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Your comfort zone is what you do without giving it much thought. Going to work, coming home, having dinner, watching a movie, reading a book. Outside your comfort zone is everything else. Everything you don’t do. Comfort zone is limited. The outside is infinite. This article is about getting out, and it elaborates on something that I wrote in a previous post.

What is outside?

There’s a lot of stuff: a book published; a million euro; running your own business; the trip to Japan. It depends on what you want.

On a closer look, there’s two kinds of things outside: treasures and obstacles. You can peek at the treasures, but you can’t help noticing the obstacles: the lack of time to write a book; the lack of skill, knowledge and connections to become millionaire; the lack of money to start up the business; the lack of (you name it) to go to Japan.

You move in this comfort zone, surrounded by obstacles.

When first contemplating stepping outside, the obstacles between you and the treasures will seem too big to handle. It’s discouraging. Even outrageous. There’s a good news however (isn’t there one always? ) You can get past those obstacles. You need to sharpen some skills and maybe a change of mindset. You need to toughen up. Not physically, but mentally. And the best way to toughen up is to hit some of those obstacles.

The more you try, the better you get at it. You’ll get some bruises now and then, but they’ll heal quickly. Just try, you’ll learn in the process. For example, if you want to write a book, wake up an hour earlier to work on it. After one week, either you will have made progress, or you were too sleepy to do anything than just stare at the screen. So try something else: take a 10 minute shower immediately after you wake up. After a week, if that still doesn’t work, continue to wake up an hour earlier, but go to work, leave one hour earlier and go to the library to work on the book. If again that doesn’t work, maybe because after work your energy is too low, see if you can arrange to wake up as you normally would, work on your book for an hour, go to work later and leave later. And so on. Eventually, you’ll find something that works. With each attempt, you become stronger, and you get closer to your goal.

As you hit the obstacles, you toughen up. With each issue you overcome, your resilience increases. You gain more courage, your mindset changes to “can do”. You learn some patterns and beat the obstacles more easily, getting to the treasure faster.

Admittedly, some goals are very big. To keep the analogy, your comfort zone is here and the treasure is way there on Mars - but it’s so big that you can see it shining from where you stand. Does that mean you can’t get it? Of course not. They did send the Mars Rover there, haven’t they? It only means that you will have to invest more time and passion to get it. You’ll get more bruises, more times, but the experience will make you better and better, and if there’s passion to it, your confidence increases with each step.

The problem scale

Another thing that happens as you step outside and take on bigger challenges is that the scale at which you see problems changes. Something that seemed an issue a few weeks ago is now but a trifle. It’s like when you have a problem and you’re worried about it, and then suddenly a bigger problem comes along that makes the other one seems insignificant.

For example, it’s 6 o’clock and you’re worried that you won’t finish the review until 8 when you have to email it. It’s only two hours, how could you? You’ve got a problem, but start working on it anyway hoping to finish it on time. Then suddenly, there’s a power failure. You don’t have a laptop. Now, you’ve got a problem , and you realize that the first wasn’t really a problem. You start thinking, and hope for the power to return; after 30 minutes, you get this idea, it might just work. You decide to go to the internet cafe in the other neighborhood. You get there by 7 o’clock, and you’re grateful and relieved to get the last seat available. You start working in overdrive mode, and the review is ready by 7:50. Was it a problem that you only had two hours?

The obstacles that seemed very big at first are now more manageable. What actually happens is that, as you take on a big goal, you learn to deal with the (new) problems attached. Because problem solving skill increased, the old issues are now just some small tasks that you want to get out of your way, so you can concentrate on the real thing.

One last thing to remember is to choose your goal wisely, so that you work towards it with passion. Then, getting out of the comfort zone and toughening up becomes a very enjoyable ride.