Making Time for Taking Action – Kiss Your Comfort Zone Goodbye Mini-Series (Part 4)

This week we’ve been taking a closer look at getting outside our comfort zone so that we can start taking steps toward our goals and desires. Today’s episode is the final part of this mini-series. If you haven’t read or listened to the previous four parts of this series, please stop and go through those first.

• Kiss Your Comfort Zone Goodbye – Mini-Series (Intro)
• Defining Your WHAT and WHY – Kiss Your Comfort Zone Goodbye (Part 1)
• Creating Objectives – Kiss Your Comfort Zone Goodbye (Part 2)
• Taking Massive Action – Kiss Your Comfort Zone Goodbye (Part 4)

The ultimate purpose of this mini-series is to help you take bigger and better action so that you can start moving toward your goals and dreams. This mini-series isn’t just about listening to me talk. It requires action on your part in order to be an effective learning tool. Each day includes an exercise and discussion that builds upon the last, so it’s important to start from the beginning of this series.

For everyone else, let’s get started with a brief recap.

Recap of Yesterday – Taking Massive Action

Yesterday we talked about selecting an objective from our list and expanding the related potential actions to include greater detail, an expected outcome, fears, positives, and accountability measures for each action.

You may have chosen to expand upon your actions mentally, or through writing. In either case, the goal with this exercise is to help you overcome your fears and inhibitions so that when you start taking action on a daily basis, your mind won’t stand in your way with all the reasons you can’t or shouldn’t do something in order to reach your goal.

Remember, growth and progress are uncomfortable. If you aren’t finding opportunities on a daily basis that press the boundaries of your comfort zone, you aren’t trying hard enough. Change takes action and action requires facing our fears, our excuses, our inhibitions and even our lack of motivation.

All of these topics and more are covered in my upcoming program which I look forward to officially announcing in the very near future. There are just some final finishing touches and testing to be done before I can unleash the new program. I can’t wait to share it with you.

Facing Fears and Breaking Routine

As I mentioned yesterday, once you commit to an objective and decide that…

Then you are in the perfect position to start getting out there and making things happen. I also asked you to commit to doing at least one action from your list in Exercise 2 every single day.

You may still be wondering how that’s even possible given your schedule, so I wanted to take today to talk about that topic. Unfortunately, time is often viewed as an impassable roadblock – even I saw time the same way before gaining a new perspective around time and why taking action daily was so important. (As a side note, just between you and me, I think our time management skills could always a bit of fine-tuning. Wouldn’t you agree?)

In order to become the proficient comfort zone breaker that I know you can be, it is important to understand the psychology and behavior patterns that cause so many of us to remain stuck, living a life far less than that which we are truly capable.

Our fear of the unknown is what keeps so many of us bound and stuck, unable to take action. But if you think about it, nearly all of our choices in life have a certain level of risk involved and some of them have to be made with nothing more than a leap of faith.

Think about how few risks you would take over the course of your life if you had to be absolutely certain of the result before taking action.

• You would never get in a car for fear of being in an accident.
• You may have never purchased a house for fear of losing your job and not being able to cover the mortgage for the length of the loan.
• You would never have kids for fear of not knowing how to be a parent.
• Getting into relationships would also be out of the question.
• You would never accept a promotion for fear of not being able to live up to the new role.

This list could go on forever. The truth of the matter is that there are so many areas of life where we have learned to stop worrying about potential disasters and we simply trust. What many people may not realize and what I’m asking you to think about is that for each action you want to take, you can apply the same level of trust that you have for all of the bigger steps and goals in your life. You survived those, didn’t you?

Each one of the big decisions in our life, buying a car, a home, deciding to have kids, or to get into a relationship or even accepting a promotion all pushed us out from our comfort zone. Without that, we wouldn’t have made the shift or taken action. Growth is uncomfortable. Change requires that we face our fears and trust that everything will turn out just as it should and that it will be okay.

Worry Less. Trust More.

So how do you learn to worry less and trust more? Like anything else, you practice. You can do this with baby steps too. Change doesn’t always have to be drastic. You can systematically break patterns in your life, especially when they are part of your day-to-day routine and fit in something entirely different. Yet, that entirely different action won’t FEEL so different because it was naturally worked into part of who you are already and part of your regular routine.

Does that make sense?

Let me see if I can help shift your perspective as to why you might want to give this “taking daily action” thing a try.

How many years have you been working so far? How many years do you plan to still be working? If you had the opportunity to work your butt off for 2 to 4 months for the equivalent of what you make in your yearly salary today, would you do it? Would you? What kind of outcome would you want to see before you’d be willing to put in the daily effort that’s needed?

Life-altering shifts are possible when you start taking daily action. Imagine for a moment, what your life might be like if you achieved one, two, or even five of your top objectives? Would you be on a new path toward a life you’ve always wanted doing something you’re passionate about? Would you have gained enough knowledge and experience to branch out in another direction?

If working for 40 years in a mediocre job, with little or no job satisfaction and feeling like you just have to put your time in so that you can finally retire still sounds appealing to you. Then table this topic and try coming back to it in a few weeks. Let your mind wander and dream a bit as it explores new possibilities. Come back to this when you’re ready to take action and start creating the life you always wanted.

Take Action or Stay Stagnant

My point here is that you have a choice.  You can push yourself to take action and do it regularly, daily, weekly, monthly – whatever seems doable to you. However, it’s important to keep in mind, the more you water down your goals and the pressure you put on yourself to get outside your comfort zone, the higher your rate of failure. Taking action means making sacrifices. The more you push the quicker you’ll see the results and be able to reap the rewards.

Oftentimes you’ll find that just the act of taking action pushes you outside your comfort zone. You’ll want to fight it. You’ll come up with every excuse in the book. You’ll decide that “just for today” and then tomorrow goes by, and the next day and the next. Soon enough a whole month snuck by and you didn’t take action at all.

You have a choice.

You can choose to be complacent, or you can choose to step outside your comfort zone and take action.

Finding Time When You’re Already Behind

If there is anyone who can empathize with someone and their business schedule, it’s me. My day-to-day is pretty crazy. I jokingly listed off several things that I’m responsible for on a daily basis during yesterday’s podcast.

I run multiple sole-proprietor businesses and I try to make progress on each of them in at least some small way each week. I’m a mother of 3 kids (a freshman in HS, a Kindergartener, and a 1/2day 4K’er that’s with me when not in school). I do the house cleaning and laundry. I get the kids fed and out the door each day. I walk the dog, cook the meals, take kids to all of their Dr appointments and after-school activities, and more. I am paid by clients to do projects for them, some little, some very time-consuming. But there’s always something that needs doing each day. All this, and I still find time to continue learning. I find time to write regular blog posts. I find time to create daily podcasts. I find time for my family. Believe it or not, I even find time to sleep each night too!

If I can do it, so can you. Where there is a will, there is a way.

Shifting Your Routine

Squeeze something here…
Pinch something there…
And toss something else out altogether…

The smallest shifts in our regular routine can make a huge difference. All it takes is a bit of determination, diligence, and drive.

Imagine what you could accomplish if you set aside cable TV, or Netflix or Hulu or Amazon Prime for 2 months. How much time would that open up for you on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis?

Say “no” to a few outings with friends for a couple of months. Stay up an hour later or get up an hour earlier each day and plan to take action for at least 1 to 2 hours a day.

Taking action is uncomfortable but the progress you make will keep you motivated. Think about what you want and what you’re willing to commit to in order to make it happen.

Exercise 4 – Making Time for Taking Action

1. Start noticing your patterns and build a list of routines you are in
2. Begin immediately to practice breaking the patterns
3. For each new pattern, develop a strategy that enforces you to try your new behavior

Use the following table as a guideline. I’ve shared with you my old schedule as well as my revised schedule and enforcement measures I have for holding myself accountable for the new actions. You can also download a pre-made template from this page as well, using one of the download forms.