How Will You Scare Yourself Today?
The premise of this article is simple: You need to get out of your comfort zone in order to grow. Scaring and challenging yourself every day positively impacts your mood, health, and wellbeing.
If you follow your comforts, you will over-eat, over-indulge, feel lazy, and bored to death at home.
If you are scared, it means you are actually excited. You are challenging yourself and you are on your way to becoming more productive.
To scare himself, Jia Jiang came up with a crazy idea: He aimed to get 100 rejections in 100 days. He called this “rejection therapy” and he did it to overcome fear and desensitize himself from the pain of rejection. You can read and watch his adventures here.
To scare themselves, a group of friends tried 30 things they had never done before in 30 days. They captured these moments in videos and established “Yes Theory” YouTube channel. They believe that life’s greatest moments and deepest connections exist outside your comfort zone.
What will you do today that will scare you?
In order to grow yourself, you need more excitement and adventure in your daily life. That is why you need to open room in your schedule for surprises, twists, and experiments. What might these be?
- Meet a new person over lunch
- Write a short article on something that you are excited about
- Take a short walk in nature and design a treasure hunt for yourself (exploring nearby birds or bugs nearby, for example)
- Read an interesting article on a topic that you know nothing about (e.g. Ayahuasca ceremonies or moons of Jupiter)
- Read a page-turner fiction book (good mysteries or science fiction will always do the trick)
- Immerse yourself in a fantasy adventure movie on Netflix (such as “The Hobbit” series)
- Draw or doodle something in your notebook (you can start with closed eyes, then open your eyes and turn that mess into an artwork)
- Create a YouTube video without making any plans and upload it on your YouTube channel (you can kickstart your channel now if you do not have one)
- Do a random TikTok dance to catch up with some viral trends
Now, it is your turn. What will you be doing today that will scare you? Think of three alternatives and write them down. Do one of them instantly. You can also choose from the list above.
Exercise: Write Your Responses in Your Notebook
Please look at the poster below and respond to these questions in your notebook. Brainstorm new ways and actions. Create a lot of fresh and exciting ideas.
Write yourself a long letter to address and respond to these questions. Your letter should include a lot of ideas.
The Future is Scary/Exciting and It is Already Here
There is scientific evidence that doing something that scares you will make you more productive, creative, and adaptive. You need to embrace the unknown and the ambiguous in order to improve your resilience in these times. We are going through crazy times in history where we are facing a new challenge and tech innovation almost every day. The best way to prepare for this future is to design yourself new challenges every day.
You will soon be working with machines, algorithms, and robots in your career. If you do not disrupt yourself every day, you will be disrupted. The only way to go forward is to be curious, keep learning, adapt to changes, and push your boundaries.
How can you be more brave, adaptive, and ready for transformation? You need to do things that scare the shit out of you. Magic always happens outside your comfort zone. You will gain strength, courage, and confidence from every experience that you go through. Bandura calls this ‘self-efficacy’. People who have self-efficacy develop intrinsic interest and deep engrossment in the activities that they do. They stretch themselves by committing to challenging goals. They sustain their efforts when they face failure. They recover fast after setbacks. They approach threatening situations with the confidence that they can exercise control over them. Such an outlook creates less stress and more success.
Take-aways:
How do you apply these principles in your daily life?
- Do not be stressed about not knowing enough. Embrace uncertainty. Always be curious, open, and foolish.
- Be a beginner again. Take interesting classes that intimidate, challenge, and excite you.
- Strike up a conversation with someone you do not know. Smile, embrace rejection and make the person laugh if you can.
- Arrange a creative date with yourself. You can doodle, paint, listen to music, go to a movie, invent a dish and cook it, have a pleasant dinner, or dance.
- Disconnect from your cell phone or laptop and take a long walk in nature.
- Get serious about your hobbies — they will make you happier and more excited.
- Be curious about new stuff and learn exciting things every day. Read about interesting topics you know nothing about.
- Go to the supermarket and buy an unfamiliar food with a peculiar name. Try out a different cuisine of the world.
- Hop into a cold shower — it will boost your immune system and support your wellbeing.
- Mix up unrelated ideas and fields to come up with creative ideas. You can use The Matrix Exercise to get started.
- Sing up for an art competition or challenge where you can apply your creative skills or creative writing skills.
- Travel to an exciting place that you have never been to before. You can design micro-adventures in your own city as well, such as trying out a new restaurant, theatrical play, stand-up show, or concert.
