Donya Smida Ben Mlouka Of Grow&Glow On How to Grow Beyond Your Comfort Zone to Grow Both Personally and Professionally

An Interview With Maria Angelova

Praise yourself for every little effort you are doing to getting out of your comfort zone. This is a great motivation to start again. The award can be self-positive talks, or a nap, or a day off or a nice conversation with good friends.

It feels most comfortable to stick with what we are familiar with. But anyone who has achieved great success will tell you that true growth comes from pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. What are some ways that influential people have pushed themselves out of their comfort zone to grow both personally and professionally? As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Donya Ben Mlouka Smida.

Donya Ben Mlouka Smida is an expert on maximizing efficiency and is a stress management coach featured in Authority Magazine, Up Journey and TED ed.

She is a highly successful International Corporate Senior Executive, having led teams, supervised large teams and managed multi-million regional complex projects for the past 17 years. She is married, has 3 children and is passionate about personal development and sport.

She consistently follows her inner voice to empower entrepreneurs and executives to build their businesses and careers around their lives, not the other way around. She is devoted to her mission to accompany people to become more efficient and less stressed in order to achieve their dreams.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we start, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?

I’m Donya, I was born in Belgium from a Tunisian father and a Swiss mother, I grow up in Switzerland and went to Tunisia at the age of 6. Since that age, I had to overcome language barriers and integrate in a new country. By the age of 19 I went back to Switzerland for my University studies and started working in the German part of Switzerland in a very male dominated field. Here as well I needed to adapt and overcome language barriers. Having a multi-cultural background allowed me to be comfortable in different situations and shaped my actual carrier. I’m a high executive in corporate and coach in stress management. I tailor my support according to the person’s background and strengths.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“Lessons in life will be repeated until they are learned”. Each difficult situation, emotional burden, and deception will hurt us as long as we do not understand the lesson behind it and as long as we keep ignoring it.

For each difficult situation, you need to sit with yourself and understand what it is trying to teach you, when you understand the lesson, you can grow and thrive until the next obstacle arises.

Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

Wayne Dyer — The power of intention. This is a powerful book that I read at the beginning of my coaching career. It opened my eyes to the power of our thoughts. Our thoughts are making our actions, which are making our reality. To change your reality, you need to change your thoughts first. This is the foundations foundation of my coaching programs.

Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. Let’s start with a basic definition so that all of us are on the same page. What does “getting outside of your comfort zone” mean?

Comfort zone describes places or situations where you feel comfortable, familiar and in control, getting outside of your comfort zone requires you to step out from things or places where you have controlunder your control. What is interesting to know is that you can enlarge your comfort zone,area by stepping out a little bit, experiencing the situation, living the moment and decide to set new boundaries to your comfort zone. Life is an adventure and you have to let the beauty of your inner voice manifest itself.

Can you help articulate a few reasons why it is important to get out of your comfort zone?

Stepping out of your comfort zone operates on 2 levels.

The first level is self-confident and self-awareness: you will be experiencing what you are capable off, learn about your fears and what makes you uncomfortable. This will nurture the 2nd level which is personal Growth: you will be learning new skills, making more connections with people, seize new opportunities and be more knowledgeable.

Is it possible to grow without leaving your comfort zone? Can you explain what you mean?

Albert Einstein said: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” You can notcannot experience growth if you don’t go outside your comfort zone. You need to change how you do things in order to have the result you are looking for. To move forward and And to change your behaviors you need to change your thoughts and push yourself to act differently.

Can you share some anecdotes from your personal experience? Can you share a story about a time when you stepped out of your comfort zone and how it helped you grow? How does it feel to take those first difficult steps?

It’s a hell of a challenge!

When I have started my coaching business journey, I have set and identified my dream and aspiration, I have defined the different milestones and intermediate objectives and started implementing them. The first step was to build my audience and one of the actions I needed to take is going online. Oh my Gosh!!! That was a hell of a challenge. Going online means being vulnerable, that means being “out there”, being confronted to critics: all those stories were holding me back. The first step is to get clear about the stories I’m telling my selfmyself, to understand the reason I’m having them. The second step is to see what is the worst thing that could happen if I go live. Third step is to identify intermediate steps I could take that will lead me to the result by that could feel less stressful for me.

Within few week, I started recording videos of myself, posting them, I accepted to do 2 podcasts to get used to it. I also posted all videos and podcast, I guess what? I’m just wondering now why I didn’t do it earlier!

Here is the central question of our discussion. What are your “five ways to push past your comfort zone, to grow both personally and professionally”?

Those ways can be used for personal as well as professional growth tips:

• Start small: make a list of uncomfortable actions you would like to explore: Identify from that list 1 or 2 action that are not triggering engendering too much stress and that don’t necessarily have a huge impact in case it does not work out. For example: You always go to the same restaurant because you are afraid of being disappointed with the food or the service. Your next action will be to randomly choose a restaurant that has good reviews and experience the food. The worst that can happen is having average food!
• Identify the pros and cons of the new uncomfortable action you want to take: Visualize what this action will be bringing you in growth, experience and knowledge. Identify what would be the worst case scenario and decide. If you usually are usually uncomfortable talking to strangers in the plane, ask yourself what would be the worst case scenario? Maybe the person will not answer or does not understand your language? That’s it ! on the contrary, maybe this person can teach you a lesson or will entertain you during the long flight? You just need to have all the parameters and always decide towards your GROWTH.
• Accountability: is for me a very powerful technic to step out of your comfort zone: you need to find helping friends or partners that will hold your objective for you and will follow your journey of growth. Knowing that another person is believing in you will make you willing to do the work and step outside your comfort zone.
• Praise yourself for every little effort you are doing to getting out of your comfort zone. This is a great motivation to start again. The award can be self-positive talks, or a nap, or a day off or a nice conversation with good friends.
• Be consistent and practice every day: Being it an important step to achieve your goals or a small thing to improve your wellbeing: be consistent in practicing action pushing you outside your comfort zone in order to enlarge it and reduce the stress around it. You might come back to your “uncomfortable actions list” and putting in place routines to have 1 action a day.

From your experience or perspective, what are some of the common barriers that keep someone from pushing out of their comfort zone?

The first barrier that keeps us stuck in the our comfort zone is the misinterpretation of our situation: We are all looking to reach peace and stability in our lives but at the same time this routine hinders us from growth. Taking the decision to go outside our comfort zone requires us to overcome: our fears and be confronted to with the unknown, our stories and limiting beliefs that we are telling ourselves on the importance of staying SAFE and last but not least our lack of self-esteem that does not push us to claim our dreams.

There is a well-known quote attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt that says, “Do something that scares you every day”. What exactly does this mean to you? Is there inherent value in doing something that pushes you out of your comfort zone, even if it does not relate to personal or professional growth? For example, if one is uncomfortable about walking alone at night should they purposely push themselves to do it often for the sake of going beyond their comfort zone? Can you please explain what you mean?

You always need to look at the end result. What is it you want to achieve by going out of your comfort zone? Is walking alone at night going to make you achieve something you desperately looking for? Or is it just to make a habit of doing scary things every day?

If it’s for achieving a specific goal, then go for it otherwise send sends your energy on to your next steps to success.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?

My deepest wish is that every person on this planet understands that they are the main actor of their lives. I want them to be able to have the power to distinguish between stories they are telling themselves and the actual reality. By knowing that they can go past it.

The movement will be that every person will mentor 2 in this specific topic and that the 2 mentored persons do mentor 2

Is there a person in the world whom you would love to have lunch with, and why? Maybe we can tag them and see what happens!

Mel Robbins, She is a marvelous marvellous expert in behavior behaviour change. I’m so inspired by her and I love listening to her podcast. She has the power of transforming what could be qualified as “small little stories” to into life lessons. I’m also impressed by her ability to make researches research so easy to understand by giving concrete examples. I’m ready to fly to the US to have lunch with her.

How can our readers follow you online?

Yes I will be happy to connect

LinkedIn: LinkeIn Donya

Webpage: Grow&Glow

Facebook: Facebook Donya

Instagram: IG Donya

Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!

About The Interviewer: Maria Angelova, MBA is a disruptor, author, motivational speaker, body-mind expert, Pilates teacher and founder and CEO of Rebellious Intl. As a disruptor, Maria is on a mission to change the face of the wellness industry by shifting the self-care mindset for consumers and providers alike. As a mind-body coach, Maria’s superpower is alignment which helps clients create a strong body and a calm mind so they can live a life of freedom, happiness and fulfillment. Prior to founding Rebellious Intl, Maria was a Finance Director and a professional with 17+ years of progressive corporate experience in the Telecommunications, Finance, and Insurance industries. Born in Bulgaria, Maria moved to the United States in 1992. She graduated summa cum laude from both Georgia State University (MBA, Finance) and the University of Georgia (BBA, Finance). Maria’s favorite job is being a mom. Maria enjoys learning, coaching, creating authentic connections, working out, Latin dancing, traveling, and spending time with her tribe. To contact Maria, email her at angelova@rebellious-intl.com. To schedule a free consultation, click here.