Michele Woodward

Powerful Coaching. Powerful Results.

comfort zone

Your (Dis)Comfort Zone

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Here’s our comfort zone:

I know what I’m doing.

I look cool.

I don’t have to do anything really icky.

Here’s our discomfort zone:

I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

I look like an idiot.

Ewww, that’s icky.

That’s really all it boils down to.

And yet, so many well-meaning, self-help people exhort us to, “Get out of your comfort zone”. Yeah, right – inside our noggin it’s impossible to not hear their words as “Quick! Fail, and look like an idiot doing something that sucks!”

No wonder we struggle with comfort zones.

Now, you long time readers will remember that I don’t advocate “getting out of your comfort zone” because I think sometimes having a comfort zone means you are staying in your integrity. I wrote about it back in 2010. See, I think you have a comfort zone for a reason and it’s ok to stay put in it – but that doesn’t mean you can’t enlarge your comfort zone and make it roomier.

How do you enlarge your comfort zone? Well, you start by looking at uncomfortable things and ask why they cause your skin to crawl – really look long and hard, and understand what’s causing the perfect storm of fear rising up in your throat.

It might be that you’re afraid that if you do something uncomfortable, you’ll look like the aforementioned idiot – so here’s an idea: Maybe you practice your twerking in the privacy of your own home before you debut on national TV.

Just sayin’.

OK, you need another example, don’t you? Let me bring up two things which are in many people’s discomfort zones:

Having difficult conversations about money; and,

Eating stewed, fermented eels.

One of these things can be mastered so your life becomes easier and much fuller, rich and flowing.

The other one is just icky.

And let me tell you this – you don’t need to enlarge your comfort zone to include things that are truly icky. Anyone who suggests that does not have your best interests at heart.

But maybe you can spread a little and learn how to do something you don’t know how to do right now. Maybe you can grow into a way of doing something differently which will be important to your overall life, your sense of accomplishment and general happiness.

Like looking someone straight in the eye and asking for the money that’s due you. Doing that will make a difference in your life and the lives of those you love.

If you ask me, that’s worth taking a hard look at your (dis)comfort zone, and getting as comfortable as you can with what’s in there.

Grow, learn, enlarge. It’s all you have to do to make the hard things easier.

The Provocative Edge

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In a coaching session this past week, I used a tactic that sometimes gets good results.

[Sometimes. Whether it did this time remains to be seen.]

My client is a very smart, very talented, very successful guy who is in a leadership role in an industry that’s failing, in a company that’s panicked. From the day he started the job almost two years ago, he knew something was wrong. Something was off. And now he’s seeing all the bad stuff come to fruition. He’s exhausted, burned out and stressed. Yet he’s spending 80 hours a week stacking the deck chairs on what feels like a sinking ship, and there’s never enough time to do everything that could be done.

“But,” he asks me.

“But, at his level can you leave a job after less than two years in the role?”

“But, I”m a smart guy – isn’t it my obligation to make it work?”

“But, shouldn’t I have another job in hand before I leave?

“But, they’re paying me – don’t I owe them?”

I call this The Motorboat moment: But, but, but, but.

Which is no pleasure trip. It’s more like bumping through heavy chop in high winds. It’s no fun, and a little nauseating.

So I whipped out my best coaching stuff – I put on my figurative trench coat, dark glasses and beret – and I became The Coach Provocateur.

For every “but” he said, I said, “Go ahead, quit.”

For every reason he offered for staying, I offered a vision for what’s next.

For every “no”, I said “yes”.

Because time after time I have seen that when I offer a rather outlandish suggestion – “Quit today and move to Tahiti” – it allows the client to say, “Well, not Tahiti, but maybe Atlanta.”

And there you have it – Atlanta. A workable goal. A clear objective.  Something that feels pretty good.

But you only get there by considering the extreme potential.

My client’s homework is to consider what it would be like to leave in three months. What it would be like to take some time to recoup and renew – his soul, his body, his psyche. And he may come back with another solution than the one I offered. And that is perfectly OK – as long as it’s a solution he can use.

As long as it expands his comfort zone and gives him the relief he craves.

So, no doubt you have something you’d like to address.  To fix. To do better.

OK, what’s the most extreme, Lady Gaga-esque approach you can think of? Dream it up. Biggify it.

Then say, “If not that, then what?”

You may find that by considering that provocative edge, you’ll find your perfect solution.

 

Blurting The Comfort Zone

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Sometimes when I’m teaching a class, I blurt. Someone asks a question and I blurt out something that then becomes SOMETHING. And people remember it. And because I didn’t write it down (I blurted, remember?) and because it’s so central to my way of being (doesn’t everyone know this?), I am often surprised that whatever I said has had any kind of impact.

[Now it appears I am rambling rather than blurting.]

In some class or other one day or another a year or so ago, a student asked about “getting outside your comfort zone.” And my response apparently helped so many people who subsequently talked about it, that my friend Charlie Gilkey of Productive Flourishing suggested I write it up.

So here goes.

I would say that  “Get out of your comfort zone!” is a phrase we’ve heard one or two… thousand times.

Especially from people who are anxious to do something risky and would like company. Or from folks who are conflicted about what they desire and want to normalize it by having someone do it with them.  Or from self-proclaimed gurus selling their snake oil.  Or from middle-aged men pressuring their naive twenty-something girlfriends.  I’m just saying.

“Get out of your comfort zone” reminds me of the middle-school taunt: “You’re no fun! Stop being such a prude!”  It’s a shaming, join-the-herd, peer pressure-y catchphrase.

And I dislike it intensely.

Friends, we have a comfort zone for a reason. And it’s good to know the what and why of yours, so you can take care of it – and you.

Sometimes the reason we have a comfort zone is integrity – our comfort zone is like an integrity bubble, and popping out of it may mean violating our own moral code.

Sometimes the reason we have a comfort zone is safety – actual physical safety. If you have a fractured foot, refraining from dancing for a month or so may be “no fun”, but it’s wise. And it’s safe. And it’s within your comfort zone.

Comfort zones can reflect your expertise. Fluency in Spanish, or C++, or the Part 36 rewrite – all may reflect the deep strengths in which you flourish.

Comfort zones protect and orient us, and that can be a good thing. But comfort zones can also become restrictive, if used as a excuse to justify inaction. You want to be safe, I know, but not so safe that you never learn, or grow, or change, right?

The idea of jumping clear of our comfort zone, as we are often urged to do, feels risky.  It feels big.  It feels icky.  And so we don’t do it.  And we beat ourselves up for not doing it.  And we feel bad as a result.

And I am all for feeling good.

So to stop the endless cycle, just quit thinking “get out of my comfort zone” and start thinking “enlarge my comfort zone.”

That’s all you want to do.

Stretch it a little.

Grow it a bit.

Make your comfort zone just a teensy bit roomier.

When you make a consistent daily commitment to simply enlarging your comfort zone, you create consistent progress toward growing and learning.  Each and every day, you make needed, small adjustments and make yourself some extra room.

Enough room, in fact, to be completely and fully yourself.

Which is, in fact, precisely what having a comfort zone is all about.