Why it's good to stretch outside your comfort zone

 

Your comfort zone is an established pattern of thinking that is “recorded” in your brain via neural pathways. Neural pathways are connections in your brain that are created each time you learn something new or have a new experience.

Neural pathways are strengthened each time you experience that same situation over and over again. Donald Hebb, a Canadian neuropsychologist known for his work in the field of associative learning famously said, 

"Neurons that fire together, wire together."

The more you experience something, or the more you think about something, the stronger those neural pathways become. This repetition creates your habits, your thought patterns, and your comfort zone.

Think you have big goals that require a big comfort zone stretch? Several years ago, I read an article in Wired magazine about a long-distance runner named Dean Karnazes.

Get this:

·    He ran fifty marathons in fifty states on fifty consecutive days.

·    He once ran 350 miles in three days—without stopping and with no sleep.

·    He’s run the Badwater Ultra Marathon eleven times. It starts in Death Valley, 250 feet below sea level and concludes, 135 miles later, halfway up Mt. Witney, at 8,360 feet. He won the race in 2004 on his fifth attempt.

·    He runs 100 to 170 miles a week.

·    He couldn’t find time to run 4-6 hours a day, so he began sleeping less. He currently sleeps four hours a night.

·    His resting heart rate is 39 beat per minute!

In another interview in Outside magazine, Dean makes an important point that many of us have forgotten:

Western culture has things a little backwards right now. We think that if we had every comfort available to us, we’d be happy. We equate comfort with happiness. And now we’re so comfortable we’re miserable. There’s little real struggle in our lives. Little sense of adventure. We get in a car, we get in an elevator, it all comes pretty easy. What I’ve found is that I’m never more alive than when I pushing hard and I’m in pain, and I’m struggling for high achievement, and in that struggle I think there’s a magic.

This rings true for me. I think there are three reasons why we should embrace discomfort by stretching outside our comfort zone, whether we deliberately choose it, or it simply happens to us.

1. Comfort is overrated. It doesn’t lead to happiness. It makes us lazy—and forgetful. It often leads to self-absorption, boredom, and discontent.
2. Discomfort is a catalyst for growth. It makes us yearn for something more. It forces us to change, stretch, and adapt.
3. Discomfort is a sign we’re making progress. You’ve heard the expression, “no pain, no gain.” It’s true! When you push yourself to grow, you will experience discomfort.

A few years ago, I started a daily practice of meditation. It sounded easy enough. Boy, was I wrong! It has proven to be incredibly challenging to sit for thirty minutes straight. But that’s the very reason I value it. I feel like I’m making progress by doing something that isn’t easy for me.

The more you deliberately stretch outside your comfort zone, the more comfortable you will become with doing so. Basically, if you can be at ease outside the confines of what's familiar, you'll feel more confident in your ability to handle what life throws at you

The bottom line is this: we can either be comfortable and stagnate or stretch ourselves—become uncomfortable—and grow. We may think that comfort leads to happiness. It doesn’t. Happiness comes from growth and feeling like we're making progress.

(Check out our post on the Progress Principle)

“Get out and stay out of your comfort zone. I believe not much happens of any significance when we’re in our comfort zone.”

                           --Bob Parson, Digital Entrepreneur

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how leadership coaching and training can help you create a high performance culture and drive results? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business imperatives. 

To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, title companies, wealth management firms, design and build companies, third-party maintenance companies, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

How to Get Clarity, Accountability and Results in Five Minutes

FRUSTRATION!

The team and I had just invested three hours wrestling with significant issues.

We defined the criteria that would make for a good decision…we had healthy debate among different opinions…we listened…we looked for alternatives…we considered consequences to the organization…we pushed hard looking for the best answers…

And finally we made a decision.

Or we thought we did.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Six weeks later we were back together to discuss results.

And everyone looked at each other…

Maybe you know the look – a little nervous, eyes wide, searching the room for safety in numbers.

No one had followed through on what we’d decided to do.

Not one person.

After spending all that time and energy to arrive at a productive solution, nothing happened.

We had wasted our time.

What happened?

A DECISION IS NOT A DECISION WITHOUT…

Many teams and leaders have experienced this frustrating lack of follow-through after decisions are made.

It can happen even with a team of high caliber, motivated people who take their work seriously.

The reason is that in arriving at a decision, you have only answered one out of four essential questions.

You have answered the “Why”, as in: “Why do we want to do this?”

The answers to the next three questions take a decision from being a nice idea and turn it into reality – something that gets done.

And the good news is that for most decisions, it only takes five minutes to answer them:

1. Who Is Doing What?

Until someone is actually doing something, nothing has changed from before you made the decision.

Until then, it is just a nice idea.

Keen readers will recognize two questions here: what is being done? who is doing it?

I prefer to combine them because it forces ownership. There is no task without a specific person having responsibility for completing it.

For smaller decisions there might be only one or two answers to this question. For larger strategic initiatives you might have an entire work plan outline dozens of tasks and people responsible.

2. By When?

As a team, agree upon deadlines for tasks to be completed.

When these deadlines are shared and publicly available, everyone is much more likely to meet them.

3. How Will We Know?

This is a critical question and the one teams most frequently ignore.

When someone completes a task, what do they do next?

• Do they need to pass the results to another person or group?
• Should they update the team and let them know?
• Will they make a presentation of their findings?
• Do they report completion in a project management software?

The specific answers depend on the task and project.

The point is accountability and efficiency.

Everyone knows what they are accountable to do, the team knows if it’s been completed, and no one is left waiting around for information they need.

STAND OUT

Who is doing what? By When? How will we know?

You can ask these questions whether you are the positional leader of a group or not.

In fact, it’s a great way to establish yourself as a leader who gets things done – people notice when you produce clarity, accountability, and results.

These questions aren’t new – you probably learned them in your earliest school days.

Despite their simplicity, many teams struggle to get things done because they don’t get clear answers to every one of these questions.

If you want anything to change, they are the most important five minutes you’ll spend.

Click here to read a related post: The Enormous Cost of Unclear Communication--And What To Do About It.

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how leadership coaching and training can help you create a high performance culture and drive results? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business imperatives. 

To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, title companies, wealth management firms, design and build companies, third-party maintenance companies, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.