Do you need to step out of your comfort zone… or finally find it?

Mar 04, 2026

Learning to be me….redefining my comfort zone.

Never mind never finding a comfortable bra…. It can be hard to settle into a comfortable life. Especially for women.

Midlife women hear a lot about stepping out of our comfort zones (or in some cases, crawling, leaping, or even being dragged kicking and screaming). After years in a rut of roles and responsibilities, we need to search out the fun from underneath the laundry pile and go full “happy!”

But it can often feel like just another midlife chore to do….. along with eating your body weight in protein, not ageing under any circumstances and taking up Hyrox (as if life wasn’t like jumping through hoops on a daily basis anyway).

It’s the advice handed out in motivational talks, personal development books and leadership seminars. Try something new. Take a risk. Say yes to a challenge. All with jazz hands and a free sample sachet of collagen powder.

And to be fair, there is wisdom in that - and it is something I have often advocated for and coached. At midlife especially, it can be very easy to get stuck in routines. Days fall into each other like a series of logistical exercises rather than a life being lived.

So sometimes stepping out of your comfort zone really does mean doing something new. Recently I’ve been doing a few of those things myself. I’ve started learning the piano. I’m doing Zumba. I’m saying yes to adventures. None of these things are life-altering decisions, but they stretch me in small ways.

I see the same thing from the women coming away with me on my Soul & Spice retreat (are you coming?) or in my coaching work. At a crossroads. Wanting more. Wanting to get off autopilot.

Stepping out of your comfort zone might mean taking responsibility for your finances for the first time. It might mean having a difficult conversation at home about fairness and boundaries. It might mean applying for the promotion you’ve been quietly qualified for years. Or it might simply mean remembering to have a bit of fun again — going to a class, meeting new people, doing something just because it brings you joy.

For many women in midlife, the real problem isn’t that we’re too comfortable.

The real problem is that what we call our “comfort zone” isn’t comfortable at all.

Our Good Girl training, means many women are living in what I call the Triad of Turmoil: people-pleasing, perfectionism and imposter syndrome. These aren’t personality traits we were born with, but behaviours we were trained into by a culture that has very clear ideas about how women should behave, and sometimes a family.

And none of them feel fucking comfortable!

Take people-pleasing.

We call it being “nice”. We call it being supportive. We call it being helpful. But underneath it often lies the exhausting habit of saying yes when you mean no. Of prioritising everyone else’s needs before your own. Of measuring your value through how useful or agreeable you are to other people. There is nothing comfortable about that.

It is deeply uncomfortable to silence your own preferences in order to keep everyone else happy. It is uncomfortable to carry responsibility for other people’s emotions. And it is uncomfortable to constantly worry about whether you are being liked. We saw Trump recently comment on a female journalist not smiling enough for him (she was asking about child sex abuse). Can’t imagine that being said to a man.

Stepping out of your comfort zone in midlife might simply mean saying, “No, that doesn’t work for me.” “No, I’m not going to smile to make you comfortable.”

That’s not reckless. That’s honest.

Then there’s perfectionism.

I remember a client who had spent years building her dream home. When the project was finally finished, the house was beautiful. Light-filled rooms, carefully chosen furniture, everything exactly as she had imagined.

And yet she couldn’t relax in it.

The cushions had to stay perfectly arranged. The kitchen had to remain spotless. And the real stressor - her young kids weren’t allowed to make a mess or have too much fun. She was constantly reminding to tidy up, to be careful, to not mess things up, rather than actually play with them.

Instead of becoming a place of comfort, the house had turned into a museum of perfection.

But a life that requires everything to be perfect is not comfortable.

True comfort is a bit of mess. It’s laughter around a kitchen table. It’s a house that looks lived in. It’s allowing joy to exist alongside imperfection because your value doesn’t lie in how clean and tidy your house is.

Sometimes stepping out of your comfort zone simply means allowing things to be good enough.

And then there is imposter syndrome.

We often think stepping out of our comfort zone means doing something big and bold - asking for the promotion, starting the business, putting ourselves forward.

But what many women don’t realise is that staying silent can actually be far more uncomfortable.

We know the statistics by now. Women tend to apply for jobs only when they meet nearly all the criteria. Men will apply when they meet far fewer. Women routinely underestimate their abilities while men are more likely to overestimate theirs.

And when women do show ambition or confidence, they are often labelled “difficult” or “unlikeable”.

So we stay in our “comfort zone” feeling uncomfortable.

Because living below your potential is its own kind of discomfort. It’s that quiet voice in the back of your mind saying, You could do more than this. I want more.

Another client is ambitious and smart, in a job that requires travel and responsibility. As the main breadwinner in her household, for years she has absorbed the unspoken message that good mothers should always be physically present and available. So every trip came with guilt and every moment she wasn’t working, she had to be at home.

But stepping out of her comfort zone didn’t just mean taking the job. It meant rewriting the script to allow herself to travel for work and take an exercise class when she was home. It meant recognising that being a mother didn’t require her to erase herself as a person and not every moment at home belonged to everyone else.

And something interesting happened.

As she stepped out of the old expectations - as she stepped out of her ‘comfort zone’ - she became far more comfortable in herself.

I’ve quoted Cheryl Strayed before: when you’re young you ask, “Who am I?” But in midlife the question becomes, “Who am I, really?”

That “really” is where things get interesting.

Because many women discover that the version of themselves they’ve been performing for decades - the endlessly accommodating, perfectly organised, selfless caretaker - was never entirely them.

It was a role.

And roles can become very uncomfortable after a while.

We are also surrounded by cultural messages that keep women slightly off balance. We’re told we’re not meant to like our bodies. Not meant to age. Not meant to take up space. Not meant to prioritise our own ambitions or pleasure.

But that can be a really uncomfortable place to be. So perhaps the idea of stepping out of your comfort zone deserves a rethink.

Yes, sometimes it means learning a new skill, joining a class or taking a trip on your own. But sometimes it means something much deeper.

It means stepping out of people-pleasing.
Stepping out of perfectionism.
Stepping out of imposter syndrome.

It means stepping out of the roles you were trained to play. And stepping into something far more comfortable: your real self.

Because true comfort isn’t about staying small or predictable.

True comfort is the quiet relief of living with your own voice and your own choices guiding the way.

So where are you feeling discomfort in your current comfort zone? (if you are reading this in email just reply to the comments button below).

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