Our local laundromat
This is difficult to adequately convey. I may not do a good job explaining this. You may not understand or get at all what I’m saying, but I’ve identified a few regular things I do that I feel certain make me a better person in the world that are not typically recognized as assisting in this endeavor. A few of em are as follows:
1) In all weather, temperatures & seasons, I head outside to use the loo.
2) Once every two weeks, I go to the laundromat to do laundry.
3) A large portion of the year, I build & light 1 or 2 fires a day in the wood stove for warmth.
No indoor plumbing. No in home washer & dryer. No turning a dial for heat. Some would consider this poverty, or at least painfully inconvenient or terribly unfortunate or a real drag & bother. But for me there is something restorative and connective in each activity. There is something, dare I say, even liberating.
One of the arenas I practice a lot in is something I like to call Comfort Zone Expansion Work (CZEW). Having been an intentional practitioner of CZEW for many years prior to moving from the comforts & conveniences of in-town living assisted me very well when we moved to the semi-remote woods where we now reside in a small 12X14 cabin, off-grid and without running water. The way we’re living now is very different then when we were living in Missoula, and it required a willingness to step into incredibly new areas and unfamiliar terrain.
I consider the choiceful decision to practice being intentionally uncomfortable, in small and deliberate ways, on purpose and with purpose, to be one of the most fruitful, transformative, spirit-improving undertakings there is. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but as Carl Jung said, “Only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life.” Here’s the paradox I’ve discovered is true based on my CZEW practice: When I actively practice to be uncomfortable in small ways, I become more comfortable in my own skin amid varied conditions over time. And when I practice small in the here & now, it allows me to work bigger in the future.
In my view, in the absence of having a CZEW practice, it’s common that as we get older we become more rigid and restricted in our ways of thinking and locked in to our habits, patterns, and routines to a detriment. Engaging with CZEW helps us to expand our ability to meet the moment where it’s at regardless of what’s happening, and to choose how to respond with care and consideration accordingly, vs. from a place of fight or flight or fawn or freeze. When we practice CZEW it also increases our ability to step into the unknown, vs. stick to what’s most familiar and relatively predicatable & socially safe. There’s nothing wrong, of course, with having a schedule and structure and routines that offer support & stability, but when we cling onto them for dear life or become overly attached to them instead of being able to update and adjust them when something changes trouble brews.
Growth as a person, learning anything new, skillset building, self-cultivation, and character development do not take place inside of our comfort zone. It’s really as simple as that.
Based on our ever-changing weather and wide variance of temperatures we can see in the span of a day in every season, here in western Montana we live in an especially good place to do this kind of work. Putting intentional effort into slowly expanding our tolerance levels for hot & cold temperatures, vs. constantly manicuring our surrounding environment to be as comfortable as possible year-round, is a fertile practice that can offer us a great deal of benefit. But this is just one example, there are many ways to do CZEW. Engaging with it on purpose & with purpose is the key. Choice is the power move here. It’s what makes this particular practice so potent.
Taking small steps outside of our comfort zone on purpose, by choice and not force, strengthens our resilience, expands our capacity for being open to new things, and develops our ability for understanding, empathy, and compassion directed towards ourselves and others.
I really don’t think I would’ve had the capacity to make the big life-change move we did back in 2021 when we sold our house in Missoula had I not spent years invested in CZEW. I think most of us lean heavily in the direction of having a pretty small comfort zone in general. We like to stick to the people and places and activities and routines and foods that we know. And while it makes sense and there’s nothing wrong with having likes and preferences, we can also take it too far. CZEW can help to ensure that as we age we don’t get more close-minded, more cynical, more intolerant of others, and more caught in the illusion of separation.
As someone who values organization, orderliness, planning, scheduling, and having a routine to follow, CZEW has especially been - and continues to be - really important and beneficial growth-work for me to do. And it’s also been crucial in helping me to be the kind of friend and partner I genuinely want to be for my husband.