1313: The Known Zone: You’re Not Actually Comfortable

Primal Potential

Elizabeth Benton

Money, Self-improvement, Inspiration, Transformation, Motivation, Affirmations, Health & Fitness, Mindset, Selfhelp, Weightloss, Education, Loseweight, Goals, Nutrition

5 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 14 June 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We love to call it a comfort zone, but let’s be honest — if you were truly comfortable, you wouldn’t be emailing me, considering a change, or listening to this podcast. What we call the “comfort zone” is almost never comfortable. It’s just known. Predictable. Familiar. And that’s a trap.

In this episode, I’m walking you through a powerful coaching conversation I had with someone on the fence about making a change. She thought she was afraid to leave her comfort zone… but what she was really bumping up against was the exposure of wanting more.

We’re getting into:

Why what we label as comfort is often just familiarity
The real reason you might be afraid to change (and what you’re already missing out on)
How your current fear might just be a red triangle in the storybook Zoom — you’re too close to it to see what it really is

And most importantly, I’m sharing three practical ways to get out of the known zone and into forward momentum:

Make small changes — simple disruptions to your routines build pattern-breaking momentum
Create strategic disappointment — practice saying “no” in low-stakes moments so the harder ones don’t knock you down
Choose intentional vulnerability — share the thing you’d rather not share; say the thing you usually skip over

This isn’t about overhauling your life. It’s about doing one thing differently — and letting it open the door to change.

💡 Mentioned in this episode:

💬 Let’s keep the conversation going:

Tag me on Instagram @elizabethbenton and share one small discomfort you’re choosing today. I want to hear it.

Transcript

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0:00.0	If you want to be more consistent, you're in the right place. I'm Elizabeth Benton. Welcome to
0:07.1	Consistent, a podcast by Primal Potential that is for all of you who feel frustrated by your lack of
0:13.3	progress or overwhelmed by all the change that you want to make in your life. Here, we stop frantically
0:20.5	chasing new habits and start
0:22.6	strategically building a structure of consistency. Let's get into it.
0:28.9	Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the primal potential podcast. I am Elizabeth Benton.
0:36.1	Thanks so much for joining me. Today we're going to be talking about
0:39.0	the difference between the comfort zone and the known zone. Most of us are not in our comfort
0:45.7	zone, though that is a phrase we throw around as though we are. We're not in a comfort zone.
0:52.6	We're in a known zone. See, the comfort zone isn't really comfortable.
0:59.8	So it's not a comfort zone. It's just familiar. And we confuse familiar with uncomfortable because
1:07.0	familiar must be comfortable if unfamiliar is uncomfortable.
1:10.8	But that is just not true.
1:12.9	That's an oversimplification that can actually keep us from making progress.
1:17.4	Because if we believe the issue is we're just comfortable where we are,
1:22.6	then we're going to keep defaulting to what we know and we're going to use that flawed logic to talk ourselves out of
1:29.7	change. What if the real discomfort is not changing, staying where you're at? And I think that is a
1:37.2	lot more true than it is true that you're in your comfort zone. So here's kind of what prompted
1:43.6	this discussion. I got an email from a listener who was on the
1:49.7	fence about the consistency course and here's what she said. She said, I'm trying to figure out like
1:54.1	what my reservation is, which first of all, I love that. I love saying, okay, I feel like it's a no, but why is it a no? Before we just move on to the
2:04.9	next thing, why is it a no? That is a powerful pattern. Here's what she said. She said, you know,
	...

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