Instead of stepping out of your comfort zone, it's more practical to expand your comfort zone.

Take myself as an example, I work as a financial translator. I love my job. But in the meantime, I need improvement. So it's also essential to get to know other successful people, not just translators, as well as knowing how things go in other industries.

I don't want to quit what I'm currently doing to make a fresh start. That is not my plan, at least for now. But I still make sure of improvement without jumping out of my comfort zone.

Instead, I expand it.

Everyone prefers to stay in the comfort zone, I mean, who doesn't? Stepping out just seems to be more risky and challenging, that's why you're reluctant to give it a go.

So, don't. Don't leave your comfort zone. But you can try to make it bigger, so you can enjoy more time of comfort.

Here are small moves you might consider to expand your comfort zone.

Examine the things you're doing at present, see if you can resize your scope of ability. Don't stop at what you do. Think about what's more you can do.

Say, you have interests in photography. But you never take it seriously. You take photos to make yourself happy.

So you're staying rather nice and cozy in the comfortable zone, like this...

But one day, you decide to become more than just an amateur. So your passion outgrows your comfort zone, like this...

And when you do become an expert, your comfort zone grows naturally...

The truth is, no matter how great or worse choices you've made, at a certain point, you'll regret that how come you didn't choose the other option at that moment.

"What if I didn't quit the job..."

"What if I accept the offer..."

"What if I didn't make the mistake..."

Will you be happier? I highly doubted. Because you can never predict what will happen in the future even if you made a seemingly good decision at present. Maybe within the next few years, it turns out to be a bad one.

Now that you've learned that it's inevitable to regret, you'll see the value of failture. The process of standing up after a fall will not only leave you harsh feelings and dreadful memories, it will also teach you lessons of life so that your next decision will be wiser and more practical.

Initially introduced by Anthony Robbins, the six human needs, including Connection/Love, Variety, Significance, Certainty, Growth, and Contribution ensure the quality of one's life.

These needs drive you to do the things you keep doing by offering directions and satisfaction. The pitfall falls in the fact that normally you'd pursuit such needs unconsciously.

So it happens that you don't even know why you're feeling depressed or happy as you're not aware of the progress of your goal. On the other hand, when you do fulfill these basic needs, you'll then become slow at making further changes.

So explore more about your basic needs by setting higher standards for instance, and record your progress to know by heart what you've accomplished and stay motivated to accomplish more.