Hello! My name is Caz Campbell. I’ve lived in Newbury most of my life, I’m a mum of two daughters who are 5 & 7 and I have three other job “hats”:  I teach baby massage, I’m an emotional coach and I’ve published a book focusing on happiness, kindness and calmness. It’s called “Donkey on a Waffle” and includes topics which I’m going to talk about in this blog. Feel free to join my free Facebook group which also discusses these topics, with fun facts, posts and chats: https://www.facebook.com/groups/818543508893746

What does your comfort zone mean to you? Writing a book, doing Facebook live videos and driving used to be well out of my comfort zone:

1. I used to think to write, I had to have better grades in English, have an extensive vocabulary and read a lot more. In reality, many people like reading conversational text. So writing how I talk is actually ok.

2. Doing videos of myself on social media still feels weird, but it’s not as daunting because I’ve given it a good go. I don’t watch myself back but I think most people don’t like the sound of their own voice so I’m not alone there!

3. I still don’t love driving but I’ve not driven far in the last year & a half! But I now have a technique to feel calm and rational when I do drive, which has massively helped me.

Being in your comfort zone is where you feel calm and competent but it may not necessarily mean it’s somewhere you love, like staying in a job you don’t like. Because you know what you’re doing, it’s not stressful or scary. You may have had unpleasant experiences that means you avoid any similar environments, therefore creating a comfort zone. Having a crash at night may mean you avoid driving when it’s dark. Having an idea rejected in the past means you may not voice your opinion in a meeting at work. Having been in an unhealthy relationship may mean you now struggle to trust or commit to a new one. Until you step out of your comfort zone and revisit something that you want, you won’t know it’s OK.

There’s huge fear in breaking out of your comfort zone – fear of failure, the unknown, being hurt or judged. It’s a good thing to minimise fear and stress, but a small amount of both can actually be beneficial. Eustress (good stress) influences us in a positive way by making life challenging, energizing and rewarding. Distress (bad stress) affects us negatively if not managed effectively.

The relationship between stress and performance was explained by a stress response curve created by a practitioner called Nixon P. in 1979 (which was based on ‘Yerkes Dodson Law’). There is an area they called the Comfort Zone which indicates the range of stress levels that we can manage alongside good performance levels. As stress begins to increase after that zone, performance levels also increase further – but, then we reach a fatigue point where our performance levels starts to decline. Ultimately, an excessive level of stress is known as distress which leads to exhaustion and burnout.

So, there needs to be a balance and awareness.

If you’d like to find out more about me and what I do, my website is: www.happykindcalm.co.uk