A Slow Death In Your Comfort Zone?
When did you last step outside your comfort zone and do something that filled you with fear but, ultimately, would help you become a better person?
A lot of people struggle to answer this question for the following two reasons:
- They can’t remember because it’s been so long since they stretched themselves.
- They’ve never really done anything that challenges them and takes them outside their comfort zone.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that the safe, warm, familiar surroundings of your comfort zone are a good thing and where you want to be. You’d also be wrong, in my opinion.
Instead of being a good thing, living life in your comfort zone is incredibly dangerous.
It’s a place of stagnation and slow death.
The graveyard of dreams.
I speak from first hand experience because I’ve spent several of the last five years hiding in my comfort zone and I can tell you that it’s a place that sucks away your passion and purpose and keeps you living a mediocre, small life, always wondering what if.
During this time I wasted so many opportunities and shirked my most important responsibilities as a husband, father, friend, business man, coach and human being.
Rather than keeping me safe and comfortable, coasting along in my comfort zone lead to depression, insecurity and an insidious apathy that infected everything in my life.
It was not a good time.
How To Step Outside Your Comfort Zone
If you can relate to what I’ve shared above and you know you’ve been hiding in your comfort zone, stagnating and letting your dreams fall by the wayside, then it’s time to do something about it.
Please don’t let another minute pass where you cover your light and hide the gifts you’ve been given from yourself and the rest of the world.
But, rather than trying to make a huge leap and get from where you are now, to where you want to be in one bound, all you need to do is take one small step outside your comfort zone.
Just one for now, that’s all.
With each small step you take, you expand your comfort zone a little, allowing you to grow and recalibrate your boundaries until, before you know it, you’ve taken ten small steps and doubled the size of your comfort zone and achieved things you never thought possible.
Instead of limiting yourself and shying away from your potential, I want to challenge you to stop hiding and reclaim your power.
Stop making excuses and believing in the stories that you and everyone else tells you about who you are and what you can achieve.
And stop watching other people’s lives and successes on the internet and letting other people fill your head with their ideas (apart from me).
Put yourself on a Low Information Diet and protect your mind, time and energy levels and focus on your own goals and dreams.
Create a new story today, be the Hero Of Your Own Movie and take the first step out of your comfort zone right now.
It Starts Now
Rather than using the normal, fluffy, self-help language of “offering you the opportunity to”, I WANT you to pick one thing that you’ve been putting off for a long time and that you have a lot of resistance to doing.
If it fills you with fear and makes your palms sweaty and your heart beat faster, then you’re probably on the right track.
Next, I want you to outline one small step or action that will move you towards achieving this goal and move you OUT of your comfort zone, and I want you to commit to taking action and completing that step within the next 30 minutes.
That’s right, I want you to set aside anything else that you’re doing, even if you’re at work or in public and I want you to make a decision to DO something to change your situation, right now, and then I want you to TAKE ACTION and do that one thing.
Information is great but implementation is where the rubber hits the road and things happen.
It doesn’t really matter what the goal is, as long as it makes you feel uncomfortable and challenges and stretches you to grow or become better in some area.
For example, it could be finding a coach to help you regain control over your body and eating habits and learn how to fit more exercise into your life, so you can lose two stone in the next 90 days, feel more confident and have more energy to enjoy life.
It could be making that short marketing video that will help you get more clients and posting it on Facebook, even though the thought of sharing it with the world scares the hell out of you.
It could be admitting that you’re not happy with your job (or the business you started and once loved) and that you feel like you’re wasting your life and want to do something else.
Or it could be as simple as leaving a note or sending a message of appreciation to someone you love and letting them know why you love and value them and want them in your life and apologising for taking them for granted (you know you do).
Take five minutes out today to perform a little “life audit” and ask yourself where you’ve been hiding in your comfort zone and shirking your responsibilities.
Then start to flirt with the edge of your comfort zone by identifying one or two small steps you can take in each of the most important areas in your life and make the decision to level up and become a better person.
Most of all, stop hiding and going through the motions in your life.
Be brave enough to identify your dreams and ask whether you’re moving closer towards them (on a daily basis) further away, or just stagnating and burying your head in the sand (which is the worst option).
Then tear up the rule book and aggressively attack your problems before life passes you by and you’re left wondering…
…what if?
In the words of the late Jim Rohn,
“Don’t wish it were easier. Wish you were better.”
