In this episode, I discuss why you should spend more time being uncomfortable.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista, where my goal is to give you quick lessons on how to grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually so you can have better careers, better relationships, and better personal finances.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe where I combine financial planning with self-development coaching for Latino Professionals.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about doing uncomfortable things. You have to understand that nothing grows in the comfort zone. That’s where things decay. It might not show up right away but it will with time. Time reveals a lot of stuff to us. It’s hard to say how things will turn out in the moment but time will give us a good perspective if we stepped out of our comfort zone or not.
One of my favorite sayings is, “What is the enemy of great?” Now, most people will say bad but the actual answer is good. If you’re satisfied with being good, then you’ll never become great. Now we can’t be great in every single category so we have to choose which thing are we going to be great at. But going back to good, good is where your comfort zone is. You’re good enough to get the job done and things feel stable, but if you’re not careful, everything can be taken away from you. How many people were comfortable before the great recession hit?
I bet a lot of people we’re feeling comfortable, times were good, the stock market was up, workers could switch from job to job. Then the recession hit and then some folks were struggling. I know I personally I was in a bubble when that happened because I was in the Marines and I was getting a steady paycheck while I was in Hawaii. I had no clue what was going on back in the states. Plus I re-enlisted Nov 2008, and I was under contract for the next four years, so I had a stable paycheck for the next four years. But at my next duty station in Oregon, I started to notice that things were not as good as it seemed. I was outside the bubble.
Places weren’t hiring and some people were struggling. Living on a military base makes you live in a bubble and it’s good to get outside of that bubble to get a real perspective on what’s going on. That experience gave me a mindset that I can’t take it easy and start to get comfortable because if I do, then I might fall down pretty hard. If I expect it and I’m ready for it, then I can take advantage of opportunities that a recession might offer, but I have to train for it now.
So if I choose to be good, then when something hard happens, then I might not be ready for it. If you’re great then you will be ready for it. In order to be great though, you have to do things outside of your comfort zone. If it’s outside of your comfort zone, you should probably go do it. You will probably suck at it and you will probably need to improve, but it will make you a stronger person for going through it. When I first started this podcast, it took me like two weeks before I actually sat down and record the first episode. It was very uncomfortable and I had to do the first episode, a couple of times, but after the 50th episode, I feel a lot more confident.
If you want to feel more comfortable with doing stuff, just keep doing. It will get easier and easier. A great first step to being more comfortable with being uncomfortable is to take a level 1 improv class. I’m an introvert by nature and I don’t like to be in front of a crowd and a level one improv class puts you in front of a crowd. I took level one in DC at the DC Improv Club with Chris and he was great. Plus everyone in the class was super supportive about rooting others on and it was a safe environment to be uncomfortable. You learn a lot about listening to other folks and to say what is on your mind. A big thing that people have to overcome is waiting to say the perfect funny thing. So people don’t say anything because they want to make sure it is the best thing they can say.
Improv is all about keeping the energy going. So as long as you do that you’re much better off than waiting until you say the perfect thing. When you say no or don’t say anything at all, the energy of the bit will die, and then you have to work on getting that energy back up. So if you don’t have anything funny to say, just say anything at all because at least you can get things moving forward.
By going through that experience, it made my one-on-one coaching meetings better because I was able to listen to the words the client was speaking more closely and I was able to react faster to what a client was saying. By going through the uncomfortable feeling of improv, it made me a better person. Now it gave me more confidence to do other things that are more challenging but offer a bigger reward. If you want more out life, you’re going to have be more in life. That means you have higher skills, higher emotional intelligence, and higher confidence that your previous self.
To be more in life, you just have to be more uncomfortable as a person. The more uncomfortable things you can do, the better you off you’re going to be. It can give you a lot of amazing stuff in life and experiences. In the Marines, I had some of my best experiences in life and some of the worst, and going through those uncomfortable moments in life made me realize the person I need to become and gave me the strength to handle being that new person.
So ask yourself, do you know who you need to become and are you working to become that person? If not working towards becoming that person, it probably means that you’re being too comfortable with life.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, nothing grows in the comfort zone. It’s a place of decay and won’t help you out in the long run. To practice ways to be uncomfortable and start to see new levels of growth in your life.
Thanks for listening to today’s episode.
To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
I have a quiz on my website that grades your inner circle, so if you want to find out if your inner circle is an A, B, C, D, or F, you can take that quiz at growwithjoe.me/quiz
I’m also trying to do a feedback Friday episode, so if you have a question that you would like to have my answer on the air, just e-mail me at [email protected]
I’m also on Instagram at Grow With Joe and Facebook just look up Grow With Joe
If you’re on iTunes, don’t forget to give me a five-star rating if you liked this episode.
Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
*Music outro
