“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”

I know that real change only occurs outside of one’s comfort zone, but sometimes I wish I weren’t so committed to real change! My whole life seems to be happening outside of my comfort zone at the moment.  I really feel like I’m making it up as I go.  The best analogy I can come up with is a game we play in the workshops that I facilitate for teens; the game is called ‘hot lava river’ – the object of the game is to get your whole team across the ‘hot lava river’ using only a few ‘magic stones.’   The magic stones are carpet squares, and the river is a section of grass cordoned off for the game.  In the game, if a foot or any part of the body of anyone on the team touches the river, then that team loses.  You can only cross the river by using the carpet sqares – throwing out the limited squares one by one; each square must be used strategically, and as you jump to each new sqare, you move forward, not exactly sure where the next one will go.  I feel like I’m tossing out the squares as quickly as I can, jumping to each new square and hoping I’m going in the right direction, and hoping I’m not going to run out of squares before I get to the other side.

Almost everything I’m doing at the moment is new to me and way outside my comfort zone. I’m planning book events that I’ve never done before, marketing myself and my book in ways I’ve never had to do before; but I keep moving forward, pushing against the next barrier, toward my ultimate goal of getting my book out there.

For me, it’s getting my book out there, but I believe we all have our our defining moments that exist outside of our own comfort zones.  Michael Johnson suggests that:

A defining moment requires a breakthrough insight and a commitment to action and it only occurs when you’re outside your comfort zone.  Without action, this defining moment fades in your memory, only to be pulled up sometime in the future as regret;  great opportunities are so often abandoned because they are not coupled with action. A defining moment must have a commitment to action.

So I have made my commitment to action. I am throwing out my ‘magic stones’ as fast as I can, and jumping to the next stone with the belief that I will get to the other side of this scary hot lava river.  Yes I’m living way outside my comfort zone at the moment, but as Neale Donald Walsch says, life begins at the end of your comfort zone.

I’d like to close with a TED Talk aptly named, Getting Comfortable Outside Your Comfort Zone.

I’d love to hear about how you deal with living outside your comfort zone. And as always, thanks for taking the time to visit, I appreciate it.