jumpingjacktrash:

florenceofalabia:

hugealienpie:

sweetschizo:

There’s a fine line between “pushing yourself out of your comfort zone” and “pushing yourself into a mental breakdown” and we need to fucking find it and stop encouraging people to do the second in an attempt at making them do the first.

A German pedagogue named Tom Senninger developed this model called the “Learning Zone Model.” Senninger talks about three zones: comfort, learning (or growth), and panic. I think that’s really important because some people do talk like anything “outside your comfort zone” is automatically good and brings growth.

But Senninger knows that you can only stretch so far before you’ve stretched too far. Both experience, personal work, and therapy can help expand the first two zones and shrink the third, but we’ll always have that place where panic and/or pain sets in, and our goal should be to recognize and respect that in ourselves and others, rather than force ourselves or someone else to “push through it.” There is no “through it.” The only thing on the other side of the panic zone is more panic.

“Edgy” performers take note. Pushing your audience into the learning zone is great. Pushing them into the panic zone is not helpful or entertaining for anyone.

this is a thing for physical therapy and training as well.

you recover by gently leaning on the wall of the comfort zone. don’t even push, just lean a little weight on it. stretch just until it feels stretchy; lift until your muscles feel kinda tired; raise your heart rate until you feel like you’re exercising. that’s as far as you should be going outside your comfort zone when you’re healing – imagine there’s a thin membrane between ‘comfort’ and ‘learning/training’ that is the ‘effort zone’ and it’s not an area you should inhabit, it’s a touchscreen you just make contact with.

for training, whether it’s in sports, martial arts, or just to get stronger in general, you want to go beyond that thin membrane of mere effort into the ‘learning zone’ which in this case is the ‘training zone’. you’re not just putting some muscle into it, you’re finding out how much muscle you can put into it. but still, you need to stop before you hit that red zone, which in cognitive areas is ‘panic’ and in physical areas is ‘pain’. you want the good ache that says “i busted ass today!” but you absolutely do not want the sharp stabbies or the sick throbbing that says “i went too far and now i’m going to lose all my gains.”

shonen manga is not a good guide to training.