Project Name: Get Out of your Comfort Zone (GET OUT)
Duration: From 01/06/2023 – 31/03/2024, duration 10 months
Activity: Training at Poland of 36 youth workers (4 youth workers from each organization) about how to getting out of your comfort zone and be creatively for your self-improvement
Dates of the activity: 2 to 9 of January 2024 (including travelling days)
Accommodation: Wroclaw, Poland
Applicant Organisation: Stowarzyszenie "OPEN SOUL" (Poland). Contact person: Agata Lech, email: agata@lemach.pl
Coordinating Organisation: Active Cypriot Programs and European Learning Into Acceptance, ACPELIA, email: acpeliacy@gmail.com, www.acpelia.org
What about? The idea is to use a variety of different methods of thinking out of the box for their self-improvement, personal development, coaching, time-management, psychology, against social and cultural discrimination and a lot of other themes which are becoming part of our personality. We will try through the PDA to make you GET OUT of your Comfort Zone. The aim is to spread these methods through the NGOs and help young people become more balanced and happier in their daily lives as well as increasing their employability rates.
Venue: You will be hosted in a hotel in the city of Wroclaw. Each room has a bathroom inside. The division for the rooms will not be based on countries, so that we will have a multicultural exchange. More information for the venue will be announced later.
Food: The venue of the training will serve the participants with 3- times-a-day meals and snacks and beverages for the coffee breaks.
Participants: 36 youth workers / educators and 4 stakeholders from Poland, Cyprus, Greece, Portugal, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Malta will gathered in a week program so to GET OUT of their comfort zone and try to create their own new project or ideas in teams.
4 youth workers / teachers / educators / entrepreneurs / people who is working with young people.
What? GET OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE
Why? Leaving your comfort zone allows you to have new experiences and to engage in activities that you haven't before, all while opening you up to meet new people. If you can try this, you are open to all sorts of possibilities you may not have thought possible.
5 REASONS TO LEAVE YOUR COMFORT ZONE
The comfort zone is a mental state that does not allow personal growth. It may be okay to be there for a while, but if you want to continue to grow and adjust to new situations, this is not a place to stay.
Although this comfort zone may seem nice (because it allows us to always follow the “automatic pilot” position), it is not sufficiently stimulating. Ultimately, staying there will make us feel empty.
Between you and me … what is it that keeps you anchored there? Surely you want to step up, be brave and take on the world. But you don’t. You may be suffering, but do not move a finger because you are in your comfort zone. Who knows what could happen if you face the anxiety, abandon your past and fight for what you’ve always dreamed of? If you can push through, and out of, your comfort zone, you may find that an exciting and new world awaits you!
Want more reasons?
You will become a stronger person. Once you step out of your comfort zone, despite being afraid, you may see that it was no big deal. Feeling insecure in the face of change is natural. That fear provides a warning that the road may not be easy. It becomes a problem when fear immobilizes you. The first step is to start recognizing what scares you is the uncertainty. It’s important to approach it with a positive mentality. If you fall from time to time, you will grow as a person. As you continue to move forward, over time, you’ll look back and be proud of yourself. Your personal development begins here. Identify what will motivate you and what you want to change. Take the first step toward that. Isn’t it worth it?
You will be more creative. Leaving the comfort zone stimulates creativity to meet new possibilities and break what is routine. A study published in Applied Cognitive Psychology (2012) showed that students who spent a semester outside their country had higher scores on two tests of creativity than those students who had stayed in their home country. On the other hand, another study found that the personality trait of “open to experience” (one of the big 5) is the best predictor of creative achievement. This personality trait is characteristic of individuals who tend to take risks. They challenge themselves or try new things constantly.
It allows you to gain self-confidence. Leaving your comfort zone and taking steps to achieve your goals will have positive effects on your self-efficacy beliefs (or confidence). This concept was initially introduced by Albert Bandura, a psychologist who developed Social Learning Theory, which explains the regulation of motivation and human action. Therefore, as you push out of you comfort zone and test yourself, you will see how mastering certain skills will increase your confidence. A positive sense of self-efficacy is associated with positive thoughts and aspirations, less stress and anxiety. Nothing bad about that!
It will help you continue your personal development. When we are young, we are more likely to take risks. As we get older, we begin to fear failure. How do we push though this learned helplessness and paralysis (do you know the “analysis paralysis”?)? This fear takes a serious emotional toll on us unless we change the way we think. In his book Auto-Renew, the writer John Gardner says: “We paid a heavy price for our failures and this is a major obstacle to our growth. This causes our personality to not develop and does not allow the exploration and experimentation (of our world). There is no learning without some difficulty. If you want to keep growing, you must overcome the fear of failure. “
You will meet new people and live new rewarding experiences. Leaving your comfort zone allows you to have new experiences and to engage in activities that you haven’t before, all while opening you up to meet new people. If you can try this, you are open to all sorts of possibilities you may not have thought possible.
How? In 1908, an experiment performed by psychologists Robert Yerkes and John Dodson found an interesting relationship between performance and anxiety. They discovered that mice were more motivated to complete a maze when given mild electrical shocks. However, the mice hid in fear once the shocks became too strong. According to the Yerkes-Dodson Law, an optimal level of pressure or anxiety increases performance, but only up to a point. Too much pressure has the opposite effect, causing someone to panic. Trying to jump too far outside your comfort zone can have the same effect. Doing activities that increase your anxiety too much can have you scurrying even further back into your comfort zone. The best way to leave your comfort zone is to gradually expand it and find your optimal level of “good stress.” Increased performance is just one of the many reasons stepping out of your comfort zone is important. It also helps you find out your true potential, reach your goals, and live a more fulfilling life.
Here are five ways to get out of your comfort zone:
Do one thing you’ve always wanted to
Take on a fitness challenge
Change up your routine
Expand your professional skillset
Choose a fear, and face it
Travel somewhere new
Below are the main aims of the Training that we are organising which will have an impact on youth workers and will be transferred in their organisations and young people through future projects. Through this training we aim to make participants get out of their comfort zone and through this to emphasize to on the following subjects:
● To evaluate the ways by which we understand ourselves.
o How do we understand ourselves?
o How do we do our self-analysis?
o Which are our strengths and weaknesses?
o What makes us motivated?
o Which criteria determine the ways we do our self-evaluation?
● Is our self-evaluation objective?
o How do other people evaluate us?
o Which do they believe are our strengths and weaknesses?
o Intersection of different views.
o How do we review our self-evaluation?
● To do freed-from-pressures, fear, discrimination or other “altered” factors self-evaluation.
o Deterioration of our self-understanding and self-evaluation at risk of being subject to discrimination.
o Are we subject to any discrimination and we cannot do objective self-evaluation, because we feel pressure by others or fear or we are deprived of our human rights?
o To learn the importance of awareness of our human rights (and responsibilities).
o To be aware of the human rights.
o To comply with human rights.
o To be freely expressed about ourselves.
o How do we review our self-evaluation? Are we now too lenient or too strict with ourselves?
● To stimulate interest in human rights and racism.
o To raise awareness about human rights.
o To eliminate exploitation.
o The right not to be discriminated against.
o Promote freedom and equality in dignity and rights
o To increase equal treatment of all for the improvement of ourselves.
● To develop skills to understand ourselves and to become better alternatively.
o To encourage people to find alternative activities to assess themselves
o To express freely new ideas for self-improvement.
o To develop imagination and creativity to envision the future.
o To think how social media can contribute to self-improvement.
o To encourage young people to think “out of the box”, because in our days those people have more chances to succeed.
o Young people of our organisation and other organisations learn new methods of Non-Formal Education in themes of self-understanding, self-awareness, and self-improvement.
o To develop the idea of living in a fair and innovative world.
If you are interesting to be part of our groups to get involved please apply to the link: https://forms.gle/wQudsu7d3c86Z8zb7