Burst your bubble

Get out of your comfort zone

Life invites us to fly free, to live big, to dream the impossible dream, but most of us play small and safe.

We find ourselves living in a comfortable bubble that we've created. We sit wrapped in our artificial security blankets living cautiously and conservatively, assuring that we are rarely forced to step far outside of our comfort zones. 

This can sometimes be a nice luxury, affording us security and comfort, like a good job or a nice house, but often it’s the very thing that holds us back from achieving what we want.

Maybe you've always wanted to go travelling and see the world. Maybe you've been dreaming of attempting this venture for years. Why haven’t you done it?

If you don’t already know, I’ll tell you — because you’re comfortable and content with the life you've created and giving it up scares the crap out of you.

Perhaps you’ve got an OK job, a nice girlfriend/boyfriend, and maybe even a fun social circle. All of this creates a nice, familiar and easy lifestyle that many people would be happy maintaining for long periods of their life.

But this comfort zone breeds unadventurous, unromantic and unfulfilling lives, and it’s this exact reason you continue to procrastinate as your dreams drift away.

I know this from first hand experience; before starting my year of challenges with Scale My Life, I lived a regular, busy, boring life. I went to work Monday through Friday, I went drinking with my friends Saturday and Sunday and I filled up my schedule with fun but mostly unfulfilling activities.

I was drifting through my life, and my goals, the things I had been yearning to do for years always seemed to take a back seat to the higher priority of my day to day.

I was trapped in my comfort bubble and even though I knew I needed to get out, I was stuck.

This is why I really love the swim challenge that I’ve embarked on.

Committing to be a little uncomfortable

This challenge represents so much more than a physical goal. By committing myself to swim two kilometres, I am forcing myself to do something that both terrifies me and pushes me out of my bubble.

Swimming in open water scares me. Not being able to see or touch bottom and knowing that if I don’t train hard enough I could drown makes me very uncomfortable.

And when I first started this month that was all I could think about. Getting in the pool and choking down chlorine as I struggled to do half a length, I wondered if I had finally gotten myself in over my head (literally).

Swimming, surprisingly is a challenging sport. It’s the only athletic activity I’ve tried where strength has little to do with how good you are.

You could be an Olympic body builder, but if you don’t know how to swim properly, an eight year old could do laps around you with ease. Swimming is all about maximizing your technique and minimizing your resistance.

The more you can cut through the water and reduce your drag, the faster and longer you can go. Unfortunately, swimming also happens to be one of the most difficult sports I've ever attempted — there are so many things you need to learn in order to do it well. Kicking, breathing, rotating, gliding, etc, etc.

It’s like rubbing your stomach and patting your head, while chewing bubblegum and running, while under water.

Seriously, it’s crazy hard.

But by just keeping my head down and focusing only on what I could do each day I was in the pool, I started to gain confidence. Maybe it was breathing, maybe it was gliding, but every day I tried to improve my comfort and ability just a little bit more.  

Some days have been tougher than others, but by just committing to being in the water as often as possible and shifting my focus from the big scary swim that was ever looming closer, I’ve instead focused on enjoying and learning every day, and miraculously I actually started to improve.

First it was 25 metres, then 50, then 100, then 500 and then finally this last Thursday night I did my full 2,000 metres of open lake swimming.

Breaking down your comfort zone

This to me is such a revelation. So often in my life I have been too afraid to take the next step toward a big scary goal. I would focus so much on the end result that it would overwhelm me with fear and self-doubt. "There's no way I can do that...it's way too big and scary..." And then I would procrastinate as much as I could in order to avoid having to face my fears.

Now tackling this swim challenge I feel like anything is possible. Even though I'm still totally afraid of big scary final goals, I feel so much more confident that if I just keep my head down and keep at it one day at a time that there's no way that when the big day comes that I won't crush it.

If I’ve learned one thing over the last almost six months challenges it's that life is FAR more interesting, exciting and fulfilling when you're doing something that makes you at least a little bit uncomfortable. It’s the uncomfortable environment that pushes you to grow and challenges you to be better; it's here that true success and fulfilment lives.

I think that this is one of life’s big challenges, if you can learn to be comfortable in the uncomfortable than you'll be truly prepared to handle whatever life decides to throw your way.

Forward to new challenges

With this new confidence I now move on to an entire month of exploration and big scary challenges. I've committed myself to experiencing something new every day forJuly. I'll be trying everything from flying a plane, to rock climbing, to donating blood for the first time (I don't like needles).

Follow me as I take on this new challenge and explore, learn, grow and attempt to fearlessly experience everything that life and our beautiful valley have to offer.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.