19. Your Comfort Zone Is Costing You Your Dreams (And What to Do About It)

Comfort feels safe. Familiar. Predictable.

But what if the very thing that feels safe is quietly holding you back from the life you actually want?

In this episode of The Bold Biz Podcast, Jenny talks about the hidden cost of staying inside your comfort zone and why so many women settle into routines that feel stable but slowly disconnect them from their bigger dreams.

Jenny shares the personal wake up call that pushed her to finally start pursuing her long held dream of building a business, even though it felt uncomfortable, uncertain, and honestly a little terrifying.

You will hear why fear is often a sign you are moving in the right direction, why experience is actually one of your biggest advantages when starting something new, and how taking small steps outside your comfort zone can completely change where you are a year from now.

This episode is a reminder that you are not too old, it is not too late, and the life you want may be waiting just outside the bubble you have been living in.

💡 In this episode, we talk about:

• Why the comfort zone can quietly block your dreams
• The difference between enjoying comfort and hiding in it
• The mindset shift that changed Jenny’s life at nearly 50
• Why experience is actually an advantage when starting a business
• The myth that successful founders are always young
• Why courage grows when you take small uncomfortable steps

If you have been feeling the pull to build something of your own but keep talking yourself out of it, this conversation might be the push you needed.

⭐ Links & Resources

• The IDEA Filter – FREE Guide

• Join The Bold Biz Collective

• Visit The Bold Biz Website

Transcript

Main Intro

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Bold Biz Podcast. I'm Jenny Lavalius, a Swedish midlife graphic designer, mom of 12-year-old twins, and the creator of the Bold Biz Collective. This podcast is for women over 40 who are ready to build something of their own without the hustle, the burnout, or the pressure to be perfect. If you've ever thought it's too late for me, or that everyone else seems to have it all figured out, you're going to feel right at home here. Let's dive in. So today we're tackling something that I think every single one of us deals with, whether we're willing to admit it or not. We're talking about the comfort zone. That warm, cozy, familiar little bubble we all love to live in.

Episode Intro

SPEAKER_00 0:46

And I get it, the comfort zone is lovely. It's like your favorite blanket on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Nobody's out here saying that comfort is bad. We all want good things. We want food on the table, happy kids, our health, a peaceful life. We want to be able to sit on our favorite spot on the couch at the end of a long day and just breathe. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting that. But here's the thing. And it's the thing I wish someone had told me 20 years ago. There's a massive difference between enjoying comfort and hiding in it. And for a long time, I was hiding in

The Comfort Trap

SPEAKER_00 1:28

it. So let me paint you a picture. I'm 52. I have a wonderful husband and a family I love, and for the first almost 50 years of my life, I was very, very comfortable. And I don't mean that in a braggy way. I mean it in the sense that I had settled into a pattern. I wasn't pushing myself in my career. I wasn't saying yes to new experiences that might have scared me. If someone invited me to speak or lead a meeting or try something I'd never done before, my default answer was most of the time no. Not because I couldn't do it, but because it felt uncomfortable. And comfortable Jenny did not like to do uncomfortable things. I think this happens to a lot of us as we get older. When we're younger, we're naturally more open. We travel, we experiment, we try on different identities like outfits. But somewhere along the way, and I can't tell you exactly when it happens, we start craving stability, predictability, and sameness. We find our groove and we just stay in it. And that groove can start to feel less like a path forward and more like a rut. Neil Donald Walsh had this quote that I keep coming back to. He says, Life begins at the end of your comfort zone. And when I first heard that, I thought, well, that's a nice thing to put on a coffee mug, but I didn't actually live by it. I was living my whole entire life inside the comfort zone, thinking that was the whole point.

The Wake-Up Call

SPEAKER_00 3:05

But about four years ago, something shifted inside me. I was getting close to turning 50, and I stumbled into this YouTube series by Bob Proctor about manifesting your dream life. Now I know what you might be thinking, and I thought the same thing at first. But Bob's core message was simple and it hit me like a freight train. He basically said, If you can dream it and think it, you can create it. The only thing standing between you and the life you want is you and your own beliefs about what you're capable of. And I sat there watching these five episodes, and I just started crying, like really crying. Not sad tears, more like the kind of tears that come when something you've always felt deep down finally gets spoken out loud. It was as if every word he said reached into the deepest part of my soul and just shook me awake. Because here's what I realized. I had been telling myself a very specific story for decades. And that story went like this. I'm just a graphic designer, I'm not cut out to be more, I don't have what it takes to run my own business, I know nothing about digital marketing, I'm not an entrepreneur, that's for other people, more confident people, bolder people, not for me. And that story, that story was my comfort zone talking. It felt safe to believe those things, because if I believe them, I didn't have to try. And if I didn't try, I couldn't fail. But what I also couldn't do then was grow. I love this Brene Brown quote so much because it's so brutally honest. We can choose courage or we can choose comfort, but we can't have both. For most of my life, I had been choosing comfort every single time, without even realizing I was making a choice.

A Dream That Wouldn’t Die

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Now here's something I haven't shared a lot on this podcast. When I lived in Silicon Valley years ago, I was surrounded by entrepreneurs, and I remember watching these people who were the flame that kept their whole business going, who were hiring people and building something bigger than themselves, and I thought, wow, how incredible would that be? It was this deep wish I carried inside me. But I never let myself take it seriously because, well, who was like to think I could do that? And the wild thing is, that wish never went away. Even when I ignored it for years, even when I told myself it was silly, even when I took breaks from my side businesses for months at a time, it would just come roaring back. This spark inside me that just refused to be extinguished. And I think that's such an important thing to pay attention to. If you have a dream or a desire that keeps showing up, no matter how many times you try to talk yourself out of it, that's not random. That's your soul trying to tell you something. The French writer Anna Isinin said something beautiful about this. She wrote that the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. And that's exactly what happened to me. Staying comfortable became more painful than the idea of stepping into the unknown. Because I started to see the cost. Not the cost of trying, but the cost of not trying. The cost of getting to be 70 or 80 years old, and looking back and knowing that I had been too afraid to go after the thing that lit me

The Data Is on Your Side

SPEAKER_00 6:55

up inside. And here's the part where I want to completely destroy the myth that you're too old or too late to start something. Because the data says otherwise. Harvard Business Review studied what makes startup founders successful, and the answer surprised a lot of people. The average age of founders behind the highest growth companies wasn't 22 or 28. It was 45. 45 years old. And founders with at least three years of real-world experience were 85% more likely to build a successful company. Even Steve Jobs was 52 when Apple launched the iPhone. Jeff Bezos was in his mid-40s when Amazon really took off beyond selling books. Let me say that again. The most successful founders are middle-aged people with real-world experience. Not kids in hoodies in a garage. I mean, those kids are great too, but the point is, your experience is not a liability. It's your biggest asset. Everything you've learned, every skill you've built, every challenge you've navigated, that's the foundation your business gets to stand on. And then on top of that, we're living in a time when anyone with a phone and an internet connection can build something extraordinary. And now with AI tools at our fingertips, the barriers have honestly never been lower. A 17-year-old kid or 70-year-old grandmother can build a digital product from their kitchen table. The playing field has been completely leveled. The only real barrier left is what you believe about

My New Motto

SPEAKER_00 8:41

yourself. So here's what happened when I got closer to the 50 mark. Something just clicked inside me. I looked back at all the decisions I'd made in my life, and I could suddenly see so clearly that I had said no to things because I didn't want to feel uncomfortable. I didn't want to get up on stage, I didn't want to lead, I didn't want to put myself out there. And I thought, you know what? No more. I'm almost 50, or over 50 now, but back then almost 50. And frankly, I don't care anymore what anyone else thinks about what I'm doing. And I don't mean that in a reckless way. I mean it in a liberated way. I'm only gonna do what makes me happy and what's best for my family. And this side business, this dream of building something meaningful that helps other women, it makes me so happy. It's a spark that's been lit inside me, and I've not been able to put it out. Believe me, I've tried. I've taken breaks, I wrote a book, came back to it, paused, came back to it again. I've questioned everything, but it always comes back in full force. It's just something I have to pursue. Because if I don't, I know I'm gonna regret it forever. So my new over 50 motto is this. I'm scared and I'm doing it anyway. Mel Robbins has a quote from the five-second rule. She says, It's okay to be scared, that being scared means you're about to do something really, really brave. And I love that reframe because we've been taught to think of fear as a stop sign. But what if fear is actually a compass? What if the things that scare you most are pointing you exactly where you need to go? She says, if you have the courage to start, you have the courage to succeed. The younger version of me was too worried about what other people would think. Would they judge me? Would they say negative things? What about internet trolls? But you know what? I'm not letting any of those things stand in my way anymore. And one of the things that Bernay Brown teaches is that you shouldn't take criticism from people who aren't being brave with their own lives. The people sitting in the cheap seats, the ones who would never put themselves out there, do not get a say in your story. Let their opinions fall to the

Being the Example

SPEAKER_00 11:13

floor. There's another reason this matters to me beyond just my own dreams. I want to be a good role model for my kids. I don't want them growing up thinking it's okay to let fear run the show. And I don't want them to avoid things just because those things feel scary or uncertain. If someone invites me to speak in front of hundreds of people about how to help women in midlife pursue their side businesses, I don't want to be the person who says, no thanks, I'm not comfortable with that. I want to be the person who says, I'm terrified and I have no idea how I'm going to pull this off, but I'm going for it. Because courage is contagious. Brene Brown says that every time we choose courage, we make everyone around us a little braver. And I truly believe that. When you see another woman your age putting herself out there, stumbling, figuring it out, and keeping going anyway, that gives you permission to do the same thing. So I want to be that for other women. I want to be the person who says, you can do this. And I believe in you, and I'll believe in you until you believe in yourself.

Start Ridiculously Small

SPEAKER_00 12:29

Now I also want to be really practical here because I know the idea of starting a business can feel very overwhelming. There are a million things to figure out if this is new to you. The tech, the sales, digital marketing, social media, how to even be visible in your business. It can feel like standing at the base of a mountain with no map and no shoes. But here's what I want you to hear. You don't have to take a giant leap from day one. Some people can do that, and more power to them. But for most of us, for a lot of us, especially those of us with families and responsibilities and a full-time job, a lot is at stake. So start ridiculously small. Just set aside one evening a week. One tiny digital product or service that helps solve someone's problem. One social media channel where you show up and talk about what you're building. That's it. That is enough to start. And then, if you want to scale it later, amazing. Scale it to the moon. But if one night a week is all you've got right now, then honor that. Work with what you have. Start where you are. Because what I've learned over the past three and a half years is that clarity doesn't come before you start. It comes from starting. It comes from messing up, from learning and figuring it out, from making mistakes and then finding your way through them. I've made every mistake in the book already. So you don't have to make all of them, but some of them you will make, and that's okay. That is not failure. It's just part of the journey. You have to be okay with not knowing. Okay with the messy middle. Okay with things not going as planned. Because things will morph and change as you grow. Maybe you start out heading in one direction and you end up somewhere completely different. And that different place might be exactly where you were meant to be all along.

Spread Your Wings

SPEAKER_00 14:36

So here's my invitation to you today, my fellow midlife woman. Be brave. Don't let fear of the unknown, fear of messing up, or fear of not knowing enough stand between you and the life you're dreaming about. It's your life. It's your dream. And honestly, nobody else's opinion about your goals matters. If people think your dreams are crazy, good. The best dreams usually sound a little crazy to everyone except the person brave enough to chase them. And yes, enjoy your Netflix evenings. Seriously, those are valuable and lovely and needed, especially with everything going on in the world at the moment. But don't let them become an escape. Don't let the couch and the remote become the thing that keeps you from doing the work you know deep in your heart you want to do. Because here's what I know for sure. You will be shocked, absolutely shocked at where you can be a year from now, if you believe in yourself and are willing to step outside of your comfort zone, even just a little, even just one evening a week.

Episode Outro

SPEAKER_00 15:51

So let's do this together. Let's support each other, let's boost each other, let's help each other create the best lives possible, because we only get this one life. We all know that. And yet we still take it for granted sometimes. So let this be your reminder. You're not too old, you're not too late, and you are absolutely 100% enough. You're gonna thank yourself 10, 20, 30 years from now for being brave today. I promise you that. That's my message for you today, friend.

Main Outro

SPEAKER_00 16:29

Thank you so much for spending this time with me today. If this episode resonated, I'd love for you to follow the podcast, share it with a friend who might need it, or leave a review. It really helps more women find the show. And if you want to keep the conversation going, come find me inside the Boldbiz Collective. The links are all in the show notes. Until next time, stay bold, ladies.