20 Small Ways to Break Out of Your Comfort Zone and Create a Positive Change Starting Today

by HENRIK EDBERG

“Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.”
Brian Tracy

I’m a big fan of doing the unusual thing. Sometimes in big ways. Often in small and daily ways to mix things up.

Why?

Because this habit is a simple and relatively easy way to:

• Expand your comfort zone. And if you change your perspective on yourself from someone who sticks to the old and comfortable all the time to someone who likes to mix things up then it will feel more natural and easier to break out of your comfort zone when comes to bigger things too. Because this habit makes the inner resistance and the fear that may hold you back smaller.
• Add a spark to your day and come alive. It keeps you from getting stuck in the same old daily or weekly rut. And it adds more fun to your life.
• Refuel your curiousness about the world and life. When you do the unusual thing regularly you to discover a ton of new and exciting things. And that will refuel your curiousness about what else is out there that you haven’t discovered just yet.

So how do you do the unusual thing and break out of your comfort zone in small and sometimes bigger ways?

Here’s 20 ideas that have helped me and still help me to do just that.

1. Eat the unusual thing. Instead of choosing the meat-based dish at lunch try the vegetarian alternative. Or try the fish if you usually go for the beef.
2. Smile towards everyone. Instead of just going along with your day in your normal social way try smiling more. Smile more towards your co-workers, the lady at the checkout at the supermarket, the people closest to you and smile to yourself when you encounter a mirror. See what happens.
3. Cook something new. Each week we try cooking a new recipe. It is most often a tasty experiment and helps us to find, sometimes unexpected, new favorites. It has also certainly made me a better cook in the last few years.
4. Mix up your music. I mix things up by trying new music every month. I have a look at the best music on sites like Pitchfork.com and Metacritic.com. Then I load a few of those albums on Spotify and listen.
5. Work in complete silence and stillness. Shut the door to your office, shut off your music, unplug the internet and just focus on doing the most important thing you can do today while enjoying the silence.
6. Read something that your friends wouldn’t guess that you are reading. Right now I’m reading a Swedish book about investing sensibly in stocks. Definitely not my usual cup of tea. But it’s really interesting.
7. Do all your shopping for the week. Instead of doing grocery shopping when you feel like it or need to, sit down and plan what you will eat and need for a whole week. Go and get all of that at the store. Now you don’t have to go back there for a week and you’ll probably have a bunch of extra free time and less stress to enjoy this week.
8. Have a day of kindness. Instead of having the usual bursts of irony, sarcasm etc. during your day try to go for a day where you are just being kind and friendly to everyone including yourself.
9. Enjoy it all. All fluctuations during your normal day is a part of life and as life it’s a gift in some way or another. So on some days I just tell myself: “enjoy it all”. Then I try to enjoy my day no matter if the inbox is overfull, if I’m hungry and starting to get cranky. The things I usually don’t like so much I tell myself to enjoy as a part of life. And so my day actually becomes more enjoyable because much of how we see life is about how we choose to think about it.
10. Watch something odd. If you usually watch thrillers then try a romantic comedy. If you most often get stuck with documentaries try an animated movie form Japan (I recommend anything by Hayao Miyazaki). If you love Family Guy, try the Wire. Expand what you watch to get new ideas and impressions.
    
11. Listen to the sound of the world. Leave your portable music player/radio at home. Just listen to sounds of the city, nature and people as you move about during your day.
12. Take a day to be offline. I tend to spend a day a week offline (usually Saturday or Sunday). It’s a wonderful change of pace and feels like I’m on a small, healthy and extra relaxing vacation. Plus, it makes it more fun to get back to work on Monday.
13. Take a news black out. Instead of reading the paper or watching the news as usual try to go without that for a day. See how it affects you and how much you miss the news.
14. Hide a note for a loved one. Hide a sweet note of affection for a partner, family member or a friend in his or her cookie jar, tea or coffee container, book on the nightstand, hat, shoes or somewhere else where they look each day. Make him or her happy in an unexpected and unusual way.
15. Take a different route. To work or to school. To your gym or home. See something new even when you are in transport mode.
16. Walk or take the bicycle to work. Instead of taking the car or riding the bus as usual. Get some exercise and fresh air before it is time to start working and on your way home.
17. Let it go just for today. If you often get into arguments or have trouble letting issues go and replay them over and over in your mind then just for today let it all go. Tomorrow you can take up your old habits just where you left them . But for today, instead of getting into an argument just let it go and walk away. If you replay something in your mind, let it go for today. If an old memory pops up today too, let it go instead of dwelling.
18. Go out. If you usually stay in during the weekdays, then call up a few friends and head down to the pub for a few hours even if it’s just a Wednesday. Or call up someone you haven’t met in ages and go for a cup of tea or coffee. Or pop down to the movie theater and catch a movie. If you usually do those things though, consider just staying in with PJs on and taking it easy.
19. Sit in a new place. If you have favorite chair or part of the sofa where you always sit then try another chair or place to sit today. It can give you a new perspective at work or at home. And I have found that it can even give me some new and fresh thoughts and perspectives on life.
20. Throw out the things you haven’t used in 1 year. Go through one part of your home – a closet, a drawer in your desk or bedroom cabinet – and see what’s in there. Go through the items one by one and ask yourself: have I used this item in the past year? If not, give the item(s) away to charity or a friend or simply throw it out.

16:44:00 - By Vincent 0

What Are Comfort Zone Challenges? The First Official Definition Ever

By Till H. Groß

  

I am not exaggerating when I say Comfort Zone Challenges changed the trajectory of my whole life.

I was about 21 when I did my first Comfort Zone Challenge, ever. Don’t get me wrong–at this point in time I was already doing well. I was earning good money with live seminars and coaching, I had given a University guest lecture, my mentors were some of the best therapists in the country, I had great friends, and a beautiful and intelligent girlfriend; but Comfort Zone Challenges took all this to another level. Now, not even two years later, I mingle with CEOs of million-dollar companies, ask future Nobel prize winners for advice, and can call some of the stars of the startup scene my close-friends. All this, while I charge more than $5000 for 30min talks, speak at international conferences, appear on national TV, get featured in newspapers, and collaborate with YouTube stars that I used to watch in awe.

Obviously behind all this is a lot of hard work, but I am very sure that my increase in courage and confidence was the defining factor that helped me to leverage my efforts. To make this clear, I believe skill is the most important thing if you want to accomplish anything in life, but courage and confidence are what leverage this skill to allow you to do extraordinary things.

Josef Penninger is about to win the Nobel Prize in medicine and ranks among the top ten scientists in the world. He happened to be my mentor during a TV show last year. When I asked him what distinguishes him from other scientists, he said: “I am very sure there are thousands of other scientists who are equally capable, but I am very courageous.” So as soon as you reach a certain level of skill, courage is the factor that takes it to the next level.

The good thing is you can train your courage and learn to become more confident!One of the most effective ways to achieve this is by doing Comfort Zone Challenges. In this article, I will explain what Comfort Zone Challenges are, where they come from, and lay the foundation for the next article where I will explain how you can use Comfort Zone Challenges to boost your courage and confidence.

Where Do Comfort Zone Challenges Come From?

It’s not clear where Comfort Zone Challenges were mentioned for the first time, but today they resemble a modern and fresh form of exposure therapy. Exposure therapy is a technique from cognitive-behavioral therapy and was first used in the 1950s as a way to cure people with specific phobias. In exposure therapy, you would expose a person to a feared stimulus (eg. a snake, a small space, crowds of people) until a desensitization would occur. Desensitization is when your body no longer responds with fear to a stimulus that before had caused a fear response.

This exposure can happen gradually, from the least fear-inducing stimulus to the most fear-inducing stimulus, which is also called systematic exposure. Alternatively, the therapist would expose the client to the scariest thing on his fear hierarchy first and thereby tackle the client’s biggest fear head on. This form of exposure is called flooding.

What happens when you are exposed to a frightening but non-dangerous (!) stimulus? Well, over time your fear decreases, and after several of these exposures the fear will vanish completely.

This concept got picked up by several self-help authors and pickup artists, termed Comfort Zone Challenges, and was advocated as a way to overcome social limitations like the fear of approaching strangers. I learned about Comfort Zone Challenges for the first time when I read Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Work Week. This is also where the now famous “Lay down on the street for 30 seconds” challenge initially comes from.

What is a Comfort Zone Challenge? The First Official Definition

There is no official definition for “Comfort Zone Challenge” on the Internet or anywhere else. So some time ago I lived up to my reputation as a budding scientist and crafted the first official definition. Therefore, I took into account what others had written about the topic and how it related to psychology, especially cognitive-behavioral therapy and exposure therapy. I also made a special effort to distinguish Comfort Zone Challenges from other courageous acts, just plain stupid things, and pranks, since the lines between these can often be blurry when there is not clear distinction. I also tried to craft the definition in such a way that it would automatically answer all the questions you guys usually ask me. Thus, I ended up with the following definition:

“A Comfort Zone Challenge is a planned action to face a fear with the primary goal of overcoming this fear or increasing your courage and confidence. This action includes a calculated risk of negative social evaluation but does not expose you to real danger or long-term negative consequences.”

Let’s take a closer look at this definition and especially why is it important to have such a definition.

Why the Definition is Important

A clear definition is important for several reasons. On the one hand, it allows you to be more effective in your endeavor to increase confidence; on the other hand, it protects you from getting stressed out by Comfort Zone Challenges, which is not the goal.

There are two parts of the definition that are tremendously important and understanding these can save you a lot of stress.

“A Comfort Zone Challenge is a planned action…”

The first part that is very important is the fact that a Comfort Zone Challenge is always a planned action.

I recently received this email from a guy who was pretty stressed out.

He started to see everything as a challenge. I have been there too. There was a time when I would sit in the subway and start thinking “What would scare the shit out of me right now,” and then I would have this mental fight as to whether I should do it or not. This is just mind fucking and stressful; there is no point going through life and trying to do as many challenges as possible, or seeing everything as a possible challenge.

In order to avoid being trapped in this mental spiral, we consider only planned actions as a Comfort Zone Challenges.

This part of the definition goes back to the roots in exposure therapy. Before every exposure, the client and therapist would plan the exposure precisely and also attempt to predict what would happen. Focusing on this can help relieve you from a lot of unnecessary stress. If you are always on the lookout for things to do that might scare you then you will only end up in a constant state of anxiousness–which is not the point of Comfort Zone Challenges. Believe me, there are so many people who start doing challenges but begin to find it hard to relax and just live their lives, because they don’t draw the distinction between Comfort Zone Challenges and random acts.

Of course, there are some badass people who do challenges all the time and consider everything a challenge, but they’re generally just intense motherfuckers. Most of us would simply end up stressed out and worse off than before.

The Basketball Metaphor

Let’s make this whole thing a bit more tangible with a little metaphor. Assume you are a basketball player. A baller lifts weights and works out to become stronger to perform better on the court. Likewise, we do Comfort Zone Challenges to become more confident and perform “better” in social situations.

When you workout you have a clear plan of what you will do, then you go to the gym and do your workout according to this plan. When you complete your last exercise, you’re done for the day. Think about it–this planned action is important. You wouldn’t walk through your daily life always looking for heavy things you could lift and then start doing curls with a couple of books or do some pull-ups at your door (though I once had this guy on my team, let’s call him Dafe, who actually did lift everything around him and was constantly in a workout mode. But that’s a different story.). It is pretty obvious that being in a constant workout mode is counterproductive. The same goes for Comfort Zone Challenges. Constantly being on the lookout for a challenge will not achieve the same results as a planned challenge; it also has a higher risk of backfiring. So instead, have a Comfort Zone Challenge routine and know when you are done, similar to a workout routine.

On to the next part of the definition:

“A Comfort Zone Challenge is a planned action with the primary goal of overcoming this fear or increasing your courage and confidence”

This part defines what is and what is not a challenge. Comfort Zone Challenges are a clear and effective tool to overcome fear and boost courage and confidence–that’s it! Due to this primary goal, there is a pretty clear line between Challenges and just plain stupid things, pranks, or real life situations.

REAL LIFE VS COMFORT ZONE CHALLENGE

Comfort Zone Challenges are a tool to prepare yourself for real life situations and should therefore be distinct from real life situations. For example, if you are at a party and you see a really interesting person whom you have always wanted to talk to but have been too afraid to approach, then this is not a Comfort Zone Challenge. This is a real life situation where your primary goal is to get to know the person – Comfort Zone Challenges prepare your for this kind of moment.

PRANK VS COMFORT ZONE CHALLENGE

Walking up to a stranger without saying anything and trying to hold the person’s hand might be uncomfortable and scare you, but when your buddy is filming it, it’s just a prank and not a Comfort Zone Challenge. The primary goal of a prank is to get a funny reaction from people, and while it is uncomfortable, it avoids the purpose of making yourself uncomfortable as a challenge.

STUPID DARES VS COMFORT ZONE CHALLENGES

Likewise, two boys who challenge each other to yell “Penis” as loud as possible, or to run naked across campus, are not attempting a challenge, but are being stupid (or funny), since the primary goal is to impress the other person and not to challenge yourselfin an uncomfortable situation.

Primary Goals

• Comfort Zone Challenge >> become more confident and courageous
• Real Life >> win a friend, get a date, get a point across, speak up, ask for what you want, go to a party,…
• Prank >> get funny reactions from people
• Dare >> impress the other person

The Basketball Metaphor

Let’s go back to our basketball player and see how this part of the definition can be explained with our workout metaphor. The difference betweens a prank, a dare and a Comfort Zone Challenge is rather clear. However the lines between Comfort Zone Challenges and real life situations might be a bit blurry from time to time so we will use the metaphor to distinguish between these two. Consider this:

Part of your workout as a basketball player might be to work on your hops; therefore, you would do a variety of different jumps with the primary goal of training the muscles in your legs to be able to jump higher. So standing in the gym consciously jumping up and down would be considered a workout because the primary goal is to train your muscles. Now, if you are on the court playing a game and you jump to grab a rebound, your primary goal is to grab the ball – so even though it is the same movement you wouldn’t call this a workout.

The same goes for Comfort Zone Challenges – you are doing them with the primary goal of becoming more confident. One of your challenges might be to approach ten strangers and ask for something, so to complete this challenge you will go to ten strangers and ask for something, like the time or directions to the nearest service station. However, if you need a tissue and therefore ask a stranger for a tissue, even though you might be scared, this is not a Comfort Zone Challenge because your primary goal is to actually get the tissue, not to challenge your comfort zone.

And the last part of the definition:

“A Comfort Zone Challenge is a planned action to face a fear with the primary goal of overcoming this fear or increasing your courage and confidence. This action includes a calculated risk of negative social evaluation but does not expose you to real danger or long-term negative consequences.”

When doing Comfort Zone Challenges, you will face negative social evaluation, but this is the point of many challenges. Thereby, you will get accustomed to rejection or embarrassment and learn how to deal with it effectively; so some degree of negative evaluation is just part of the deal.

However, by no means should you put yourself in danger, or do things that are likely to have long-term consequences.

If your challenge is to look five strangers in the eye until the other person looks away, don’t do it with guys like this, unless you can handle it if it goes south. There is no benefit in putting yourself at unnecessary risk.

The same applies to long-term consequences. I recently received an email where a girl asked me if she should do the “Howling Like A Wolf” challenge in her library.

My reply was of course she should not do this and the same applies for most other people. You are doing the whole Comfort Zone Challenge thing to become more social, win friends, gain confidence or to be more extroverted. Having your whole University believe you are nuts and maybe even getting expelled is not helpful in this endeavor. Because you might end up like this young fellow:

Therefore, I would be cautious doing challenges in places that you usually spend your time or around people you see on a daily basis. This means most people shouldn’t do challenges at their work, university, or places they frequent. Unless you are already incredibly social, extroverted, or most people know you, people will probably assume you are crazy. I can do those things because I literally don’t care what the people think and I already have a reputation. I was the guy who held a lecture in his first semester and I knew a ton of people. Of course you want to stop caring what others think, but you also want to have friends, right? So rely on your own judgment as to whether you should do challenges in your everyday environment; however, I encourage you to seek neutral scenarios.

So when you start doing challenges, do it in places you don’t frequent, avoid long-term consequences, and don’t put yourself in any real danger.

Basketball Metaphor

Our basketball metaphor unfortunately doesn’t really apply here, though I will try to make it fit: If you have a game during regular season, you wouldn’t bring your dumbbells and start a workout during halftime. So the lesson here: Differentiate between training (Comfort Zone Challenges) and game time (living your normal life) and keep them separate.

Next Step

Now you have a clear idea what Comfort Zone Challenges are, and this definition will save you a lot of trouble in the long run. In the next article, you will learn how you can use Comfort Zone Challenges to boost your courage and confidence – there is a difference between the two.

Key Points:

• “A Comfort Zone Challenge is a planned action to face a fear with the primary goal of overcoming this fear or increasing your courage and confidence. This action includes a calculated risk of negative social evaluation but does not expose you to real danger or long-term negative consequences.”
• Planned action: don’t run around like a headless chicken trying to make a challenge out of everything.
• Primary goal: differentiate challenges from just random acts, real-life situations, and pranks.
• Avoid real danger and long-term negative consequences: don’t mess with the wrong people and avoid places you frequent

And now…get your first Challenge!

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16:00:00 - By Vincent 0

3 REASONS WE SHOULD BE SLOW TO JUDGE

Why Criticism Can Be More like Poison than Medicine

by Michael Hyatt

When I think of key leadership qualities, decisiveness is always high on the list. The ability to quickly size up a situation and act is essential.

But sometimes we can be too fast. And that’s especially true when it comes to criticism.

Every day in America between five hundred and a thousand people die because of medical errors. Unless carefully administered at the right dose, medicine is just another word for poison.

It’s the same way with criticism.

Avoiding a Bad Diagnosis

Identifying what’s wrong with a situation—including the attitude and actions of the people involved—is absolutely necessary in business and the rest of our lives. But if we’re too quick, we risk misjudging and harming those people. I’ve certainly done it. I’ve also been on the receiving end.

When I launched my mastermind group, for instance, I caught flak for the price. Some complained it was exclusionary. Others said I was greedy. When I posted an image of the men in the group, some griped about gender and race.

I could see where these people were coming from, but they missed the boat.

As leaders, we always face criticism. We dish it out too. Some of it is helpful, and some of it is not. Like medicine, it all depends on administration and dose. But here’s the problem: If we’re quick to judge, we’re upping the odds that we’ll misdiagnose and seriously hurt someone.

With that in mind, there are at least three reasons we should be slow to judge.

1. We Sometimes Don’t Have the Full Story

How often do we judge before we have all the facts? I see it all the time. Something hits us the wrong way, and we jump to criticize. News, commentary, and social media accelerate this reaction till it’s almost reflexive for some of us.

But do we know all the relevant details? Even more problematic, do we know the motivations behind what’s happened?

Judging on incomplete information is counterproductive—and sometimes worse. Before we make a move, we should make certain we have enough information. If circumstances force us to move without all the details, we should be humble, open to correction, and ready to change our opinion.

2. We Often Project Our Own Issues

We all have hangups, faults, and pet peeves. And because we’re so familiar with our own issues, we tend to notice them everywhere we turn, even—especially—in others.

As C.S. Lewis said about pride, “The more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.” And it’s not just pride. Most failings are like that.

When we don’t have the full story, we often fill in the blanks with our own issues. It’s unconscious, but suddenly we’ve assigned motives and condemned someone when we are really just imagining things.

3. We Usually Regret It Later

Reason 3 flows from the first two. If we realize our misdiagnosis, regret comes next.

By jumping the gun, we might have harmed relationships that will now have to be mended. Thankfully, there’s a simple process for making things right when we blow it. But we can’t be cavalier. Apologies are like car airbags—good to have but best if never needed.

“Criticism is like medicine. It’s poison unless carefully administered at the right dose.” Michael Hyatt

In social media, relationships are less involved. But that doesn’t mean that the results of misjudging are less important. For one, we can unfairly damage someone’s reputation.

And that goes for us, too. If we get it wrong time and again, we’re building a reputation as someone whose judgment is worthless.

Life and death are in the power of the tongue, Solomon said. We can’t be too careful how we use it.

Question: Have you ever misjudged someone? Where did you get things wrong? You can leave a comment by

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17:00:00 - By Vincent 0