Written by: Vickie Sullivan | March 16, 2021
Fear Factor: How to Go Outside Your Comfort Zone
Heads-up: I’m gonna get real here. For the past month, I’ve been out of my comfort zone. I’ve had to do things that I’ve dodged for decades. It wasn’t fun, but I got through it. The best part is I learned a lot.
Now that time has passed (and I’m off the ledge), I want to drill down on how to feel the fear and do it anyway. Why? Because this off-the-chart distress will show up when we are called to do big things.
2 Strategies for Working Outside Your Comfort Zone
Two things you can adapt when you go outside your comfort zone:
• Coping mechanisms. Most of our tactics work with mild discomfort or nervousness, but they can fall apart in the face of extreme fear. Unfortunately, my past strategy (avoiding and white knuckling) was not sustainable. Once I figured out that walking through the fire was a prolonged process, I had to come up with a new way of coping. Fast.
Listen: A Systematic Approach for Feeling the Fear and Doing It Anyway
• Continuing practice. Good news: I had time between events of abject terror. So, an ongoing plan (several times per day) was devised to prepare me emotionally for those. The more I practiced, the better I felt. And the better I felt, the less need to white knuckle. I learned that calm is cumulative.
When you get out of your comfort zone, the fear can be visceral. But you can influence that feeling. That is how being fearless is born.
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