8 Ways to Strategically Disrupt Yourself
“Stepping outside your comfort zone is supposed to feel uncomfortable because we’re in new and unfamiliar territory. Being uncomfortable is a sign of success, NOT of failure! So if we are uncomfortably outside our comfort zones, then than means we are growing!!! And THAT is cause for celebration!””
You are a creature of habit. And there’s a good reason for that: habits make life easier; they allow you to act in auto pilot and keep you safe. The more you repeat the same habit, the more it takes over your neural network, the more ingrained it becomes. Soon you are not even aware of your habit. Have you ever got in your car to drive to work, and next thing you know you are at work and you don’t remember how you got there?
Research shows that 45% of the actions we take are governed by habit, not actual decision (Neal, Wood, & Quinn, 2006). Your habits keep you within your comfort zone, keeps you safe. And your comfort zone is, well, comfortable, because your brain confuses safety with comfort. However, it’s a trap—the fear of the unknown and the uncertainty related to leaving the comfort, familiarity, and predictability traps you in it. Nothing new or spectacular happens in that comfortable place. Nothing changes.
If you want to grow and experience new things, it’s necessary to move beyond your comfort zone, you need to strategically disrupt yourself.
Strategic disruption is the key for professional and personal reinvention, and growth. By strategically disrupting, you make yourself stronger, you find you have choices, you become more aware of your habits and choose to discard the ones that do not serve you. You create space for growth and thriving. You can respond, rather than react.
But this is easier said than done.
Disruption takes effort, persistence, determination. It challenges the status-quo and your deeply ingrained habits and beliefs, it makes you uncomfortable. Fortunately, there are ways to minimize the discomfort (BTW, habits may be quite sticky, so that’s the topic of an upcoming post).
With time, you can teach yourself to enjoy this uncomfortable feeling, because you understand the potential it holds.
TRY THESE TECHNIQUES TO DISRUPT YOURSELF AND BREAK OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE:
Know your WHY, your purpose. Your WHY is your strong foundation, your support thru the ups and downs of disruption. It helps keep you grounded
Develop an agile mindset. Agility helps you overcome ambiguity, helps you be you more flexible, more willing to learn, more willing to experiment and take chances. It helps you come up with ways to sustainably break out of your comfort zone.
Accept that fear is a pre-requisite for growth. Fear’s job is to protect you, so it’s quite normal and expected that you’ll feel fear once you step our of your comfort zone. Susan Davis (2015) advises you to “choose courage over comfort” and also that, “to keep growing, you need to be open to the unfamiliar, even the uncomfortable. And leaning into your uncomfortable emotions allows you to learn from them.” So reminding yourself of your WHY will support you, give you strength, and help you choose courage over comfort to face the fear.
Challenge your thoughts. Your thoughts can be your worst enemy. You imagine the worst. You ruminate. You create stress and then proceed to magnify it. As you notice your negative thoughts, ask how true the thoughts are, whether they are serving your WHY, whether they are enhancing your life. If the answer is “No” to any of the questions, positively reframe your thoughts so that they can help you move forward. Concentrate on what you want, not on what you don’t want.
Mentally rehearse. Mental rehearsal can be just as real to your brain as the real thing. Before disrupting yourself, mentally rehearse your actions and success in that situation. The more you practice (in your mind), the easier it will be for you when the time comes to physically do it. This can easily be done in bed just before falling asleep and immediately after awakening.
Spend time with risk-takers. The people you spend time with matters. Spend time with risk-takers, and you’re bound to feel a little bolder.
Take tiny steps. Avoid feeling overwhelmed by taking the smallest step you can that would feel like progress. Continue this process and eventually you’ll reach the end point and achieve what you set out to do! And learn and adjust as you go.
Try something new, take a new route home. Take up a new activity that isn’t very threatening. It could be trying a new restaurant, going to see a play, walking on a different side of the street. And take a new route home. You never know what you’ll see that you’ve never seen before.
Have the courage to disrupt yourself and leave your comfort zone behind if only for a little time each week. You and your life will grow in new and interesting ways.
Remember: There’s nothing for you in your comfort zone besides comfort. Your life can be about much more than that!
Citations:
Davis, S. (2016). Emotional Agility – Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life.
Neal, DT, Wood, W, and Jeffrey M., & Quinn, JM. (2006). Habits—A Repeat Performance, Current Directions in Psychological Science 15, 4, 198–202.