PhiloPsycho Freedom

My friend and I have this sort of unspoken pact together where we are both trying to live on the "edge" as close as possible. Getting past the conventional meaning that alludes to living fast, dying young, and just having a generally crazy time, our meaning is something else entirely. Ours relies on the theory that everyone has a comfort zone, and we aim to get outside of said comfort zone in order to attain maximum growth.

I break it down into three major components of the self: Intellectual, Social, and Physical. The main goal is to push yourself to meet and surpass your comfort zone to within a range that leads to optimal growth (zone of optimal growth or ZoOG, if you will). This range is rather small, somewhere between complete comfort and extreme anxiety/failure. The goal within this is to push yourself just slightly past your current limits, attempting to expand them and, eventually, reach self-fulfillment (with regards to ability).

Of course, everyone's zone of optimal growth is at a different point, and can range in size depending on how adventurous or tough one is. Certain people can probably last for a short while in pushing past their limits, but I feel that doing so would result in a breakdown of some sort.

Regarding pushing one's self, you'll get different results depending on what area you choose to push past it's extreme: Intellectually, if you attempt to overextend yourself, you'll reach an area where you will have little to no comprehension of the material you're challenging and find it impossible to master; Socially, you'll likely expose your nervousness/unease through your body language and get a self-fulfilling prophecy of rejection; Physically will likely end in injury.

Of course, the assumption behind this is that pushing yourself to challenge things outside your ability will help extend your ability to encompass what you were attempting to master (the social aspect takes an exposure therapy approach to self-expansion (not to be confused with the self-expansion model by Aron & Aron), assuming the lack of social competency is due to nerves). The social realm is possibly the only area that is master-able considering there is no end to physical ability or intelligence, it's hard to get much further than complete comfort in approaching groups of strangers or speaking in front of large crowds.

Note two things: this is just a little experiment I'm trying with myself, though it may be entirely wrong in its assumptions; I neglect the spiritual realm because I don't really have anything like that in myself, but it's entirely  possible to be a fourth area of expansion to challenge. Something to take into consideration is that one must push themselves to discover their limits, teaching them something about themselves and what they are capable of.

Try it out and tell me how it goes; I'm sure you won't regret it.