How do you define your comfort zone and push yourself outside of it?

Here is and update on where I stand after my first week in Toronto for pre-dep training. I decided to take some time to write while am in a good space.

Body space: I went running with Jordan today after work and it felt great, it's nice and cool in Toronto. I needed some reflexion time and some physical activity. I put my headphones on with my iPod on shuffle and every new songs brought me to a different place in my mind. I'm lacking sleep; I'm sharing my room with two other people and we have bunk beds with noisy plastic sheets! haha. We are working a lot and I'm trying to get assignments done at night on top of getting to know my team mates and doing some other stuff. We're eating super well so far, making family dinner and we make sure to have some drinks together everynow and then (like tonight).  7/10

Heart space: Hummm! I'm starting to disconect from all the things that were holding me back...I think it's a good place to be at. It feels better anyway. I'm leaving my initial fears and hopes behing to replace them with brand new ones; it's complitely uncomfortable but pushing my borders and extending my comfort zone a bit more. I'm missing my friends a lot, but they are super supportive and I appreciate it tons. 6/10

Head space: Although it was a though week because of a lack of time and lack of space to self reflect on my learnings and experience, I had an amazing time. I'm having ups and downs: it's hard, uncomfortable, overwhelming and fantastic at the same time. I had a great day today; I got to learn more about our programs, got a coaching session with Boris about my self development and my role in the team, then got a four hour insightfull session with the CEO of EWB about leardership...WOW. Best day so far! And to make it better, had a a great night with my teammates/housemates. We laughed and talked, it's good to get to know them and work on building trust. I'll need their thoughts, perspective and support over the next year as they'll go through the same things I'll be going through. I appreciate that we are all coming from different places and that all of us had our different life experience that brought us to apply. None of us is a new graduate.

I'm not always sure of the purpose of every session or activity, but at the end of the day, when I look at the outcome or the big picture, I've learnt tons. I'm in a happy place, uncomfortable, overwhelmed and tired, but definitely positive. 8/10

So far we had learning sessions about rural livelihoods, frameworks, systems and root causes of poverty, leadership, meeting, coaching, behavior chages, buisness approaches in development... almost every session is presented by a different person and in a different way; we have workshops, assignments, role playing, participatory learning activities...It's a great place to be. I particularly appreciated the buisness approaches in developement session. It connected my reality at home and my consulting background to the agriculture and developement world. It gave me a few ideas on how to make a buisness, even here in Canada be suistanable on a social and global point of view without changing the actual profits, but on changing some the objectives in the decision making process.

On the side, I'm learning about myself: what triggers me, what challenges me, what motivates and demotivates me, how I react to all of that, what is my role in the team now and where I want to go. It's like stepping outside of real life for a month to learn about myself and the world. It's helping me define and extent my confort zone and knowledge skills. Great opportunity, what a lucky girl am I to be here!

I'm exhausted, so I'll go to bed now, but before I do that, I'd like to challenge you to define where you stand, what your comfort zone is and how can you extent it? I'll be more than happy if you feel like sharing it with me.

Night...