Our 2 year old son kicked, screamed, cried and raised hell when his loving but harassed parents successfully weaned him away from drinking milk in bottles to sippy cups. He took a big step on his journey to growth.
He will eventually transition from diapers to potties, from simply walking to cycling and so on.
He will be helped every step of the way by his loving parents who will never give up on him.
But what about us, normal adults. Who will coach us, cajole us and push us to new behaviors that while very uncomfortable initially will greatly help us become more, learn more, do more and achieve more in life.
Friends we all have a barrier in life that we need to break through. It is funny that some people call it the glass ceiling, bamboo ceiling and so on and so forth.
It is very comforting to assign blame to someone else.
The ceiling we really need to break through is the comfort ceiling.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
To take new actions you need to break through your comfortable mental and physical routines a.k.a your comfort zone.
A while ago I learnt a powerful lesson of why we should do this consistently.
For more than a year I was running a website (now defunct) called www.indianbabystuff.com.
In that time I made about 4 sales and was more than 500 dollars in the hole.
I cancelled the website but was still left with an inventry of Indian comics, DVDs and audio CDs ( I still am in case you are interested in buying).
I then learnt about a ethnic fair aimed at Indians where I could rent a stand and sell my inventory.
I was very very uncomfortable doing this. I was brought up in a culture that devalued the sales profession. While I understood intellectually the importance of sales I just could not get myself to participate as a vendor. I was worried about how my friends would perceive my actions, I was worried about how I could approach total strangers with a sales pitch. I was wracked by all sorts of worries.
At about this time, I was reading the Emotional Intelligence quickbook by authors Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves( you can read my free abstract of the book at EQ QuickBook Book Summary). This book stressed the importance of crashing through your comfort zone.
I got caught up with one phrase in particular "Lean into your discomfort". I kept repeating this phrase like a mantra. So despite my acute discomfort I leaned into it and went ahead with the fair.
I opened up a stand.
On that one day I made more sales than what I did for a whole year through my website!!
And I had no problems at all making a sales pitch to anyone visiting my stand.
What a powerful lesson on the benefits of breaking through your comfort zone.
Remember you cannot grow and still expect to be the same.
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