Are you being intentional about giving yourself the best chance to grow in skills, competence and experience or are you holding yourself back? I’m not talking about the obvious ways we can grow like training courses but how we approach our work day to day. I’ve been reflecting on how our ability to stretch ourselves depends on how we manage our comfort zone. A recent snowboarding holiday at Whistler, BC, Canada has provided me with some lessons that might help you if you want to be sure you are giving yourself the best chance of growth.
I’ll start by sharing a bit about the snowboarding – It was different this time: First snow holiday since Covid; first snowboarding since a hamstring injury from hockey in December 2022; and my snowboarding friend had had an injury just before we came away.
The first day, I was on the slopes alone as my friend needed to rest her injury and see if she could even tolerate putting a board on. This was new to me – I have always boarded with someone else, partly for the enjoyment of sharing the experience but also from a safety perspective in case one or other of us had a fall and needed help. With that in mind, I chose to take runs that I knew I could manage and to stop and enjoy the views over a coffee. Instead of pushing myself to get lots of runs in and to challenge myself on steeper terrain, I needed to see how to best support my friend to get something from the holiday and was assessing the terrain and how easy it would be for her to mount and dismount lifts. I was broadly within my comfort zone in terms of terrain although pushed a little outside of it in making decisions on where to go and how to traverse the mountain – I realised that in the past I would often defer to what others wanted.
Lesson 1:
Even when we are deliberately keeping within our comfort zone, there are opportunities to learn about ourselves and be pushed beyond it if we look for them – either consciously to take advantage of them, or unconsciously which we recognise on reflection. As a result of needing to make my own choices on the mountain, I’d look to do that again and be happy to do some solo boarding – how might this be similar in my business life? Where do I let others make choices that I am capable of making?
Reflection for you:
Thinking about a recent period of time, where have you been pushed out of your comfort zone, perhaps without even realising it, what can you learn from how you handled that situation? What might it mean for future choices and behaviours?
On day 2, my friend ventured onto the slopes. She could only manage runs that started at the top of the gondola and led to the mid station for the gondola. To support her, I did what she did, and let her lead so that I was always behind her should she get into difficulty if her injury prevented her from continuing. As I look back now, I was definitely in my comfort zone … and that was ok … I had a good reason for it. And, I recognised that I would need to do more at some point if I were to be able to maintain my snowboarding competency (I figure that when you only get a chance a maximum of once a year, you need to make the most of it to keep your confidence up).
Lesson 2:
It’s ok to be in your comfort zone for a period of time but doing so for too long can mean you can lose competence or confidence potentially so that your comfort zone gets smaller.
Reflection for you:
Where might you have been in your comfort zone for too long? What is at risk of being lost in terms of confidence or competence if you don’t stretch yourself a little? What might you do from here?
My final lesson came on my second to last day on the slopes. By this point my friend was doing much better and able to use lifts. We were enjoying some blue terrain and the conditions were really good. I was feeling confident, going faster, and feeling the adrenaline … and then I hit a bump, almost managed to keep myself upright but ended up overcorrecting and taking a tumble. It took me by surprise. I’d pushed myself and had been doing really well but this was a reminder that stretching your comfort zone can at times come with some discomfort! (Luckily, in this case, nothing too painful!)
Lesson 3:
As we stretch our comfort zone and become confident at doing something, it is worth being careful not to get complacent and to consider how far we want to stretch ourselves so that any misperformance is tolerable. We want to be able to recover and continue rather than crash and burn!
Reflection for you:
In what area are you currently pushing your comfort zone? If you are at the point when you are feeling really confident, what might you need to be aware of in order not to overstretch and misperform? If you feel it is worth the risk to keep pushing, what can you do to ensure any ‘fall’ will be as safe as it can be?
My final reflection is that I probably don’t check-in on how much I’m in my comfort zone versus not and whether I’m ok with that. It’s something I’m going to do on a more regular basis to keep making sure I’m growing and learning. How might you benefit from doing something similar?
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