We all have big dreams in life. It’s our dreams that sustain us as we slowly trudge through our day to day lives. We look towards the future, so we don’t feel so bad about our present.
We see our lives as having this upward trajectory. We’re not going to stay at the bottom forever. Who wants that anyway?
But we all know what the truth is. The vast majority of people are going to remain at the bottom. Far removed from what they’ve envisioned their life to be.
For most of us, success is nothing but a word. It means nothing. But how did this happen? Aren’t we all supposed to want to achieve our dreams?
The truth is, we all want to succeed, but not everyone is willing to take action. Success is earned, not given. It’s not going to be handed to you on a silver platter. You don’t get to sit back, do nothing, and get rewarded with your dreams. No, it doesn’t work like that.
If you want to be successful, you’re going to work hard for it. And by hard, I mean really hard. You’ll toil for your dreams for years. It won’t be a walk in the park.
You’ll take risks and challenges. You’ll face failure head-on, not once, not twice, but plenty of times.
Dreaming is not for cowards. It’s not for those who can’t even find the courage to leave their comfort zones behind. It’s not for people who aren’t brave enough to take that first step out the door. It’s not for people who don’t know the meaning of the word ‘sacrifice.’
But, you’re not one of them. You’re reading this guide because you want to change your life for the better. You’re tired of living a mediocre life, and you’re finally taking action towards your goals.
Let this guide help you get to where you want to go. I guarantee that by the time you finish reading, you’ll be ready to finally step out of your comfort zone.
Are You Living In Your Comfort Zone?
“A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future. You must break out of your current comfort zone and become comfortable with the unfamiliar and the unknown.”
– Denis Waitley
We all like getting comfortable. We like living and doing things in comfort. In this day and age of instant gratification, we can easily get the things we want.
For instance, with just a push of a button on a mobile app or a click on your computer mouse, you can have your food and groceries delivered to you. There’s no need to stand in line all hot and sweaty.
Thanks to the Internet, you can get practically anything you like delivered straight to your doorstep.
Living in a comfortable bubble
When we get too comfortable, we tend to live in our own little bubbles. At first, we may feel happy, satisfied, and safe in our little safe zone. We’re able to do things that don’t stress us out or make us anxious.
Eventually, however, we become bored and uninspired. We become unhappy. Our dreams get relegated to the back burner.
But many people still don’t want to rock the boat even though they’re unhappy. Does this sound like you?
You want to leave things the way they are. You’ve gotten too used to comfort that the mere thought of leaving it to go do something uncomfortable leaves you in a cold sweat.
What does it mean for you?
It means you’ve changed. And it’s not for the better, either. Where your dreams once consumed you, you’ve now turned into a scared little mouse. Always afraid your small block of cheese is going to get stolen right from under your nose.
Comfort zones do change
You want to go out and chase your dreams, but you’re afraid that if you do leave your comfort zone, you won’t be able to find your way back. You think it’s going to disappear.
But it’s not true. You know why? Because our comfort zones don’t remain constant forever. As we grow older and have more life experiences, our comfort zones grow with us too.
Think of it this way:
What you have inside your comfort zone now used to be outside of it at one point.
Look at your home. For most of us, our homes are at the center of our comfort zones. It’s where we go home to sleep, eat, relax, have fun with the family, all that good stuff.
But, have you always lived in that same home? Did you always have the same people living in your home?
I’m willing to bet your answer is going to be a big ‘no.’
So, before you moved into your present home, you were living somewhere else. And that somewhere else was also part of your comfort zone.
When you decided to move from your old home to the new one, you probably felt scared. Excited, too, but mostly scared. You were leaving your old comfort zone behind.
However, after a few days, weeks, or months of living at your new home, you suddenly realized it’s become your new comfort zone. You no longer felt scared.
Your new home is no longer the ‘unknown.’ You’ve finally settled in. You’re finally comfortable.
See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?
There’s nothing wrong with being comfortable. After all, everyone seeks it no matter what their status in life is.
When comfort becomes a problem
When comfort suddenly interferes with your dreams and your goals in life, it becomes a problem. When you get to the point where you let your comfort take precedence over your dreams, then it’s a problem.
Your comfort zone has become a problem. Now the thing is, problems aren’t meant to fester. They’re meant to be solved and remedied.
So, when your comfort zone stands between you and your dreams, you need to make the right choice if you want to succeed.
Step out of Your Comfort Zone – Don’t Let It Kill Your Dreams
“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”
– Neale Donald Walsch
What’s your biggest dream or goal in life? How long have you had that dream? What have you done to accomplish that? Do you feel like you’re getting closer to achieving your goal?
If you’ve been stuck in your comfort zone for a long, long time, then you may find these questions hard and very painful. You’ll probably remember how at one point in your life, you were so full of dreams. How you were going to become a big superstar, a successful engineer, a famous scientist, or whatever you wanted to become when you ‘grew’ up.
But look around where you are now. Do you like what you see? Is it what you’ve envisioned from a long time ago?
Maybe. Maybe not. Only you know the answer.
Breathe new life into your dreams
Do you know why many successful people say your comfort zone is where your dreams go to die?
Well, it’s because they’ve been in your shoes before. Once upon a time, they too were languishing in their comfort zones. But they had dreams, and their dreams took them far away from their comfort zones.
If they didn’t leave their comfort zones, they’d still be where they were years ago, doing the same things over and over. But no, they didn’t settle for that kind of life. Their dreams were more important than their comfort.
Life threw challenges and obstacles at them. But they kept on. They kept fighting for their dreams. Sure, they made mistakes, and they failed countless times. But it did not deter them from their goals.
Their eyes were set on the prize far into the future. They knew what they had to do. And they knew that if they settled in their comfort zone, they’d never amount to anything. They’d never achieve their dreams.
Your true potential
Each of us has the potential to do great things. But if you remain trapped in your comfort zone, then you’re never going to know your true potential.
Imagine a bird trapped in a small cage. The bird knows it can fly, but for as long as it’s caged, it will never know just how high it can fly.
That bird is you. You’re trapped within your cage – it’s just disguised as your comfort zone. The good news is that unlike caged birds, you can actually choose to leave your comfort zone. You’re just not willing to.
If you want to uncover your true potential, then you will need to unlock your cage. That’s the first thing you need to do.
Learn new things
With your cage wide open, you can now feel the breeze on your face. You can now taste freedom. You can now go after your dreams.
But dreams can be fickle. One minute you see it so clearly, you feel like it’s within arm’s reach. Then the next minute, it’s far, far away.
If you want to accomplish your dreams quickly, then you need to have a plan. Not just any old plan, but a solid, well-thought-out plan. A plan that may require you to learn new things and new skills.
In your comfort zone, you wouldn’t have had the opportunity to learn and try new things. No, in your comfort zone, you’ve already mastered everything. Trying new things made you edgy, it made you uncomfortable.
But outside your comfort zone, you don’t have such limitations. Outside your comfort zone, you’ll experience a multitude of opportunities that were previously not available to you.
It’s up to you to grab and hold onto those opportunities. They’ll build your skills and your knowledge. They’ll bring you closer to your goals.
Key to Success – Setting the SMART Goals
“Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.”
– Tony Robbins
Your dreams aren’t going to magically appear within your comfort zone. Instead, if you want to achieve your dreams, you’re going to leave your comfort zone behind. You’re going to traverse the vast wilderness, the vast unknown, full of scary things.
You may feel lost, and you may feel like quitting. You’ll hear your heart pounding loudly in your ears. You’ll feel the wetness of tears on your cheeks. You’ll feel your resolve weakening.
At this point, the majority of everyone who’s ever had the courage to leave their comfort zones behind, give up. They break down. They surrender to their failures. They succumb to the obstacles. They turn around to where they came from. They hide again in their comfort zones, never to resurface ever again.
The smart thing to do
The unknown abyss beyond your comfort zone is extremely tough. If you’re not mentally, emotionally, and physically ready, you’re not going to get very far before you pack up and head home.
So, how do you get from point A (that’s your comfort zone) to point B (your dreams)?
Well, the smart thing to do would be to prepare for your journey.
You can’t just wing it and expect to succeed.
It’s like going on a month-long holiday abroad without planning ahead. You only buy the tickets to your destination, but you don’t know where you’re going to be staying. You don’t know anything about the place. You don’t know the culture, the people, you basically know nothing apart from the name of the place!
Things can quickly go downhill the moment you arrive. You could get lost, you could get robbed, you could get hurt. And you don’t want that to happen to you.
Just like your vacation, your dreams need serious planning if you want to succeed. Otherwise, you wouldn’t know which way is up and which way is down.
Setting SMART goals
Smart goals aren’t the same as your regular, run-of-the-mill goals. You don’t just say your goal is to become a successful businessman someday. That’s just some generic goal. It’s whatmost people would say. Chances are those people aren’t any closer to achieving their generic goals, too.
So, what do you do? You start out by actually taking the time to define your goals. Smart goals don’t take 5 seconds to create. Smart goals require you to go deep within yourself, to uncover what you really want.
To begin with, your smart goal should meet the S.M.A.R.T. criteria. It means the following: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-sensitive.
Based on this criteria, you can see right away that a simple goal of becoming a ‘successful businessman someday’ is not going to cut it.
If you want to become a successful businessman someday, you need to refine your goals to fit the S.M.A.R.T. criteria. You can ask questions like these:
What kind of business would you like? Do you want to create your business from scratch? Should you buy a franchise? What industry do you want to do business in? Do you have sufficient capital to fund your business? If no, how do you plan to acquire capital? What’s your timeline for your goal? Three years? Ten?
As you can see, defining a SMART goal isn’t going to be easy like your random generic goal. You’ll need to write your thoughts and weigh your options. What are the pros and cons of every option you’re considering?
Yes, your SMART goal will make you flex your brain cells. But ultimately, it’s the right – and only – thing to do.
With a SMART goal, you’re eliminating much of the guesswork. You won’t be second-guessing yourself all the time, which only slows you down. You already know what you want.
All you have to do next is to make sure you don’t ever forget your SMART goal. You can start by writing it down in your journal. You can print out several copies of your goal and then tape it or hang it somewhere you’ll see it frequently.
A SMART goal will help you reach your goals more efficiently and more effectively. Yes, you’ll still need to navigate the murky and scary unknown that lies beyond your comfort zone. But now, you’ll be prepared and better equipped.
Planning Your Course Of Action
“Your life will be no better than the plans you make and the action you take. You are the architect and builder of your own life, fortune, destiny.” – Alfred A. Montapert
Creating and defining your SMART goal is important. But you don’t just stop there. If you do, then who’s to say your goal is actually smart?
A SMART goal is accompanied by a smart action plan. An action plan that doesn’t stop at 2 sentences or a single paragraph. Instead, you need an action plan that will outline all the major steps you need to take so you can get to your goals, your destination, your point B.
If you don’t want to get lost on your journey, you need a solid plan. It’s going to be your roadmap to success.
A sense of direction
Imagine for a moment you’re going away on a road trip to a destination far, far away. Say, a thousand miles away. You’re holding a map in your hands. You circle your current location, and you draw a second circle for your destination.
Then you connect the two circles. But you don’t just draw a straight line. What you do instead is you look for the closest distance between the two circles because there’s probably more than one way to get to your destination.
You choose a good route – one that goes through highways instead of back roads. You put a star next to each major city or town you’re going to be passing through. You’ll probably spend the night there.
Planning a 1,000-mile road trip is the same as planning your path to success. You can’t just say you know the general direction of your destination. You need to plan ahead if you want to reach your destination faster. If you don’t plan the details, you’ll be wasting days on the road.
It’s all about the details
Success is a lot of work, isn’t it? First, you have to define a goal that meets the SMART criteria. Then you have to create a detailed action plan that will show you exactly how you can get from point A to point B, a thousand miles away.
Most people won’t have the patience to do all these steps. They’d think doing all this planning is silly and a waste of their time. They’ll think, “I already know where I’m going. That’s all I need to know.” So, they’ll skip the planning part, jump into their cars and go on their thousand-mile road trip.
Funny thing is several miles later you’ll see them by the side of the road. Their cars have broken down (nope, they didn’t check if their cars could actually survive the long journey) or they’ve run of fuel. You, on the other hand, will be happily driving along until you get to your destination. Your thorough planning has paid off!
Now, your dreams and your goals need to be planned out the same way. You can start by breaking down your main goal into smaller chunks. If you’ve given yourself 10 years to achieve your goals, then you need to break it down into 1-year goals, 2-year goals, and so on.
By the end of the first year, you should have accomplished milestone 1. By the end of the second year, you should have achieved milestone 2, so on and so forth.
While annual goals are great, they’re still a little too big to be easily accomplished. So, you need to break your goals down into weekly or monthly goals, keeping in mind what you need to achieve by the end of the year.
It’s much easier to tick off a daily or weekly to-do list than a yearly to-do list. When you’re crossing items off your list, you feel a rush of satisfaction. You feel productive. You feel proud of yourself.
If you don’t break your big goals into smaller, easy-to-achieve mini-goals, you may lose motivation. You’d feel like you’re not taking enough action. Your fears and insecurities will start creeping in again, and you could potentially undo all the hard work you’ve put in so far.
“Face your fears and doubts, and new worlds will open to you.”
– Robert Kiyosaki
We’ve all got fears, just like we’ve all got our comfort zones. And on your path to success, your fears are going to appear out of the woodwork, one by one. They’ll try to distract you from your goals. They’ll do their best to scare you, so you’ll go running back to your comfort zone with your tail tucked between your legs.
But you know what? Fears are only scary because you make them scary. Think about it this way: why is it that nobody else is afraid of your fears? Why are you the only one afraid of your fears?
The answer is, they’re yours! Your fears only exist within you. You are consciously and subconsciously scaring yourself. You’re letting your imagination run circles around you.
If you want to reach your goals, you’re going to have to face your fears head-on. There are quite a few ways to overcome your fears. Here are some of them:
Understand your fear
Human babies are supposedly only born with two fears – the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. This is why newborns cry when they’re exposed to loud noises or when they’re set down too fast.
All the other things we’re afraid of are acquired. So, there has got to be a reason for your fears. Try to look beyond your fears and trace its beginnings.
When did you start feeling afraid? And why? Did something terrible happen that it left such a negative mark on you? And now you can’t think about it without cowering in fear?
When you rationalize your fear, you’ll see it will be much easier to deal with it. When you look at your fears logically, you’ll usually find an antidote to it.
To make it easier for you to find an ‘antidote,’ you can write down your fears on a piece of paper. And then beside each fear, write down what your ‘antidote’ is or how you propose you’re going to overcome that particular fear. This is a simple technique, but it works. Try it, you just may be surprised at what you discover!
Keep yourself occupied
When you’re busy, you don’t dwell on your fears. When your mind’s somewhere else, you’re not going to be thinking about your insecurities and your fears. You’ve got something more important to do.
The best way to keep yourself occupied is to actually go and do whatever frightens you! Take baby steps. The simple act of doing something to conquer your fears may be enough to keep your fear at bay. With every step you take, your courage grows.
Your courage will be inversely proportional to your fears. The more courage you have, the more your fears disappear. When your courage is at a hundred percent, your fears will be totally wiped out.
Stop scaring yourself
Fear begets fear. When you tell yourself you’re scared, then, of course, you’re going to be scared. But if you tell yourself you aren’t scared, and you say it with conviction, then trust me, you’re not going to be scared.
Instead of dwelling on the negative narrative, focus on the positive. If you’ve been rejected at a job you really, really wanted, it’s okay to feel sad at first. But find a way to bounce back immediately. Don’t dwell on the negative aspects of not getting hired. For instance, you may think that just because you’ll be jobless for a little while longer then you’re going to starve or you’re going to be homeless.
When you scare yourself like that, then you’re not doing yourself any favors. What you can do instead is to look at the positive side. For instance, you can say that since you didn’t get that job, then maybe it means you were meant for something greater. That job would have held you back and wouldn’t have contributed to your growth. So, you need to look for a better option.
Putting things into perspective like that will let you see that sometimes our fears can be irrational. And when you think irrationally, you let your emotions and your negativity cloud your judgment. It gets the better of you.
So, really, just by shining a light on your fears, you’ll be able to see it for what it really is. Perhaps there’s an opportunity lying in wait, just waiting for you to recognize and take advantage of it!
At this point, you should recognize that being afraid of leaving your comfort zone is irrational. Sure, what lies beyond it may be the great unknown, but it’s not all about the ‘monsters’ lurking there.
It’s all about the wealth of opportunities that lie just beyond your wall, opportunities that will never present itself within the confines of your comfort zone.
Replacing Negativity With Positivity
“Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.”
– Zig Ziglar
If you’ve got it in your head that you’re better off in your comfort zone, then you’re never going to accomplish your goals in life. Your dreams lie way outside your comfort zone.
If you let your negativity get in the way, then guess where you’re going to be for as long as you live? That’s right. You’ll be stuck in your comfort zone. You’ll feel sorry for yourself, and you’ll resent everyone who’s ever dared to do things you know you’ll never do.
You’re going to get trapped in a vicious cycle of negativity. And you know what that’s going to get you? Nothing.
So, before your negativity consumes you, here are some important pointers you need to follow so you can see the light at the end of your comfort zone.
Focus on what really matters
You’ve got a goal in mind. You’ve created a solid plan so you can achieve that goal. But it’s so easy to lose sight of all that when you’re faced with so many obstacles, and your comfort zone looks so inviting.
Before you totally close the door on your dreams, you need to remind yourself what really matters to you. Why did you choose that particular goal?
If you’ve created a journal for your journey, then you can simply look up your entries or notes from when you started. You would have written down your hopes and dreams, and more importantly, your ‘why.’
Your ‘why’ is what you need to focus on. It’s the reason you’re doing what you’re doing. It’s why you’re taking huge risks and facing all these difficult challenges head-on. Don’t let all these obstacles stop you.
Remember your ‘why,’ and you’ll remember all the hopeful, positive thoughts you’ve had at the beginning of your journey. It will motivate you and give you a good kick in your pants.
There’s no limit to what you can do
Negative thinkers are severely limited by their negativity. They’ll find it hard to do something good or anything noteworthy at all because their negativity is going to pull them down.
Even if they had the skills and the talent to go after their dreams, they’re not going to use it to their advantage. Nope, their defeatist attitude is going to pull the plug on their dreams.
You, on the other hand, is a different story. You know that outside your comfort zone, you won’t have those restrictive walls. You know that by leaving your comfort zone, you can easily uncover your true potential. When you think positively, you’ll be able to see all the opportunities hiding in plain sight!
Look forward to your failures
Your failures will literally show you what you need to do so you can succeed – this is what a positive person would say. However, negative thinkers will throw shade at you if you give them that advice. They’ll say you’re never ever going to succeed, your failures are proof of that. Don’t believe them for a moment.
Ask any successful person if they had a smooth journey towards their success, or if they didn’t suffer any hiccups or failures on the way to the top. To be honest, they’ll probably laugh in your face.
And they’ll proceed to tell you about all the many mistakes they made, the failures, the countless nights they spent trying to understand what their failures are telling them. Then they’ll tell you that without going through failure, they wouldn’t be where they are today.
Failure has gotten such a bad rap, but it’s not really all that bad. Think about it: when you fail at something, it shows you what you can’t and shouldn’t be doing next time.
The more failures you have, the closer you will be to your goals. You’re just crossing off all the ways your plan isn’t going to work. You’ll eventually find the right combination, the right process, the right system that will lead you to success!
Be excited about the future
Negative people have nothing to be excited about. They’re not going to look forward to what the future will bring them. They’ll look for the negatives even if there is none to be found. They’ll be suspicious of anything that falls outside of their comfort zone. They’ll be the naysayers, they’ll predict doom and gloom for everyone.
You wouldn’t want to be with that kind of people now, would you? If you do, then you won’t be looking forward to your future too. You won’t be looking forward to the time when you’ll finally get to achieve what you’ve been waiting for all this time.
When you think positively, you’ll still be aware of the dark clouds on the horizon. You’re not going to be delusional that everything’s going to be bright, colorful and perfect when you know it rarely is in real life. However, instead of honing in on the negative stuff, you’ll focus on the positives, and you’ll look forward to your future.
Working on Your Self-Discipline
“Disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and important, although difficult, is the highroad to pride, self-esteem, and personal satisfaction.”
– Margaret Thatcher
The road to success is full of temptations and distractions. Without self-discipline, you can easily go off-target. Instead of taking action on your goals, you’ll be off somewhere gallivanting.
If you keep up with that behaviour, you’re never going to get to where you want to go. Success takes commitment. To stay committed, you need self-discipline.
In many cases, saying ‘no’ isn’t really all that hard. It’s just a two-letter word, after all. However, the reality is saying ‘no’ is easier said than done.
This is why having boundaries in place is important. This is the line you’re not supposed to cross. You want to focus on your goals. The boundaries you set will help classify things as (1) useful and helpful, and (2) a complete waste of time.
If someone or something tempts you to cross that line and you know it’s going to do you more harm than good, then you need to say ‘no.’
The first time you say ‘no’ to something, you may feel uncomfortable. But over time, the more you say ‘no’ to temptations, the stronger your resolve becomes, and the easier it gets for you to reject distractions!
You can’t keep on saying ‘yes’ just to make a friend happy. If they don’t know why you’ve set such boundaries or limits for yourself, then tell them about your goals. Tell them how giving in to their requests is going to be bad or counterproductive for you. Real friends will understand. Real friends will wholeheartedly support you.
Your habits help define who you are. If you’ve got a lot of bad habits, people will most probably have a negative perception of who you are. That’s not what you want. So, what you can do instead is to replace your bad habits with good ones.
The thing is letting go of bad habits is not so easy. Habits are so deeply ingrained in us, we literally do them automatically without putting much thought into what we’re doing.
But how do you know which habits are bad?
Well, for starters, bad habits are those that don’t contribute anything to your growth. They don’t do anything to help you achieve your goals, rather they are pretty much a distraction. Some bad habits like smoking and drinking can even be destructive.
When you’ve identified your bad habits, you need to make a conscious decision to stop doing those. What you can do is you can use it as a ‘hook.’ The moment you catch yourself doing your bad habits, you stop, take a deep breath, and do something positive instead. That’s how you build your positive habits – by replacing your old, bad habits with new, positive ones.
It’s important to mention here that habits don’t form overnight, it takes anywhere from a few weeks to a few months for a new habit to stick. As you focus on building your new habits, you’ll realize you’ve been developing your self-discipline as well!
You need accountability
There are two kinds of accountability: accountability to others and accountability to yourself.
Being accountable to others is actually easier, especially if you choose to be accountable to someone who sincerely wants you to succeed. They won’t mince words if they find out you’ve not been taking action on your goals. They won’t hesitate to tell you off if you’ve been spending too much time playing instead of working.
Being accountable to yourself is much harder. To pull it off successfully, you need lots of self-discipline and self-control. It’s so easy to lie to yourself. It’s so easy to deny responsibility. However, if you live your life with integrity, then self-accountability will be an easy job for you.
Journals are good for self-accountability especially if you’re an old-fashioned soul. However, if you like the convenience of modern technology, there are plenty of computer software and apps that can help you.
To help improve your self-discipline and help you reach your goals faster, practice both self-accountability and accountability to others.
Rewarding self-discipline
Mastering self-discipline is hard work, but you’ll be able to accomplish so much more when you’ve got it down pat. Saying ‘no’ and building new habits aren’t easy, but both are awesome achievements that need to be rewarded.
Having a reward system in place is important. It keeps you motivated. It gives you something to look forward to. It makes you think, “I need to finish this task by tomorrow so I can go treat myself to a massage.”
While rewards are helpful, you need to make sure you aren’t rewarding yourself with something that will be detrimental to your success.
For instance, if you’re trying to lose weight, then you wouldn’t exactly want to reward yourself with an all-you-can-eat buffet, right? You can potentially undo all the hard work you’ve done, all because you chose the wrong kind of reward.
The right rewards will help reinforce your goals and your dreams in life. So, think carefully and make sure you don’t accidentally cause yourself to take a step back instead of inching closer to your goals.
Stay Motivated Even in a Slump
Don’t feel too bad if you’re in a slump right now. You’re not the only one. The truth is everyone gets into a slump from time to time. This is why it’s important to have a constant source of motivation.
Your motivation is the driving force within you. If you lose it, then you’re not going to have the desire to continue on with your journey. When you’ve run out of gas, you’ll fall back on your bad habits. You’ll go back and hide again in your comfort zone. You’ll stop taking action towards your goals.
You don’t want to undo months and years of hard work. So, before you lose all hope and surrender to failure, figure out how you can regain your motivation.
Extrinsic motivation
With extrinsic motivation, you are motivated by external factors.
Usually, this comes in the form of rewards and punishments.
You want to succeed because you want to get that cash prize or that gold medal. You want to become the best in your field because you seek the recognition of others – your superiors, your mentors, your loved ones.
When it comes to punishments, some people are spurred into action when they know they’re going to get punished or have something taken from them.
For example, you’ve tasked yourself to finish something by the end of the week. If you complete the task, you get rewarded with an extra day off. If you fail, then you’re going to work two weeks straight, meaning you’re not going to get a single day off.
When you’re in a slump, you can put a picture of your reward and/or punishment on your wall, so you don’t lose sight of what you’re going to gain or lose.
Intrinsic motivation
Intrinsic motivation is self-motivation. Something deep within you fuels your passion, your drive to succeed. You want to reach your goals because you want to please yourself. You want to prove to yourself that you’ve got what it takes to succeed.
For example, your goal is to become the finest athlete in your sport. You don’t care about the money, the rewards, the accolades. They’re great, of course, but it’s not why you want to succeed. You want to become great because that’s what will ultimately make you happy.
When you’re feeling down, recall again why you want to succeed. Remind yourself you want to be great, you want to become the greatest athlete ever. Then you’ll feel motivated again.
Make motivation a habit
Making motivation a habit will require you to have plenty of self-discipline. Basically, what you need to do is you need to identify a new habit that will make you feel motivated every time you do it.
There are a lot of different ways you can do it.
Here’s an example: if you’re trying to lose weight, you can make it a habit to wake up early so you can do your daily 5-mile runs. Your motivator is your daily run. Every time you go for a run, adrenaline rushes through your body, and it pushes you to run even faster because you want to lose weight so badly. You do your runs every single day. When the weather’s good, you run outside. When it’s bad, you run on a treadmill.
When you’ve made motivation a habit, your goals will become so much more attainable. You do your habit out of routine, which translates to your source of motivation being a matter of routine as well.
Turn obstacles into opportunities
Obstacles and challenges can bring even the most motivated person down. Sometimes, it’s hard to look beyond that great, big problem that’s staring you in the face. It blocks your view and you can’t see past it. It’s like a giant wall that blocks off your access to your dreams and your goals in life.
When you’re in a slump, it can be hard to look beyond your current situation. You have people breathing down your neck, berating you for not doing what’s expected of you. Even you are angry at yourself.
What’s important for you right now is to take a breather. Take a timeout. Wait for the haze to clear.
When you can finally think clearly, you just may see a multitude of opportunities to get out of your slump. You’ll be back as a much better person with a more positive outlook on life. You’ll feel pretty good about yourself and your chances of succeeding at your goals!
Widening Your Comfort Zone
Our comfort zones aren’t set in stone. It’s just an artificial mental boundary that allows us to function in our daily lives without getting anxious and without getting scared. It’s a zone where we feel in absolute control of ourselves.
To achieve our goals, it’s necessary to step out of our comfort zone. But it doesn’t mean you need to leave it forever and never look back. That’s not how comfort zones work.
Successful people still have their comfort zones. They didn’t totally abandon it when they were chasing their dreams. They still went back to their comfort zones when they felt fatigued and needed to go back to the familiar for a bit. But they didn’t allow themselves to get trapped in there.
What they actually did was, over time, they expanded their comfort zones and turned the previously unfamiliar to something familiar and comfortable.
The unfamiliar becomes familiar
The first thing you need to do to get out of your comfort zone (so you can expand it later on) is to actually take a step forward. It’s pretty common sense, you can’t get out if you don’t take the necessary action, which in this case, is taking a step.
It’s like when you first attempt to go out in an unfamiliar, chaotic place. You go to the windows, push the curtain to the side to survey the scene outside. Once you see it’s safe, you go to the door and open it. But you don’t just go right out taking big confident steps like you’ve been doing it forever. What happens instead is when you open the door, you look outside again before you step out. Then you take a little step forward. And another step and another. All the while keeping your senses tuned for any sign of danger.
The more steps you take, the more confident you become. After a hundred steps or so, you’ll realize it’s not so bad and you let your guard down a bit. After a while you get to know the neighborhood, you start befriending your neighbors, you start settling in.
Did you see what happened there? In the beginning, you were afraid to go out because you didn’t know the community. But after a while, that community became a part of your comfort zone. You left your original comfort zone (your home) and expanded it to include your new neighborhood. See, that wasn’t so scary, was it?
Fight the good fight
It’s absolutely normal to feel intimidated when you’re in unfamiliar territory. That’s just the way our DNA is wired. When faced with uncertainty, humans have a fight-or-flight response. We either stand our ground (fight), or we run away (flight).
In the course of chasing our dreams, there will be many instances when we’ll have our fight or flight response tested. To reach our ultimate destination, we’re going to have to fight more often than when we run away.
In some cases, running away may be the smart option. Especially if the obstacle in front of you is an absolute monster and you’re going to get destroyed if you don’t run. But the point is when you run away you need to come back and pick up where you left off.
You’re not supposed to abandon your journey to success.
Ultimately, however, you need to have a fighting spirit if you want to have the slightest chance at success. In most cases, you’d really need to stand your ground. You’d need to be brave enough to slay and conquer the dragons standing in your path.
Every little bit of ground you gain from your victories will become yours. You absolutely deserve every inch. And naturally, what you’ve conquered will form part of your expanded comfort zone.
Continue challenging yourself
Growth comes from challenging yourself to learn new things. When you conquer your fears, you learn something new, you learn that your fears were nothing more than a figment of your imagination.
When you take risks, whether you succeed or fail, you also learn something new. When you succeed, you determine the correct formula to success. When you fail, you learn what you should avoid doing next time.
When you feel like your life has stagnated because you’ve been in your comfort zone for far too long, then you should challenge yourself to explore and experiment. For every win and every skill you master, your comfort zone grows and expands with you.
Let’s take The Leap
“You only do good work when you’re taking risks and pushing yourself.”
– Sally Hawkins
Getting from your comfort zone to your dreams will require you to take a giant leap of faith. You literally don’t know what’s going to happen on your journey – whether you’re going to succeed or fail.
Even if you’ve meticulously planned all the steps you’re going to take to arrive at your destination, there’s no guarantee that everything’s going to go according to your plan. You can only do so much – there are far too many external factors that come into play between where you are and where you want to go.
When you take the leap, you need to believe in yourself. You need to trust that you can do whatever it is you’ve set out to do. Otherwise, what’s the point of taking the leap in the first place? If you don’t believe in yourself, who else will? The answer is, no one.
So, before you even consider taking the leap, ask yourself if you believe in yourself. If you don’t, then you need to go back to the drawing board. Figure out what you need to do so you’ll have more confidence in yourself.
Do you think you don’t have the right skills yet? Then find out how you can acquire those skills. Maybe go back to school or look for relevant jobs that will help you get those skills.
Or maybe you think you don’t have the right mindset, the right attitude to succeed at something so big and so important. If yes, then you should consider signing up for self-development courses – there are tons of them you can choose from.
Once you’ve got the right mindset and the right skills and knowledge, then go ahead with your action plan and take the leap!
We all respect people with integrity – there are far too many people without it. So, when we meet someone who’s got a reputation for being honest and decent, we ultimately end up liking and trusting them.
If you don’t live your life with integrity, then you need to change your ways right now. You need integrity to succeed. You need to be honest with yourself at all times. If you’ve set your mind to chasing your dreams, then you better make sure you actually do it.
When you practice integrity, you’re not going to be telling yourself you’re going to do everything in your power to succeed, and then not do it. No. When you tell yourself you’re going to succeed, thenyou will do whatever it takes so you can succeed. Even if it takes you your whole lifetime. What you promise, you’ll carry out.
It’s the only way you’re going to be able to live with yourself. It doesn’t matter if you’re scared of leaving your comfort zone behind and you’re going to be facing uncertainty out there. You made a promise to yourself, and there’s no way you’re going to break that promise.
Bend but don’t break
There will be many times along the way when you’ll be presented with options that won’t be in line with what you originally had in mind. Perhaps what you want is just simply is no longer available. So, instead of saying ‘no’ to the entire thing, you simply go look for the next best thing.
Knowing when to bend or adjust is important. You need to be flexible sometimes. You can’t plan for everything, so sometimes you just have to choose whatever will help you reach your goals.
If you’re unwilling to compromise, you could cost yourself your entire goal or your entire dream. Some people end up abandoning their dreams simply because they weren’t willing to adjust. They weren’t willing to bend the rules they’ve set for themselves.
If something will help push you forward, closer to your goals, then go for it, especially if it doesn’t affect your moral compass. If it does affect your values, then maybe it’s best to wait for a better opportunity.
There’s no point in crying about something you can’t have.
Sometimes you really have no choice but to accept your fate.
Before you take the biggest leap you’ll ever take in your entire life, ask yourself if you’re willing to sacrifice your comfort, if you’re willing to make compromises along the way, all in the name of your dreams.
Conclusion
Our dreams and our goals give us direction in life. It tells us which way we should go and which roads to take. Remember, however, you can’t get to your destination without stepping out of your comfort zone first.
Comfort zones are important, too. But we shouldn’t let it stop us from chasing our dreams. Gather the courage to get out of your comfort zone. Go and follow the path that will ultimately lead you to success.
