Are you comfortable?
Are you truly challenging yourself to get outside of your comfort zone in your business? The only way to improve and to grow is to stretch yourself outside of your limits. Think of a muscle- in order to produce muscle growth, you have to apply a load of stress greater than what your body or muscles have previously adapted to. The same rule applies to business. You need to push yourself beyond what you are either currently doing or previously did in the past. This causes stress for most people. Most common people tend to steer away from that uncomfortable feeling because of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. So how can you push yourself to grow? When you realize you are comfortable with your current results, you need to fall in love with the idea of being uncomfortable.
Get comfortable with being uncomfortable!
Current Comfort Zone
Take a look at your current results and ask yourself these two questions:
Are you happy? Is there room for improvement?
There is always room for improvement, but most people never take the time to analyze where they currently are in the game of life. It doesn’t matter if you want to apply this concept to business, money, relationships, or physical health. Are you playing the game of business or life- just to get by? Are you playing the game to win? Or are you playing the game to conquer? The idea behind this concept is constant improvement and growth. When we allow ourselves to get comfortable, we are beginning the steady decline towards failure. It is a universal law: if something isn’t growing, it’s dying.
Check in with yourself, your team, your boss, or your coach and see where you are with your results and if you can expand and break out of that comfort zone. I personally check in with myself and see where I am playing the game of life as it relates to what I call my CORE FOUR Areas of Life, which is a part of what we help identify within our coaching process and Life Alignment Bootcamp Retreats. Most of our clients have health, career, family, relationships or fun ativities as their top CORE Four Areas, but everyone is different depending on what stage of life they are in at the time they check in. At a minimum, check in with your current comfort zone at least once a year. Most of my top clients check in with their progress and check their comfort zone every quarter- if not monthly.
I recently was challenged with this concept by my personal trainer Steve. His boss (The owner of the gym I train at) is a coaching client of mine and I have been working with some of their team members every month. One of the concepts that I was talking about was the comfort zone philosophy and learning how to break through into the next level of success. I look at it like a thermostat. If the temperature in the room is set at 68 degrees and the room gets warm, the air conditioning kicks in. If the room temperature gets colder, then the heat kicks in. But the room remains programmed for 68 degrees… unless you don’t like the temperature and you physically get up off your ass and reprogram the thermostat… Right?
In any event, coach Steve understood this concept and was intelligent enough to call me out on my own shit. So he asks me during one of our work out sessions, “So, what are you doing this year to challenge yourself?” I began to share with him how I am writing a new book about mental toughness, looking at another commercial property, selling a business, opening another business, and hosting an Empowered Mastery Bootcamp Retreat. I was confident with telling him my future goals. Then he asks about health and fitness. With a bold attitude I begin to share with him how I am running another half marathon and another 200 mile team relay. He looks at me, smiles, and says, “Didn’t you already complete both of those challenges?”
Challenge Yourself
You can be happy and grateful for the progress you have made, but in order to grow and continue your journey towards success you need to challenge yourself beyond your current results. As coach Steve called me out, I realized that I was playing comfortable and not challenging myself beyond my current level.
So I ask him, “What do you have in mind?” He then begins to look up men’s physique competitions online with a devilish look on his face. I say to myself, “Men’s physique? No way I’m wearing a fricken speedo!” “No”, he says. Men’s physique isn’t body building, you wear surf board shorts and the body poses are not as rigorous.
Hhhhm. 🤔 He was right. I needed a new challenge to push myself outside my current comfort zone. I knew I could improve my workouts, eating habits, and also cut out those weekend social cocktails and really become laser focused on my physical results.
Challenging yourself isn’t just about physical accomplishments, it’s about your outlook and mindset towards everything you do in life. You can apply this type of mental focus to business, too. It’s about constantly challenging yourself to think bigger. I had an opportunity to speak and give a seminar in Atlantic City to some of my personal coaching clients business study group sessions. Most of these men are top level producers in their industry. I challenged them to imagine making 10 times their income and they started to laugh at me. If you think about it, most of them in the room were making around $100,000 a year, less than five to ten years ago, and now they are making over a million dollars a year. They already increased their income more than ten times, so why can’t they do it again? They simply weren’t challenged yet and they became comfortable with where they were. For most people it may not be to increase their business or income by another ten times, it’s just about them learning to condition themselves for growth and improvement and not catching the “comfortable disease”.
Having a coach or mentor to challenge you is important. It doesn’t matter if it is a personal trainer, martial arts master, mentor, or business coach- as long as that person challenges you to push outside of your current comfort zone. Remember, if the challenge doesn’t scare and excite you at the same time, it isn’t big enough. When I was challenged to enter in that competition, I was excited to see my results and scared as hell to push myself beyond what I was currently doing. But it really is about pushing your mental muscle and expanding your current results.
Commit and Communicate it
Once you become aware of your current comfort zone and then challenge yourself to expand outside of it, you need to commit. Once I committed and registered for that men’s physique competition, it was real in my mind and I was committed to pushing myself beyond what I thought I could do. Silly little challenges can enhance mental toughness and when you apply the same mindset to your business, it will condition your subconscious mind to constantly push yourself to greater levels of success. I remember someone said to me, “How you do one thing, is how you do everything”. I don’t know if that statement is true in every case or situation in life or business, but I do believe that when you make a decision and commit to achieving a goal or an objective in one area of life, you can apply it to other areas of life. This is why I love the martial arts and the concept of earning belts- and more importantly, when someone commits to earning a black belt or becoming an instructor. Most students who commit to that goal can apply the same level of determination, persistence, and perseverance to their grades, career, and other activities.
The commitment to the challenge is key mentally, but communicating it to others holds you accountable. Tell people what specifically you are committing to, not to brag- but to hold yourself accountable to what your new challenge is. I ask my clients to send declaration emails out to their top clients, coworkers, mentors, and family members and explain what it is that they are setting out to do. Communicate and share with people this new challenge that you decide- whether it is writing a book, losing weight, hitting a sales target at work, or completing some kind of fitness challenge that takes you out of your comfort zone.
At our Life Alignment Bootcamp retreat September 13, 14 and 15th, we will use similar strategies to get our attendees to break free of their current comfort zone. We hire elements professionals to take our clients through obstacle ropes courses, pamper poles, and zip lines. This is an awesome experience breaking free of fears, expanding mental limitations, and challenging themselves to new levels of success. It truly is just breaking outside mental barriers that hold us back in life and business.
For more information about Empowered Mastery’s Life Alignment Boot camp and break free outside your current limitations and comfort zone please visit this link: More Information and Registration
Please be sure to leave a comment and remember to share if you care. If you have any questions, you can always email me at pmelella@empoweredmastery.com
It is my honor to serve in any way I can.
If you would like to find further information about how Empowered Mastery can help your personal life or business… please visit our website at www.empoweredmastery.com.
Live Life to the Fullest!
Master Paul Melella Jr.
Tips from this article
- Check your current comfort zone at least once a year
- Hire a coach, trainer or mentor to call you out and challenge you
- Commit and communicate what you are going to do to become uncomfortable