Life Happens Outside The Comfort Zone: Anne Even (Transcript)

Full text of Anne Even’s talk titled “Life happens outside the comfort zone” at TEDxCentralWyomingCollege conference.

TRANSCRIPT:

So we live in a world where we strive for comfort. We work hard to have a more comfortable lifestyle, house and car. We strive to make things easier, more efficient. We incorporate technology into our everyday lives in order to simplify, streamline.

We make things consistent, predictable, transform them into a pattern. We try to fit in and be the same. We’ve made a world where you can just exist, function on autopilot and float along. We are present, but not really here.

This is a form of life. But is it living? Is it experiencing all that there is around us?

Now, what could our life be if we stepped outside our zone of comfort? What would it be like to feel more alive?

How do we challenge ourselves to be truly full of life, to live and to not just exist? How do we step outside of what we know to see what’s on the other side?

And what if we had the desire to do the unexpected? What if we remove those mental barriers that prevent us from doing something, even if it’s minor in nature?

What if you did what you or someone else thought you couldn’t?

By stepping outside of what we know, we have the ability to reinvent ourselves. We could become people who aren’t afraid. People who act upon their dreams. People who inspire others to be better.

Now, growing up in a town of 400 people, it was easy to have a label placed upon you as to who you were and what you would become. As a young child, I was to be at the top of my class in academics.