In this article, I’m going to tell you to do something that may seem oxymoronic. It’s something that I’m struggling to do myself. I grew up with a lot of fear, and I’ve slowly been conquering them. One of them being my fear of water.

What if I told you that some of the most happy people got there by doing things they feared? Read any biography, the happiness and satisfaction of work came after going through something that could induce anxiety. It doesn’t have to be as life altering as giving a speech, or raging against the patriarchy. It could be as simple as being impressed with yourself after singing your favorite song at karaoke.

If we all knew this, we’d probably all be looking to go against the grain of our fears to produce a bit more happiness. It goes against what we were taught about happiness. We were made to believe that happiness is sustained by doing the things that we like to do. At some point there’s going to be a plateau.

Getting out of your comfort zone doesn’t have to be a monumental endeavor, like I said before. Sometimes getting out of your comfort zone is easy as just sitting down with anxiety, or any other negative emotion. To stay in our comfort zone, we typically push negative emotions aside as if they were not real. Some of the ways we do this is with alcohol or flipping on the TV. We get home from stressful situations without the opportunity to really decompress. The best way to conquer your fear is to be one with it and then do something about it.