comfort zones

When I was in primary school, I was made monitress.Not because I was the epitome of good behaviour, but conversely, because I happened to be hopping around the class on one foot when my form teacher was selecting someone to lead the class.

I helped the teachers run errands after errands, led the class back to the classroom after assembly, made public announcements and even raised the Singapore flag every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I doubt my primary school friends would ever term me a shy kid -  I was outgoing, loud, and popular then. But no one then knew that it took a lot out of me to handle the demands asked of a monitress.

I remembered that my form teacher used to frequently ask me to head over to another class to pass a message to other teachers. Sounds effortless. But I had to calm myself down, count 1 to 10 outside the class and make myself take deep breaths before I knock on the doors of another class. It seems silly now  to think of how much self-psycho-ing I needed to convince myself to do something as simple as stepping into another class. But then, that really seemed like a daunting task.

Now to think of it, I really appreciate being made monitress (thank you Mrs Wong, though you'll never read this). And I firmly believe that I'll never have gotten to where I am now, if not for that opportunity. It's really the first time  I understood what it meant to be put out of my comfort zone, which paved the way for me to try out new things beyond what I think I can do from then on.





Accepting this post has really pushed me to do things I would never have imagined doing. While it gives me a great sense of achievement afterwards, others would never see how much self-psycho-ing it takes me to do many things. I got no idea why my comfort zone has such a small radius. Why does so many things fall beyond my comfort zone?!

What prompted this post? A new challenge.
It's not really often that I get an opportunity like this, but the challenge scares me like no other.
Grrrrr. Pass it up? or face my fears?