a leadership team member. Regular check-ins create accountability and give you space to process what you’re learning.
4. Track Your Progress
Keep a simple log of what you’re doing and how it feels. Note when something shifts from uncomfortable to manageable. That shift is evidence your comfort zone is expanding.
5. Adjust Based on Feedback
If something feels too hard, break it into smaller steps. If something feels too easy, increase the challenge. Your comfort zone is dynamic. Adjust your approach as you learn what works.
The Long-Term Vision
Expanding your comfort zone is a lifelong practice. There’s no point where you arrive and stop growing. But the way you approach growth can either sustain you or destroy you.
Kristen’s 15-year journey from rock bottom to running a global community demonstrates the power of sustainable expansion:
I really didn’t have a huge expectation. I just wanted to help people. I was so excited. I wanted to share my transformation. When you come from that place, I think anything’s possible.
She didn’t force herself into constant discomfort. She built practices that nourished her, expanded her capabilities gradually, and stayed consistent for years. The result is a business and life that feels sustainable instead of exhausting.
That’s the model worth following. Build capacity. Expand gradually. Recover regularly. Let the compound effect do its work.
Over time, you’ll look back and realize you’re comfortable doing things that once terrified you. Your comfort zone will have expanded so much that challenges that would have broken you years ago now feel manageable. That’s the goal. Not to eliminate discomfort, but to build the capacity to handle whatever comes.
If you want guidance on expanding your comfort zone as a leader without burning out, book a complimentary strategy session with one of our executive business coaches. We’ll help you identify your edges and design a sustainable expansion strategy.
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