Don’t Take Comfort in Comfort Zones

  • Posted by glen on November 17th, 2007

Don't Take Comfort in Comfort Zones

Variety is the spice of life. No one can deny that. There’s a book out there that shows that if you’re looking for satisfaction in routines, you’re probably not going to find it.

One of these books is Satisfaction: The Science of Finding True Fulfillment by Gregory Burns, a professor of psychology at Emory. His research includes athletes, S/M practitioners, even sex with his own wife. And he concludes that doing something outside your comfort zone makes you happy — it can trigger a release of the neurotransmitter dopamine, a mood-lifter.

While routines can be comforting, they’re not always fertile land for groundbreaking ideas. Have any of you found this to be true? What routines are you bucking to find happiness?

via Lifehacker

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    • I often come home tired from the office and the just easily take an hour (at least) of playing with toys together with my litte daughter. It brings me mentally back into my own childhood days.
    • Investigation of old thoughts, conventions, and paradigms, and moving into new territory is the essence of learning, growing, and fulfillment.

      I constantly struggle to balance being satisfied today with my hunger for more - more of life, more knowledge, and more growth, and doing new things - experiencing life - helps me to balance these two.
    • If we always do what we've always done we'll always get what we always got.
      For some people, tomorrow they'll wake up and it'll be 2012 and they'll still be doing what they've always done. Action creates a reaction.
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