Are You Living Your Life, or Are You Living Your Fears?
Maybe it’s time to take one step outside the comfort zone
Some people thrive on risk; others, not so much. Feeling fear doesn’t always mean you’re in danger; it can happen when you face a challenge at work or in life, when you misstep and need to face the consequences, or even when you merely imagine worst-case scenarios that may never happen. The brain perceives a threat and works hard to protect you and keep you in a safe place–often that is the comfort zone. However, there is no advancement, no change, no opportunity to do more and be more in the comfort zone.
Stepping out of the comfort zone is scary. You can’t know what’s on the other side with certainty. Despite not knowing, your ability to take risks and move beyond where you are today determines the quality of your tomorrow. Here are 3 ways you can soften your resistance to leaving the comfort zone, strengthen your resilience, and ease the fear of risk-taking.
“Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.” — Les Brown
A willingness to be wrong can make you stronger
No one wants to be wrong, but like many things in life, a judgment like this may itself be wrong. Research has shown that a willingness to make mistakes improves your resilience, which is your capacity to bounce back and keep going.
In his excellent book, Skip the Line: The 10,000 Experiments Rule and Other Surprising Advice for Reaching Your Goals*, author James Altucher recommends engaging in low-risk experiments that don’t take a lot of time or resources. When one of your experiments succeeds, you strengthen your resilience for further risk-taking. If it doesn’t deliver the results you want, you haven’t lost anything except minimal resources, and you’ve gained knowledge about what not to do. Either way, it’s successful.
A willingness to take the first step can make you stronger
Maybe you feel afraid because you don’t know what it will be like when you’ve left your comfort zone. If you succeed, how will it change your life and your work? What if you discover you don’t want what you achieve? How will others react to you if you change? You hesitate and let opportunities pass you by until, sometimes, it’s too late.
Dr. Robert Maurer in his book, One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way*, describes how to lower resistance to large, seemingly overwhelming challenges and goals. His method is to identify the step for which you feel the least resistance and then take that step. Repeating this process strengthens your resilience and improves your self-confidence. The highest mountains are climbed one step at a time.
A willingness to stay focused on the end result can make you stronger
Clearly defining the result you want from taking a risk can make it easier to take it. What will you gain? What will you avoid? How will your life be better, easier, and more satisfying?
Even more important than your goal is your why–the reason you want the goal. When you are why is crystal clear, you have the cornerstone that strengthens your resolve and keeps you going despite any obstacles you encounter. When your why is directly related to your values, it can be the strongest motivation you can have.
It all works together to make you stronger
You can implement any one of these 3 ways to help you become a better risk-taker, but by leveraging them off each other, you can supercharge your results.
- Take Altucher’s advice and create small, lower-risk experiments to test the water before diving in.
- Define the steps involved and take the first, smallest step that feels the safest. But don't stop. Take the next safest and so on.
- Keep your motivation strong by connecting your goal to your why and keeping it in front of you when the going gets rough.
“Risk-taking is a state of proactive living where you are constantly growing and developing yourself on many different levels every single day. And because you’re growing, you are therefore truly living and experiencing life to the fullest.” — Adam Sicinski
Want more on risk-taking? Check out this article by Dawn Bevier:
Thanks for reading, Patricia
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