This is What Can Happen When You Move Out of Your Comfort Zone

There are many ways of defining the comfort zone. It can be the purely physical feeling where we’re neither too hot or too cold. For most of us, that’s somewhere between 68 and 78 degrees Fahrenheit.

In terms of feeling at ease psychologically, the comfort zone is defined as:

We do things the same way we’ve always done them because we feel comfortable. We’re creatures of habit. Sometimes we’re such creatures of habit, we get stuck in a rut.

When you want something different, you’re probably going to have to step out of your comfort zone. At the very least, you’re going to have to stretch it a bit. Most people do this every day. We just don’t realize we’re doing it. Here’s a few common examples:

· We try a new food. It might just be a sample at Costco. Hey, it’s just a tiny bite, but it’s something new and different.

· We go to the dentist. We let a stranger poke around inside our mouths.

· We go to the chiropractor. Usually because we’re in pain and want it to go away.

· We start a conversation with a stranger. Who knows who you’re talking with? Most of the time it’s very pleasant.

· We take a different route home. Who knows why or what we’ll discover.

Moving out of your comfort zone does not have to be a big deal, but it can pay dividends. Here’s what happened to me in the past year or so. I wasn’t really thinking about my comfort zone, or any other kind of psycho-babble blocks. I just wanted a specific outcome and I began to do the things I thought I needed to do to make it happen.

I’ve been blessed, or maybe touched by an angel, or just downright lucky. Call it what you will. Over the past year, I’ve been working hard on building my coaching business. More than just growing my business, I’ve been on a mission to share some of the skills and experience I’ve acquired over the years to help sales leaders succeed.

Success can mean different things to different people. In the case of the sales management professionals I work with, it’s usually very simple. They want to build a sales force that consistently makes quota. And, they want to do it without a whole lot of hassle or getting burned out.

Most of my career has been spent in face-to-face interactions. The internet and social media were foreign to my psyche. Then I moved to Cottonwood, Arizona … a great place to live, but a wasteland for sales management consulting.

To grow my business, I had two choices. One, I could travel. That meant going back on the road, being a road warrior. Been there, done that, don’t want to do it anymore.

Option two was building a virtual business. That idea scared the hell out of me. Seemed like a very steep learning curve, but since I didn’t have a whole lot of options, I was willing to give it a try. What was the worst that could happen? It wouldn’t work. So what?

Fast forward to the present day. I’m humming along. I’ve made a lot of progress. It hasn’t been a straight line by any means. There were lots of zigs and zags. I’d need to do something to grow the business and then I’d find there were pieces of the puzzle missing. Oops! A diversion.

So, I’d handle that, and then move along until I hit the next roadblock. Slowly but surely, I began to make progress.

OK. Here’s what happened that I didn’t expect. There have been many unexpected bonuses … several benefits I did not anticipate:

By far the greatest bonus has been the connections I’ve made with great people. Look, I didn’t set out to make new friends. Shame on me, I don’t pay nearly enough attention to the friends I’ve got. That’s something I intend to fix and soon.

I’ve talked with people all over the United States. I’ve also talked with people in Ireland, England, Sweden, Switzerland, Russia, Singapore, even in Bangladesh.

Some of them will become clients. Many will not. Regardless, I’ve learned something from all of them.

Here’s the bottom line: Whether you’re in sales or not, there are tremendous benefits from moving out of your comfort zone. Try it today. Maybe nothing will happen, or all you’ll get is a smile on your face. Maybe you’ll add to someone else’s day. Maybe you’ll hit pay dirt. You won’t know until you try.

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