Comfort Zone Limits Potential
If you wanted to run a 10K next spring, you would start building endurance and strength by running each day. At first your goals would be simple: run up to 10 minutes at any speed – just achieve the time and repeat it every day. Eventually, you would translate time into miles and then add speed to reduce your time – more miles, less time. Your plan would be to be able to run the 10K distance comfortably several times before you enter a race.
At some point during your training you begin to realize that your body has responded to the physical test and you feel like you can push harder. The question now is when do you leave your comfort zone and push your limits?
Pushing your limits helps you realize the breadth of your physical capabilities. How often can you apply a burst of speed, maintain it, slow down and recover, ready for the next sprint? The more times you practice this staccato regimen, you become stronger and faster. This is how athletes improve their performance; this is how you improve by pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. (You can actually measure your performance improvement by mapping your heart rate. Your resting heart rate goes down and the time it takes your heart rate to recover between sprints becomes shorter.)
When you physically leave your comfort zone the rewards begin to mount. You get faster beating your previous 10K performance; you lose weight and feel stronger; people congratulate you on a good performance. It is invigorating!
Mentally, the strategy is the same. Too many times people work from their comfort zone. It’s an autopilot that leads to the observation that the person is mailing it in, a reference to the lack of effort. In school, most students work in his or her comfort zone. A teacher gave assignments and tests and the students offered a measurable performance. Even students who garnered top scores were pretty much on autopilot since meeting teacher expectations are fairly easy.
Schools give students what they need: a foundation for learning. It is the student’s responsibility to move out of the comfort zone and challenge his or her ability to build thinking to higher levels. Just like preparing for the 10K run, that kind of movement from comfort zone to higher performance does not come without training and dedication.
Resistance to new ideas is a result of people unwilling to leave their comfort zones. We all like the idea that today will be much like yesterday. The problems, the preparation and the meetings will resemble familiar territory. We like to change but at a slow pace. This allows for gradual integration of change into our comfort zone without much stress. As the saying goes, “Insanity is the belief that doing the same thing over and over again will yield different results.” Stress is the foundation for higher performance.
Just like you can’t run a 10K without practice and training, you can’t become a top level critical thinker without practice. Building thinking skills starts by reading. Set aside 30 to 45 minutes a day to read. Your reading doesn’t always have to be boring – it can be a combination of fiction, non-fiction and books and magazines. The goal is to train your mind to focus on the content and improve your comprehension.
A great learning tool while reading is to have a conversation with the author. Read a passage and talk it out: Do you agree? How can you use that information in your work?
Use the white space along the edges of the page to write notes. At the end of the session, what do you have that you can use now? Every session should end by finding at least one nugget of learning that you can immediately apply. Maybe you just read about a breathing trick to help you get faster in your next 10K!
Your mental goal is to be able to switch gears – just like when you sprint during a run. You want to be able to go from watching TV or having fun with family or friends to cracking open a book and immediately focusing on the content. You want your mind to switch gears from autopilot to focusing on text. You want to be able to do it quick and for a sustained period of time.
You want to train your mind to create role-playing scenarios based on the text that puts you into situations and how you would react. Your creative daydreaming sees you employing new thinking and being successful. You do not want an untrained mind that reads several sentences and then starts wandering off to thoughts about work or “what am I missing?”
It has been asserted for a long time that people fail to use all of their capabilities. Part of the problem is we don’t have much experience or opportunities to push our limits. You learn that from participating in physical activities. If we don’t extend our reach, we don’t improve.
Mental capabilities are the same. If we don’t push our thinking to new levels, we are stuck in our comfort zone. Hence, there’s a good chance we’ll miss the next great opportunity.
Exercise your capabilities today.
GROWTH <> LEADERSHIP <> EXCELLENCE
© 2007 3 Minute Learning LLC
