A Never-Ending Comfort Zone

My new years resolution for 2022 is to continue working toward expanding my comfort zone. The bigger my comfort zone, the more things I will be able to do while still feeling safe, comfortable, and of course, relaxed.

As a child, I was always the most shy person in the room. My timidity affected my ability to pursue my passions of singing and acting. My social anxiety is still a part of me today, but I have learned to cope with it very well. I primarily learned these coping mechanisms during my senior year of high school.

I’ll never forget one specific night performing at a school music concert. I had just gotten off the stage after singing "God is a Woman" by Ariana Grande, and a boy came up to me.

“You’re so amazing! How are you so confident?” he said.

I was shocked.

“I’m not confident,” I told him.

“Of course you are! How else would you be able to do that?” he asked.

“It’s all an act,” I told him.

From that day on I realized that the confidence I exuded on stage was not genuine confidence. I was still terribly nervous all the time. That's why I was so shocked when he asked me how I was so confident! But, in the end, I love to sing so much that I wasn’t going to deprive my body of performing just because I was too shy or scared. So, in order to cope and adapt, I involuntarily became someone else in all of my performances.

That same year, an idol of mine, posted life-changing advice on her Instagram story.

“If there’s something that you really want to do and the only reason you’re not doing it is because you’re afraid of what people are going think of you or that people will judge you, you should do it," she said.

Her words inspired me to sign up for my first acting class.

I sang in about a hundred concerts and I took twenty weeks of acting classes.

Eventually, I faked it enough that I made it. I performed so much that I became that person I was on stage. I was no longer made up of two personas – a timid little girl and a strong confident woman. I was both of them, all the time, but definitely more of the strong confident woman.

I’ve learned that it’s normal to be nervous to do something – even if it takes you seventeen years to overcome the anxiety. Confidence comes after the risk is taken. Therefore, don’t expect to be confident enough to do something until you actually do it. So just do it!

Over the past four years I have come to realize that fear of judgement is not good enough a reason to stray from my dreams. It's okay to not feel confident all of the time -- but fear of the unknown doesn't mean I shouldn't take risks. After all, confidence comes after the risk is taken.

At the end of the day, you don’t need passions that will earn you a lot of money or a lot of status. You need passions that will make you grow as a person.

You must step outside of your comfort zone in order to make it bigger. As it grows, things that were once scary to you will become second nature. This gives you more opportunities to feel relaxed and at-peace with whatever you do. In turn, your newfound freedom and confidence will allow you to become more skilled, more experienced, and more creative in your pursuits.