The Four Zones Of Progress
Stages you will experience in your journey to success
Most of us in life strive for something to some degree. We may not all push our capabilities towards creating a colony on another planet but we all push some areas of our lives for the better.
Whether you are a student trying to get good grades, a parent trying to make your children’s lives a little better, someone trying to find love, someone trying to build the next Amazon or any form of action you may take to make your life a little better you’ll probably experience these zones of progress in relation to your endeavors.
We also have similar struggles on this journey of betterment and it can sometimes feel like our efforts don’t mean anything and will ever result in anything.
More times than not, we simply give up too early. According to science and research did at the University of Scranton, 92% of all people who set New Year resolutions never achieve them.
The common reason of course is that they give up on their goals and so many people have come up with techniques to help people achieve their goals and as much as a lot of them are helpful, I have found that in my case, knowing where I am in the course of my journey is also a morale booster to help me achieve my goals.
I think that a lot fewer people would give up if they were only aware of how far they had to go to get to their goals.
For me, I find that putting my struggle into phases helps my mind to steer clear of negative thoughts of discouragement that often make me wanna throw in the towel a lot of times.
I’m sure that a lot of other people use them too but I find them effective in my life and I call them zones of progress and here they are.
The comfort zone
This is most commonly the zone many people find themselves in after achieving a given milestone or reaching some sort of compromise in their lives and what they can tolerate.
The comfort zone is also the lowest zone of the progress of them all.
In the comfort zone, there is a tendency to feel safe and in control and whenever I feel this way, I do not let this feeling linger for too long.
In most cases, I can coast a little and allow myself to “seize the moment” so to say but I also keep a thought in the back of my mind that this is only the lowest level of zones of development.
The four zones also reflect one journey at a time for me. This means that the top zone of one journey is at the same time the bottom zone or comfort zone of another.
Whenever I find myself getting comfortable, that is an immediate signal that I have achieved something, and in that every moment, like an opposite side of a coin face, I know that I am at the bottom of the next thing.
Again I can dwell on one level for some time, but I make sure I don’t dwell there for too long and the only way to make that transition from one zone to another is through climbing the slops I’ve indicated in the illustration through an activity called work.
The Fear Zone
Moving from the comfort zone brings me to what I call the fear zone. The work I do between the two zones involves activities like dreaming, setting new goals, daring myself to do better, and all forms of ambitious preparations.
The work between these two zones is mostly mental. There is little physical effort I need to if any while at this point.
But there is a tendency for me to sometimes get here and get stuck doing mental work which turns into pure daydreaming.
When a lot of people reach some form of compromise in their lives and get a little comfort, they don’t dream more which is the only work needed to move you to the next level so I make sure I dream.
Naturally, a lot of these dreams are ambitious and they scare the life out of me. They bring me into the zone of fear and fear serves two purposes.
- It notifies me of some weaknesses that I still have in my personality.
- It shakes me out of my state of comfort and opens up another world that I could explore for the advancement of my life.
A lot of times at this point, I find that I lack self-confidence because I am not sure whether or not I can achieve whatever I am dreaming about.
There is a tendency to find a lot of excuses. And this is where we are affected most by other people’s opinions because we do not have experience of our own to serve as a strong foundation for our dreams.
Some people give up at this stage and they keep on thinking that they cannot get anywhere but it's only a zone on the road of your progress and you should treat it that way.
The learning zone
When you are in the fear zone, you will have to do a lot of mental work to move forward.
At these two levels, it’s mostly my will to move on that keeps me from giving up because the challenges that I have to face here are mostly the ones that have something to do with overcoming my mental limitations.
When you are in the fear zone and remain determined to get where you want, you will then begin getting ideas in form or logic, or intuition that can help you achieve what you want.
By following through and acting on those ideas, that is you doing the work that eventually lands you in the mental zone.
When you act on ideas that you receive whether, from your mind or that of another person in form of suggestions, you will naturally have an experience of what works, what doesn’t, and how to be more efficient.
This will mean that you are in the learning phase.
Learning is also just a phase and just because you are learning does not mean that you are making progress unless you are contributing to your own life or that of other people through the information you are acquiring.
In the learning zone, you will deal with challenges and problems, acquire new skills and the best thing about learning is this.
Whenever you learn something new, you immediately expand your comfort zone. In other words, what felt comfortable to you before becomes highly limiting since now you have a much bigger zone of comfort which in itself is progress.
For example have you ever visited something that you did a few years ago and wondered how anyone took you seriously for doing what now seems like terrible work?
If you visit your work from a few years ago and still think it is great, then you just know that your comfort zone has not increased in a while.
Learning pushes you and gets you ready for the next step.
The growth zone
Experiences you will have while trying out your ideas will bring you to the learning zone and with all those lessons acquired, you will start working on things that make you want to find your purpose.
The things you will have dreamt about will now be the realities you are living and your desire to set goals and conquer objectives will be strong.
When you feel this way, you will be in your growth zone.
To get there, however, you need to do the work of course. In this case, it will be moving towards concentrating your efforts on things you care about and paying less attention to those you don’t.
On your journey to growth, remember I said the top of one endeavor, it the bottom of another.
So whenever you hit what feels like a growth zone, you should immediately know that you are also in comfort concerning something higher than you previously aimed for.
You take your time and keep in mind that this process is always recurring and never stops.
If I am to call this a progress ladder, you should know that there are also progress ladders within progress ladders and so on.
If you are in a job for example and your goal is to become an executive director, being promoted to an assistant director is also a progress ladder within the progress ladder of hitting your executive position.
This means that you should not get discouraged if you find yourself falling short of your intended goals and just know that these are progress ladders within progress ladders.
Looking at your struggles as a progression and being able to point to where you are in that progression can be a very helpful practice in helping you remain focused on getting where you want to be.
Just do the work and don’t be discouraged by you arriving in a given zone nor should you be complacent when you hit a comfort, learning, or growth zone.
I have found this to make my life and work a little more enjoyable. Hope you’ll give it a try.
