Ready to Stop Coasting and Challenge Your Comfort Zone?

If personal growth and challenge are not your thing, then you might want to hit pause or stop. But if personal growth and challenge is your thing, well then I want to invite you to take note of what insights might come to you after we’ve chatted.

I’ve often been called inspiring or even motivating, and while it’s a great compliment, I suppose to be called inspiring, I don’t believe that I have the power to inspire you. I believe that inspiration lives within you. You already have the capacity to be inspired, to be motivated, and that the work and the challenge is to figure out how to connect to what’s important to you so that you can then motivate yourself, so that you can be the pilot of your transformation, if there isn’t a seed of inspiration already in yourself.

My job as a coach is not to motivate, but to transform thinking beyond what you thought was possible. It’s not attached to what I think could be, but rather an opening to whatever you want to grow, whatever you want to build. I see unlimited potential in you, but that means nothing unless you can see it in yourself. Maybe you’re doing really well at something a lot of us coast along right, find ourselves enjoying what we’re doing, doing it well, being complimented for doing it. But if we take a closer look and this is the challenging part if we challenge ourselves to take a look and ask ourselves where in my life am I ourselves? Where in my life am I coasting? Where in my life am I showing up for other people’s expectations and meeting them and relying on the feedback the good feedback that I’ve done a good job from them? From them, what potential am I not tapping into in myself to challenge myself of what only I know I’m capable of? That’s the mind of a high performer

High performers are typically really good at what they do. It doesn’t matter what they do, but whatever it is they choose to focus on. It doesn’t matter what they do, but whatever it is they choose to focus on, that area of their life is something that they’re either known for or that they know they’re good at and they do it well. They’re high achievers, they work really hard, but at a certain point you hit a plateau. But at a certain point you hit a plateau, you start to just float, coast, even rest on your laurels. Where in your life are you not digging deeper into that well of potential that we all have? Now, again, as I prefaced. If this isn’t important to you, then just ignore me. Take what’s useful and get rid of the rest.

It’s so important, though, to allow yourself the opportunity to ponder some of these things. I mean, how many of you, honestly, are really doing well and might even be just a little bit comfortable? Maybe things come easy to you and you’re getting a lot of praise for what you do, but you know deep down inside that there’s more. But from the outside, everybody thinks you’re doing great. Everybody’s impressed with what you’re doing. It would be so easy just to coast along with that, and you know what? Honestly, there’s nothing wrong with that. If that’s your vibe, if you want to do that, go for it. Power to you, but do it intentionally, not by default, because it just kind of feels good and it’s easier to not change or to not grow than it is to just stay where you are. But if you’re truly comfortable where you are, by all means stay and get curious there. Get curious about what’s possible in where you already are. Treat each day as if it’s a brand new day. So if you’ve been doing the same thing for a long time and you’re continuing to do it, that’s okay.

What’s important is how you’re doing it and who you are being when you’re doing it, because who you are being when you’re doing whatever it is you’re doing is key to living a fulfilled, fulfilling life of possibilities. Listen, guys, sometimes I okay. So I have, I have pretty good self-esteem and I have a pretty good track record of people telling me you’re strong, you’re motivating, you’re successful, you’re a maverick. I’ve been called so many things and feedback’s nice, positive feedback is great, but at a certain point it means nothing. It means absolutely nothing. If it means nothing to you, if you’re not proud of yourself, then you got to ask yourself why. Again, that’s where the challenge comes.

The challenge is not necessarily in climbing a mountain or trying something new it could live there but ultimately, before you even get to the thing that you’re doing, that you feel would be a challenge, the challenge is to admit that you are not living up to your potential and that it’s important to you. It’s a choice here, guys, it’s a choice and again, it’s okay if you don’t want to. There’s nothing wrong with that. Here comes the challenge part.

I challenge you to think hard and be honest about where in your life you’re coasting, where it is that you might just be surfacing where it’s easy, where you’re kind of unconsciously good at something, where in your life are you unconsciously competent? And where can you build your competency in another area? Where in your life are you unconsciously not tapping into your potential? When was the last time you were actually challenged? When you felt challenged or scared? That’s the sign that growth is on the horizon. And again, if growth is not your thing, that’s totally fine. There’s nothing wrong with being comfortable. There’s really nothing wrong with being comfortable. I mean that.

But as a high performer myself and working with high performers, I’m highly aware of when I can stretch a bit further because it’s important to me, not because I’m trying to impress somebody else or because I think I’m not enough. I believe that we are all enough, but I’m talking about honoring ourselves. Quite frankly, I can share with you that what I fall into is feeling very accomplished, being able to own that, but also feeling an underlying worry that, although I’m absolutely capable of going to the quote-unquote next level, there’s some fear there, not because I can’t do it, but because I can. And that’s where I start to think about what would I be saying no to if I say yes to that. And then I start to really delve into the area of why does this have to be a yes-no scenario? What would be different if I looked at it from the point of view of scenario? What would be different if I looked at it from the point of view of yes, this might be different, but what else is true? Because if one thing’s different, then many things are different.

So by saying yes to something, yes, things will change, right, I mean your rhythm will change. The people you’re interacting with might change. Maybe your travel schedule changes, maybe you’re just your basic rhythm of life. You’ll be meeting new people. Perhaps, whatever it is you decide to do, that is a change or a transition, will bring newness into your life. But it doesn’t mean that everything else is suddenly old. Does it need to mean that? Does it mean that you’re leaving something to go towards something you know?

I often talk about being attached to an outcome. What if we’re attached to where we are? What if we’re stuck in the middle? What if, on the one hand, we’re attached to the thinking that if I do this, then it will be like that, but we’re also attached to staying where we are, to keeping ourselves safe, to not thinking, no magical thinking here, just safety thinking, familiarity thinking, hardwired, primitive brain thinking. But what’s in the middle of that? How can I be safe? How can I know that I’m rooted in all that I’ve done and all that’s brought me here to this moment and that that is part of what’s going to get me to there? But it’s not going to be exactly the same. What if I play in the middle? What’s in the middle? What’s in the place where there is space?

Friends, I know this has been a lot. I told you it was going to be a challenge. You’ve just been part of my thinking process and you know, just thinking out loud here. I encourage you to ask yourself these questions, as I’m asking myself in real time. If that’s something that excites you or that feels a little edgy, then I think that’s terrific. I appreciate you and I hope that you’ve learned something from this and gained some insight about yourself, where you are, where you’d like to be and what the possibilities are.

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