“Gaining confidence means getting outside your comfort zone,
experiencing setbacks, and, with determination,
picking yourself up again.”
The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance – What Women Should Know
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing
over and over again and expecting a different result.”
~ Unknown
We’re about two thirds of the way through January. How are your New Year Big Vision goals going so far? When you think about where you are now and where you’d like to be at the end of 2019, are there any things you’d have to do differently to get there?
One of my biggest aha’s of 2018 came from reading The Confidence Code by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman. Like many women, I have areas of my work life where I’m not as confident as I’d like to be, so what did I do to change it — I read a book about it!
Before reading The Confidence Code, it never occurred to me that you gain confidence by doing scary things, learning from them, and then doing more scary things. I honestly thought you became confident and then did scary things.
So, I started to challenge myself to do something scary each week. Well, that didn’t work very well. Telling my brain to do something frightening was not motivating at all (big surprise). As 2019 rolled around, I realized I needed to frame taking risks in a different way — going outside my comfort zone.
To figure out what that might look like, I drew two circles, one inside the other. In the inner circle, I wrote all the things that felt comfortable related to my Big Vision (e.g. working from my home office). In the outer circle, I wrote the opposite of those easy, comfortable things (e.g. working outside of my home office). It quickly became clear what I needed to do differently in 2019 (e.g. work 1-2 days a week in co-working spaces or with friends at their homes).
Impact Hub Oakland co-working space
Last week, I worked outside of my house twice and it was great! I’d forgotten how much the places you work and the people around you affect how you think. I had more exciting ideas during those two days than I’d had since the New Year began.
Try it yourself
- Think of something related to your Big Vision for your work in the world that you’d like to change, but are feeling stuck around.
- On an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper, draw two circles, one inside the other (or use the free PDF I made for you, Living Outside My Comfort Zone. You can see what it looks like below).
- Write in the inner circle how you usually do things, or what feels comfortable and easy to do when you feel stuck around this Big Vision issue.
- In the outer circle, write down the opposite of what you wrote in the inner circle.
- Based on what you wrote in the outer circle, pick one manageable thing you could do this week to experiment with going outside your comfort zone.
If you want some accountability, feel free to write the one action you’re going to take this week in the comments below, on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn, and then let me know how it went once you’ve completed it
Have fun!
Brilliant advice. Changing the scene loosens creativity as you proved