When entering your 20s, the path of curating your future is undeniably intimidating.
Whether it’s physical, mental, or social, situations will arise that make you question your boundaries — but respecting your boundaries is just as important as pushing your limits.
We must start this complex journey by acknowledging and differentiating your boundaries and your limits. With that, comes the understanding of what being uncomfortable means to us and how much discomfort we are willing to endure for the sake of potential growth.
So what does being uncomfortable mean? This is going to look different for everyone. For me, there are going to be two kinds of discomfort: one that makes me feel unsafe, and one that makes me feel unsure.
When my discomfort is entangled with a lack of safety — whether that manifests itself mentally or physically — that’s when I know that there’s a boundary being crossed or that one is going to be crossed. I can only describe this to be a demonstration of trusting your gut. We all know that feeling, the immediate concern that you can feel deep inside your stomach when you just know something is off. Trust that.
When it comes to feeling unsure, we often feel that in our chest. This is anxiety. Don’t trust that. On a very basic level, anxiety is a mental obstacle. But if you shift your perspective on the power dynamics at play and understand that that’s all it is, a mental obstacle, then you’ll be able to diminish its power in your mind.
Now I want to be very clear when I say that this concept is only in reference to anxiety on a very basic level. This is not for anxiety or panic disorders — as we all know those stem from chemical imbalances — but rather the anxiety that takes place before starting a new job or when your friend asks you to do karaoke with them.
When it comes to the latter, those situations are when we must learn to see anxiety as a small signal. A signal letting us know that we have an opportunity to step outside of our comfort zone. Although anxiety is often telling that if we step outside, peril awaits, it’s important then to acknowledge what we had discussed earlier, that there’s a difference between our boundaries and our limits.
At the end of the day, it boils down to individual discernment, one person’s safe haven might be another person’s hell. Let’s take a look at how rock n’ roll was perceived in the 80s by many religious people. For many teens, rock n’ roll felt like that safe haven — the Beastie Boys were practically a church choir. For more conservative, religious people, rock n’ roll was the devil incarnate and felt like a threat to their safety.
It’s all about preference, environment, access, and rationality. So, in the journey of stretching one’s boundaries, we must figure out what each of those things means to us and understand that it won’t look the same for others. It can be hard to picture ourselves venturing into previously uncharted territory, so when it gets tough to do so, remember to look back on all the progress you’ve already made. It’s not fair to ourselves to forget that.