A couple of weeks ago, I was coaching a client. She said she had dove back into my first book. 52 Ways to Live a Kick-Ass Life and had been thinking about the first chapter, which is called, “Cannonball Out of Your Comfort Zone”.
(Before I continue, the truth is, the chapter titles are meant to be dramatic and catchy. You don’t have to CANNONBALL out of your comfort zone…even dipping a toe into it is great.)
We had a great session where we talked about what it meant for her to take action that scared her, how the pandemic has impacted her comfort zone, action she could take, and any obstacles that might get in the way. It was such a great session and I felt like what she was feeling was relatable to so many of you. As soon as she and I got off the phone, I turned the mic on and recorded this minisode for you! Enjoy!
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SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Andrea 00:00
You're listening to Make Some Noise Podcast minisode number 495
Welcome to Make Some Noise Podcast, your guide for strategies, tools and insight to empower yourself. I'm your host, Andrea Owen, global speaker, entrepreneur, life coach since 2007, and author of three books that have been translated into 18 languages and are available in 22 countries. Each week, I'll bring you a guest or a lesson that will help you maximize unshakable confidence, master resilience and make some noise in your life. You ready? Let's go.
Hi, welcome to another episode of the podcast. Feel like I'm leaving you a voicemail. You. You. Just you. That's not so far. So up close and personal. I'm excited to bring you this minisode that was recorded a few days ago, actually. And before I jumped in, I needed to record an intro because I realized I was so excited to record this particular topic that I failed to record a regular intro. So here, here we are. And the only thing I wanted to give you a quick reminder about is that How To Stop Feeling Like Shit is being re-released and it comes out on December 27. You know what, Amazon is kind of being a dick. And I mean, what else is new. But if you buy your books at Amazon, which I know many of you do, when you go to How To Stop Feeling Like Shit, it will show you the white cover. You have to scroll down just a little bit. And then underneath it is a little yellow cover and it says New Edition, like the band, and then you click on that and then it gives you the option if you want to purchase that particular version. It's annoying. I've emailed the publisher, and I'm like, can we fix this? Can we have the yellow version be front and center? And they're like, yeah, they want to sell down stuff… It's boring, it's boring information, that doesn't matter. But if you want the new version, which I highly suggest, then and that's where all the bonuses come from, then scroll down a little bit, you look for that you look for the yellow copy, look for the yellow copy, excuse me, and then head on over to AndreaOwen.com/HTSFLS to get your bonuses.
All right, that being said, here is the minisode. Okay, so I just got off the phone with a client of mine and I asked for her permission to be able to talk about this and she did give me permission. And I think it might be helpful for those of you who struggle with fear, who struggle with the comfort zones that they have created for themselves and gotten very, very comfortable in said comfort zones. All right, so this client, let's call her Jessica. Jessica came to the session, I asked her what she wanted to work on and she said that she was reading my book. She was rereading 52 Ways To Live A Kick Ass Life, which was my very first book that came out almost 10 years ago. And I think it might even be like the very first chapter. The chapter title is called Cannonball out of Your Comfort Zone. And it's about that it's about learning to challenge yourself and be in the discomfort and step out of your comfort zone. And she had mentioned that she had just gotten really comfortable with her weekends. She shares custody of her children with her former husband, and every other weekend when she doesn't have her kids, you know, she gets in her sweats and she just relaxes and the whole weekend goes by and she plays you know her video games and just kind of has this this routine of self-care really. And I want to pause there because I think many times we can beat ourselves up for that. And I want to stop you right there if that's you.
If you have gotten to the point where you either have these routines, and you are calling yourself unproductive or lazy, stop it right now. Stop it right now. We live in a capitalistic system that tells us if we are not productive, if we're not efficient for not going going going all the time, then we are lazy we are less than. We're not productive members of society. That's all bullshit. It just it was a way to shame people into doing more. Anyway, I won't get into that too much but cut yourself some slack. Partly because this pandemic has made that worse for a lot of people. It forced us to isolate for our own safety and the safety of others. And a few years have gone by and it's created these habits where we just don't get out as much as we used to, we just don't socialize, we just don't cannonball out of our comfort zone, like we used to. Okay? So just want to acknowledge that if you're in that place where you have created a comfort zone that feels less than ideal for you, you're not alone. And please have some compassion for yourself. You did what you needed to do to survive. Alright, so there's that.
The next part is, if you're feeling like you have got yourself in this rut, and you want to get out of your comfort zone, I invite you to ask yourself, what is it that you're looking for? Is it something specific, like, in the case of my client, she wanted to meet new people and she also wanted to do a couple of things that she was interested in. And she thought about it when I asked her like, what is it that you're after, at the end of the day, beyond just these things that you want to kind of check off that you're interested in. And she said, I want to connect with people. Like I want to have people that I can text and if I need them, they show up and if they need me, I can show up for them. It's like, yeah, these are these connected, intimate relationships that are part of the necessities we have as humans. Like, we're meant to be in community with each other. We're meant to be social creatures. And I think so many of us have gotten away from that, whether it's just circumstantial with our jobs, or our families, or whatever it is, plus pandemic habits. We've moved away from that. And, of course. Of course, you want these relationships.
And also, I challenged her a couple of things that she and I talked about. You know, when you make plans to do something, and it sounds great at the time, and say it's you made plans to meet up with a I don't know, like a knitting group. Like you started knitting over the pandemic, and you want to get together with these people. And there is one at 7pm on Tuesday nights, and it's not far from where you live. So you make the plan, you RSVP to the Facebook event that you know someone else starting an established group. And then it's six o'clock on Tuesday, and you're like, oh, it's already dark because of daylight savings time and I really just want to get in my sweatpants. I don't want to go and meet these people and have to like keep my makeup on or like reapply my mascara and meet people and do like these usual pleasantries and like sit awkwardly on their couch and like nod my head and just forget it. I'm just it's not like anybody's going to follow up with me. Okay. That's happened to the best of us, myself included. And so what I invited her to do is to expect that to happen and I said, what if you could set alarms or reminders on your phone, anticipating that that will likely happen. That those thoughts will pop up of not wanting to go of figuring out the excuses of why it's actually a better option to not go. So if knitting club starts at seven, you know that at 615 you're gonna have to like start getting ready. So at 620, you set an alarm for 6:20pm on Tuesday night to go off and say, hey, if you're thinking about not going to that knitting club, you should go anyway. Plan to stay for 10 minutes and if it sucks, you can leave. Or whatever it is that you need to write to your future self, from your former self, either a pep talk, either a quick note, whatever it is that you are going to need to hear in that moment. If you have no one else to hold you accountable. Like if you're not going with a friend, if you don't have a life coach like me, who's going to be texting you going like are you ready to go to your knitting club? How did it go? The next morning, if you have no one, then be that person for yourself. Put up the post it notes set the reminder on your phone, whatever it is. Or ask somebody in your life. hey, can you text me at 630 to make sure I'm getting off my ass and go into that did include club meeting that I said that I would go to that I'm probably going to want to get out of? Can you not let me get out of that? Because I really want to go because I know that once I get there. It's going to be fine. I'm probably going to have a good time. Worst case scenario, it's kind of boring and I end up not connecting with anybody. But I went. So that's a positive. Okay? Worst case scenario is that it's boring y'all. Really truly, and that you're uncomfortable in the beginning, making small talk and pleasantries with people. That the price you pay to meet new people. None of us get out of that. It's the social tax, that's what I'm going to start calling it. It's the social tax that we all pay. Alright?
So that was the one thing I invited her to do. The second thing I invited her to do was just to expect the fear and the discomfort, the evening of. Just know that it's going to come. Because I think sometimes we can have these expectations that we should be beyond that, or that it shouldn't be this hard, or whatever. No, meeting new people post pandemic, at our age is hard. I consider myself an extrovert, and it's hard. It's awkward, sometimes I don't know what to say, I am finding that I'm fidgeting whole time and I'm like, are people noticing that I'm fidgeting. I feel like I'm sweating. Did I not reapply deodorant? And all of those things. Everybody's nervous. Everybody's nervous meeting new people. I think some people are just better at pretending that they're not nervous. So expect that nervousness expect that discomfort. Maybe you need to put it in your calendar, when it's like knitting club 7pm, Tuesday in parentheses, it says expect discomfort, or knitting club plus anxiety. That's what's on the calendar. Have fun with it. Like I love to have fun with it and encourage my clients to have fun with it, make jokes about it have some levity. For God's sake, life is uncomfortable. I cannot remember if I said this in one of my books or on a podcast episode. But I am truly convinced that life is just one big uncomfortable scenario after another. Constant discomfort. I'm surprised I don't have diarrhea all the time because of like nervous tummy, and probably a little bit too much coffee. But one uncomfortable situation after the next over and over again until we dive.
Alright, so I gave Jessica those challenges, if you will. So she's thought of two different things that she's going to look into. And if it felt right, you know, she was going to make the commitment to do it. And then there was one more thing towards the end of the conversation because I asked her, you know, she actually had brought up that there was like this woman that she was like kind of friends with before the pandemic and then the pandemic happened and it kind of fell apart. She's like, I could reach out to her. So that was also her challenge. So those are those were three big homework assignments to her and what I did, and this is, you know, this is what we do in coaching. I said, okay, what are you doing right after this call, she said nothing. I just was gonna clean up the kitchen. I said, okay, instead of cleaning up the kitchen, you're gonna spend an hour doing X, Y, and Z, and then I want you to let me know, either text me or email me and tell me how it went. Tell me what you decided, tell me what you plan. If I don't hear from you by two or 3pm, then I'm going to reach out to you. So I mean, that accountability, it lights a fire under your ass, doesn't it? That's what coaching can do, and also, you know, maybe that's just a friend in your life that you have where you hold each other accountable for the things that you want to do that you are procrastinating on that you know you're gonna want to get out of. Maybe it's working out or eating better or finally scheduling your mammogram or whatever it is that you are procrastinating on. All right. All right.
So I hope that helps. You're not alone. If you put things off if you have gotten very comfortable in your own comfort zone. But as I told my client at the end of the session, these may seem like very small things, but this definitely is what I consider canon balling out of your comfort zone. It truly is. When you've gotten into the habit of really not doing anything, besides just you know, take care of your own mental health by being in your sweats at home, doing these things is canon balling out of your comfort zone. I hate that quote. Do one thing every day that scares you. No, ma'am. And I'm a life coach. No, ma'am. And I'm a motivational speaker. No, ma'am. I think do one thing every month. That scares you. That is plenty. That is plenty. And I'm a risk taker. Do one thing every month that scares you. For Jessica my client, this was her three things that she's going to do in a month. Maybe she's got some catching up to do.
So I hope you can think of some things. I hope you can have an accountability partner, I hope you can cut yourself some slack and have some grace and compassion for yourself. If you've been just not doing a whole lot, if you've been unproductive over the last three years, I certainly feel like I have. We all have. We all needed to. Alright everybody. Thank you so much for being here with me on these minisodes. I appreciate you immensely. Don't forget to cannonball out of your comfort zone. And remember, it's our life's journey to make ourselves better humans and our life's responsibility to make the world a better place. Bye for now.
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