How I Deal With Comfort Zones – My Personal Story

This was a post I added to Twitter yesterday because I faced an obstacle to my success yesterday. Don’t think us coach’s don’t have to face business success demons too, because we really do!

And this was one of mine and how I have dealt with comfort zones for years because it works, and because of my success with dealing with comfort zones I know how important it is to remove these obstacles to your success.

Let me first describe what a comfort zone is. Imagine being all cozy in your duvet, its dark, the alarm has gone off, its cold, you can hear the rain hitting the window and you think……mmmm I could just stay here. But wait a minute what one minute feels like a great place to stay can quickly change.

Imagine you get to stay in bed a bit longer, but now you want to get up, suddenly that duvet is not warm and snuggly its firmly wrapped its way around you because you’ve been in there for so long and you are now trapped. That duvet is suddenly not so much your friend right?

That is a comfort zone. It can feel like a good place to be until you realise that it has actually trapped you and its stopping you from progressing in the success of your business. Not so fun now right?

So how do you fix it?

You can go the softly softly approach as some of my clients like. That way you can build up to the biggy by breaking it down into little bits. But that can be a longer process. For me its fast and it works to do it my way!

My saying has always been “I like to get so far out of my comfort zone that I can’t see it anymore!” Here is an example of this working and in action;

I was seriously ill and so I had not driven any further than the hospital since March 2012 to ensure I looked after my health. Back to work 2 and half months and recovering, as a Finalist in the Colchester Business Awards I had to attend an interview at one of the judges premises. For me this entailed a 45 minute journey. The longest since March 2012. But on top of that;

This year I was stationery at traffic lights and an articulated lorry decided it wanted to change lanes and didn’t notice me in my large estate car. it was really scary and then in the summer another large truck nearly drove us off the road in France. needless to say I’ve not been overly keen on being next to large vehicles that I’ve come to believe many of them don’t know I’m there! Was I keen to get on the A12 yesterday?

You see its all too easy if you stop doing things that suddenly your confidence can drop and a comfort zone is created.

So I dealt with it as I deal with any comfort zones, the biggest being my absolute fear of public speaking 6 years ago. I got so far out of my comfort zone that I could not see it any more.

I accept that it was just bad luck to have 2 lorries not pay attention to my large silver car in my life time. And I’m back on track.

So how could you utilise this idea for your success and to get rid of your comfort zones?

And what impact could it have on your success?

Do share your thoughts as I love hearing from you.