There is a well-known thing that happens to caged animals. Keep one confined long enough and it stops testing the door. Open the door and the animal stays put, because the boundary is no longer in the cage. It has moved.
I read about that, thought it was sad, and then looked at my own life.
Thirty-three years working in corporate. In all that time I never seriously went looking for something better. Never went back to school. Never really reached for anything past the edge of what I already had.
I was comfortable. That was my box, and I sat in it for over three decades and called it a career.
Why is comfort the hardest wall to see?
Because nothing about it feels like a limit.
A fear of public speaking announces itself. You feel it in your chest and you know exactly what you are avoiding. Comfort does not do that. It feels like sound judgement. Why would I leave a decent job for something uncertain. Why would I go back to school at this age. Why would I take a risk when things are fine.
Every one of those questions has a reasonable answer available, which is the problem. The reasoning is never obviously wrong on any given day. It is only wrong in aggregate, across thirty-three years, and by then it is not a series of decisions any more. It is a life.
The tell is not unhappiness. I was not miserable. The tell is that I could not remember the last time I had tested anything.
How did I finally notice?
By seeing the pattern somewhere else first, which is usually how this works.
Once I understood the shape of it, I started seeing everybody else’s. The same outline, over and over, in life after life. People standing next to a door they had stopped trying, entirely convinced the reason was practical.
Recognising it in other people is easy and slightly smug. The uncomfortable part is that the pattern you spot fastest in others is nearly always the one you are running yourself. I could see it in them because I had thirty-three years of practice at it.
What was the first wall?
A job I lost because of one, which is where the book starts.
I will not relitigate it here beyond the shape: there was a thing I would not do, and somebody who would do it got the position. That was not a mysterious injustice. It was a wall behaving exactly as walls behave, quietly determining an outcome without ever presenting itself as a choice.
What made it useful was that it was specific enough to see. Most walls are not. Most of them cost you things you never learn about, because the opportunity simply goes elsewhere and nobody tells you.
Are all these boxes the same?
No, and
I got lucky in which boxes I had to deal with. I have never had to fight quitting smoking, because I never smoked. Or drinking, because I never drank. Or gambling, because I never gambled. I am not going to stand here and lecture people fighting battles I never had to fight.
If a real addiction is part of your box, that deserves the kind of help built for it, and a book about comfort zones is not that. What I can write about honestly is the specific variety I know from the inside, which is the wall made of nothing but never having tried.
What does testing the door look like?
Smaller than people expect, and the size is the point.
The mistake is treating this as a dramatic decision. Quit the job, move country, start the business. Those are enormous tests with enormous consequences, which means you will not run them, which means the wall holds.
A real test is small enough that failing costs almost nothing. Apply for the thing you would not get. Say yes to the invitation you would normally decline. Ask the question you assume the answer to. The purpose is not the outcome. It is data about whether the boundary is still there, and most of these have not been checked in a decade.
What surprised me, once I started, was how often the answer was that the door had been open for years and nobody had mentioned it.
What would I tell somebody comfortable right now?
Ask when you last risked failing. If it is years, that is the finding.
Distinguish the wall from the reason. A reason you have never tested is not a reason, it is a conclusion you reached once.
Test small. Big tests do not get run, and an untested wall stays up.
Notice the pattern in other people, then look for it in yourself. The one you spot fastest is usually yours.
Do not confuse this with the serious ones. If your box is an addiction, get the help built for it. This is about the walls made of habit.
I left corporate eventually, and everything I have done since has been outside the box I spent three decades in. That is not a triumphant ending, because thirty-three years is a long time to spend not checking, and I would like some of it back.
The book on this: Don’t Live in Fear is 22 chapters on the walls people stop testing, written after I lost a job to one and then spent three decades not noticing the others.
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