Believe it or not, it is proven that stepping out of your comfort zone can go a long, long way to building amazing confidence and a healthy self-image if you do it often enough.
We often stop ourselves from trying something new for fear of ridicule, failure or even pain but if you give in to this fear and hide in your comfort zone you will never be able to grow into an even more amazing version of yourself and you’ll stop yourself from going after your big goals. Sometimes you just need to throw caution to the wind and go do the thing you’ve always wanted to do.
This fear can stop many of us from achieving our dreams, or even attempting to! It can stop us learning something new or experiencing something wonderful through pure fear of failing at it … but unless you give it a try you’ll never know just how good you can be!
Fear is a powerful thing, it can control you so badly that you don’t pick up the phone to put your name forward for an exciting opportunity. It can stop you volunteering to take part in a great experience by making you think you’ll end up looking silly or feeling embarrassed.
Well now the time has finally arrived to give fear the middle finger and carry on regardless. I am inviting you all to join me in the BYP Comfort Zone Challenge to push past fear and start challenging ourselves.
The challenge is simple, just list down 20 things that you really, really want to do… but you haven’t done yet due to the fact they scare the living Hell out of you!! Things you’ve always thought “if I was as confident as that guy I’d do it” or “if I was more outgoing / brave / crazy… I’d try that”
The truth is you can easily appear as confident as that guy, or be as brave as that girl… by just getting over that initial fear stage and doing it anyway. The confidence that will follow and self-belief will blow your mind.
Target as many as 20 big goals or more that you want to achieve and make your determination levels over power your fear levels by doing whatever it takes to push yourself out your comfort zone to go after these goals.
Here’s some examples and a little taster of what I’ll be putting on my list:
- Host my first ever Open Mic night 🤓
- Deliver my first ever training course in my current organisation 😳
- Sing a song to a crowd without the words for first time in 10 years 🙊
- Kayak down a river into Loch Lomond 🤓
- Attend and take full part in another training workshop 😬
- Record and share first ever BYP video 😯
- Volunteer to lead an important project at work 😳
I’ll be adding more to the list but this gives you a flavour for the challenge and may give you ideas for your own.
Harness your fear of Regret over your fear of Failure. Make that your driving force, that you don’t want to wake up one day and realise that you missed your chance to do something amazing in your life.
That has to be a stronger force than the silly fear of failing at something or being embarrassed?? Embarrassment is nothing but a state of mind, a state of mind that you are actually choosing. You can choose to view the experience as embarrassing or you can choose to view the experience as a learning curve, that at least you gave it a go!
Please join me in this challenge and please be so kind to leave a comment sharing some of the amazing confidence building challenges you’ll be taking on.
Let’s blow 2017 out the water 🙌😁
Scott J
#BestYouProject 
This advice is excellent Scott and everyone should embrace this challenge! I can’t emphasise enough how significant that first scary step out of your comfort zone is and how it can be the beginning of a whole new world of opportunities. I would certainly agree that it is only your own perceptions of new challenges which hold you back from moving forward into unchartered territory. The horrible sickening feeling in the pit of your stomach, the inner rants of “Why on earth did I ever agree to this”, the worst case scenario thoughts are all commonplace but those feelings are quickly overshadowed by the pride that at the very least you tried. Nothing ventured ….
For me I wanted to become fitter and join some exercise classes but I was overcome by the following thoughts: What if everyone else is so much fitter than me? What if I’ve aimed too high? What if I am sick/dizzy? What will people think of me when I struggle and everything wobbles? What if no-one speaks to me? Something I forced myself to do from the outset was to talk to people in my first class about my fears/thoughts/perceptions of what might happen and this resulted in two things:
1. People were friendly back and reassured me that they felt the same and that it does get easier.
2. They encouraged me to go back the following week and congratulated me on surviving my first class!
A year on I skip into class, laugh when I can’t co-ordinate myself and stumble, chat to everyone and I have long since accepted that we are all on our own journey and comparing yourself to others is pointless, above all I try to be the person who says hi to the people who come for a visit and hope that I can encourage them to persevere.
What would take me out of my comfort zone? I’ll start with a couple and continue to add!
In no particular order:
* sing in a karaoke
* wear a wetsuit and complete some water based activity e.g. jet ski, water ski, snorkel
* ride a horse
I would love to hear what others would do to take them outside their comfort zone, it may even inspire me to do something I have never even considered 😊.
Julie
Awesome Julie, love your first few challenges 👍😁 Bring them on!