What is comfort zone?
Comfort zone is anything that makes you feel safe and secure. It is a feeling that you teach your mind.
And your mind becomes a monster when you have to do things that do not confine to this “feeling.”
Comfort zone is mainly related to our work life.
What is comfort zone to do with our work?
Well, the major time of our “waking” life is spent at work. Its imperative that comfort zone has a major role to play in our work life.
Why do we get into this feeling of comfort zone?
From my childhood, I was always told: Study hard, get good grades, and get a good job.
You do the work now; you’ll be happy later.
For me, it translated to, “If I do the hard work now, I’ll be comfortable later.”
I feel that it is a game that parents and teachers play around us thinking, “Let the kid at least cross this phase. When “real” world hits him, he’ll learn.”
When I reflect back now, it seems that my eventual goal for doing hard work was to find the comfort zone.
So, I started chasing comfort zone in anything I do.
I think I was doing it unconsciously, but that’s the truth.
It was only when I was reflecting on my career and thinking a lot about this topic for my book, I realized that this place called Comfort Zone is a bad place.
The thing is:
We don’t know when we enter the comfort zone and we realize it only when things start to stink.
Why… because once we are in comfort zone, we become stagnant.
When things are stagnant, it starts to stink.
Are you wondering, “How to get out of comfort zone?”
It starts with C and ends with E (and you just need to HANG in between them).
Did you know I was talking about CHANGE?
It’s not about the solution at all because it’s the change journey that scares us.
How about exploring the whole journey?
I am sure you’ll feel hopeful because, we’ll explore the whole journey of going from being stagnant to being Joyful through the case study of a typical corporate environment.
Is being Joyful good?
You bet.
I’ll be the first to say that CHANGE is hard. In fact, change HURTS.
But hurt better than stink.
Whether you agree or not:
The adaptability to change is a key skill in today’s fast paced environment.
After all, change will help us come out of comfort zone and grow our confidence.
Change manifests into we entering a new environment, often, in the form of new assignments.
New assignment could be an offer in a new company or a project with a new client within the same company.
Although we might enter with excitement about what we can learn, or do, we quickly realize how much hard work is there ahead of us.
Our initial impressions of work environment contain an element of fear because we are ignorant of the power relationships between people, the psychology of our boss, the unwritten rules and procedures that are necessary to thrive.
We might get confused and things might go over our minds.
We might give in to the feelings of fear, impatience, anxiety and confusion.
If you give in to these emotions, you will STOP observing and learning.
But that’s where you need to keep a little patience and courage.
I have personally taken this step and there are only rewards.
If you don’t give up and allow some time, something remarkable begins to take shape.
As we continue to observe and follow the lead of others, we gain clarity, learning the unwritten rules and seeing how things work and fit together.
If we keep practicing, we gain fluency; basic skills are mastered, allowing us to take on newer and more exciting challenges.
We begin connect things that were invisible to us before. We slowly gain confidence in our ability to solve problems or overcome weaknesses through sheer persistence.
We then try out our own ideas. Instead of just learning how others do things, we bring our own flavor into play.
And that’s when you feel the JOY of doing work.
Without you knowing, you’ll move from a novice to an expert. Now, you are confident to thrive even in a new environment.
And this all started because we were ready to CHANGE.
