When Your Comfort Zone Says “No” - Take These Four Steps

When does this happen?...when you consider signing up, walking in, talking to someone who seems out of your league, following up with an important contact, and on and on... Ignoring your comfort zone can be daunting. Staying in your comfort zone can be a debilitating limitation that artificially reduces your networking results.

None of us is born with these barriers. Your comfort zone is not a physical limitation; rather it is a dynamic set of learned limitations.

It is possible to overcome the years of self-talk that has created your comfort zone. If you want to break free of your learned limitations and significantly expand your comfort zone, follow these four steps:

• Set goals that stretch what you think is possible
• Take the actions of someone who will accomplish those goals - discard your old patterns and if it helps model someone who you know who has the right patterns - when appropriate, embrace your discomfort
• Stay vigilant and continue to expand your comfort zone to new and much more productive patterns - it can take weeks of consistent effort to evolve new patterns
• Recognize and celebrate the emergence of your new and more productive patterns

Imagine being someone who embraces walking into a room of people who you don’t know, opportunities to meet new people of any stature, making the most of each event, following up with your contacts, or any type of new challenge that will increase your skill and aptitude as a professional. You have no limits except for the ones that you perceive.