Have you ever taken one of the behavior assessments where you score yourself on various behaviors from 1 to 10?
The lowest score is a 1. The highest score is a 10. A majority of people select the score 5. The selection of five is middle of the road. Not a high score and not a low score. In fact, when enough answers on the assessment have a five the test becomes irrelevant.
This is about as close to not rocking the boat or stepping out of your comfort zone as anything else.
Your comfort zone is a place where there is no pressure, no anxiety, and no stress. Consider a routine behavior you may have. Maybe even create a list of these routine behaviors. Feel free to go to the comments section for this article and note some of these – then come right back here.
At the lowest level of starting to break out of your comfort zone, change up two or three or more of these routine habits intentionally. Keep track of what you are changing and what the change is and keep at it.
Guess what? You are still okay – the world didn’t end!
This may seems to be a bit uncomfortable. This is good as the next level to stepping out of your comfort zone is to intentionally take some actions which will definitely test the uncomfortable factor. None of these actions should be illegal actions or actions which may harm you or anyone else. The point is to push you into unfamiliar places.
The intentional action steps of taking risks will feel uncomfortable for certain. However, these actions will create a new willingness to try new things, make some snap judgment calls and open up your decision making process to include untested and untried solutions which look interesting enough to test. Previously you may have required more testing or more proof of some kind to even consider these.
One caution is not to be too drastic in what you select to try out.
An excellent example for many people to step out of their comfort zone is to speak in front of a group or an audience of people. There is a genuine fear across many people of public speaking. This is a low risk – high reward step out of your comfort zone change. Another low risk option is to eat different food items. If you are a frequent customer at a restaurant for lunch or dinner – select other items from the menu than the ‘usual’.
In summary, in some way consider changing up anything in your life that has become too much of a routine. Intentionally taking some risks, even though it may involve breaking through your fears, there will be a payoff down the road.
Mitch Tublin is the CEO and Founder of Wenkroy International LLC a boutique consulting company with a main focus on Strategic Business Consulting, Training and Business Coaching. Our passion is to take people to the next level in their life and in their business.
