Tightrope: Success requires stepping outside your comfort zone

— -- Recently I agreed to meet with a friend's relative. I will call the relative, Anna. Anna's husband has recently been diagnosed with kidney failure and is on treatment. Because of his illness he is unable to run his construction company as he has in the past. Because the business is the primary income for the family, Anna, the homemaker, is about to become an entrepreneur.

Anna describes herself as an introvert. Although her husband has been giving her guidance in how to run the company, her real concern and question was how to overcome her shyness.

I actually understood quite well what she meant. Believe it or not there was a time in my life when I too was quite shy. Being inside of our comfort zone is a warm and cozy place, but to keep a successful business running, you must move out of that zone. And I managed to find ways to move out of my comfort zone.

Moving out of your comfort zone can be a painful experience. Think about this: remember your first day of school. You were probably five or six years old. It was most likely scary for you to go off to a strange place for the whole day. You were leaving your mom, your toys, your room, and all the things you knew. However, you needed to take this step in order to learn and grow.

When you headed off to school for the very first time, you were stepping outside of your comfort zone and into a different world. Maybe you cried. Maybe you thought you'd hate it. But eventually you adapted to your surroundings: you grew a little bit. And then you began to feel comfortable again.

A comfort zone is that part of your life that is familiar. When you step outside of that space, you expand your comfort zone.

In my life, I have repeated that experience many times so that I could learn and grown. This is where you are in your life right now. Leaving your comfort zone is as important at age 30, 40, 50, or 60 as it was when you were five. And it's scary every single time. I remember a time when I was scared to death at the thought of speaking to a group of three people and decided that if I was going to build my business I would need to learn how to address small groups. Subsequently, I enrolled in public-speaking classes. It was terrifying for me to go to those classes at first. But I put myself through it and forced myself to broaden my horizons. As a result, I became a much better speaker. Actually I'm a better person because of it.