Learning Process | Comfort

Comfort is an emotional state of a person's mind, which, among other aspects, has a strong influence on behavior, thinking, focus, attention, and the ability to concentrate. This is the feeling of well-being in the form of comfort and the attitude of risk-free behavior. This is also often referred to as the so-called comfort zone in which the person thinks(!) he/she is located.

There is a so-called Yerkes-Dodson law, which describes the cognitive performance as a function of the level of stress/nervousness. The performance curve for this is also very individual, as it depends strongly on emotional and motivational factors and is divided into four sections.

The most used presentation of this law and the performance process is the Hebbian version.

When it comes to comfort, it depends heavily on whether we have a healthy level of stress or have already crossed the threshold, leading to a reduction in our performance. It is very individual here where our center is. We are in an area that we are used to and that we consider comfortable. Mostly these are situations and fields in which we have already gained a certain amount of experience and know-how to find our way there.
When we leave the so-called comfort zone, we enter a situation or field where we have little or no experience. This kind of uncertainty lowers our ability to think and has a powerful impact on our thought processes, which, in turn, slows us down.
The fact that small children do not exhibit such uncertainty is interesting.
They love to try out something new all the time and are not afraid or uncertain of making mistakes.
After all, mistakes are an essential part of the learning process, and we should always keep it in mind.
An interesting question that arises here is: "Why small children, unlike adults, do not feel such uncertainty?"
Let us first look at the following diagram:

The source can be found here.

Now imagine you are standing at the entrance in front of a massive dark forest in the middle of the night. This forest is so dense that no daylight can get through the treetops. To the left and right of this forest, some cliffs are much too steep to climb down, and we know that somewhere in this forest, there is the one thing we want to have.

Will you go inside and look for it?

Common sense would do anything not to.
But what if the thing you want is a hundred yards further into the forest, and it is brightly lit?
That is the thing that will fulfill you the way we have always wanted it to.
Would you risk it now?

Those who chose to leave the comfort zone would reach their destination faster than they thought they would. They would never have sprinted at such speed before in their lives.

Now we should understand the progression between decisions to step out of our comfort zone or stay in it. We will often get into situations where we do not know what to do. These will come again and again. However, we will always learn something new, and it will become more comfortable each time.