Archive for the ‘Excellence’ Category
Wikipedia says about the Comfort Zone this…
One’s comfort zone refers to the set of environments and behaviours with which one is comfortable, without creating a sense of risk. A person’s personality can be described by his or her comfort zones. Highly successful persons may routinely step outside their comfort zones, to accomplish what they wish. A comfort zone is a type of mental conditioning that causes a person to create and operate mental boundaries. Such boundaries create an unfounded sense of security. Like inertia, a person who has established a comfort zone in a particular axis of his or her life, will tend to stay within that zone without stepping outside of it. To step outside a person’s comfort zone, they must experiment with new and different behaviours, and then experience the new and different responses that then occur within their environment.
You have to leave
the city of your comfort
and go into the wilderness
of your intuition.
What you’ll discover
will be wonderful.
What you’ll discover
will be yourself.
ALAN ALDA
According to John-Roger and Peter McWilliams the comfort zone is our personal area of thoughts and actions within which we feel comfortable; it’s all the things we’ve done (or thought) often enough to feel comfortable doing (or thinking). Anything we haven’t done (or thought) often enough to feel comfortable doing lies outside the parameter of the comfort zone. When we do (or think) these things (basically, anything new) we feel uncomfortable.
For example, most people reading this blog find little difficulty reading English-it’s within your comfort zone. However, how comfortable are you reading code?
Dpohsbuvmbujpot! Zpv’wf kvtu dsbdlfe uif dpef!
Can you crack the code? What does the sentence say?
How do you feel? Uncomfortable? Overwhelmed? Have you given up yet? Did you give up before you started? What if there was a million dollars riding on it? And you had to do it on TV? And someone you love’s life is depending on it? Plus, there is a time limit?
How do you feel? If you played along with my questions, you probably felt some tinges of fear, guilt, unworthiness, hurt feelings and/or anger – the feeling blanketed in what is generally called uncomfortable.
After feeling uncomfortable long enough we tend to feel discouraged; we give up. Some people give up before they even begin. They say things like “I’m not good at puzzles.” or “I’m no good at these things.” Or “This is stupid.”
Other people, who love puzzles, jumped right in. They weren’t uncomfortable; they were challenged! Perhaps the “doers” felt the same emotion the uncomfortable felt… that tingling we feel when rising to a challenge… and labeled it “excitement instead of “fear.” Maybe they used that energy to help solve the puzzle.
How often have you heard someone say, “I don’t want to do that; I feel uncomfortable.”? It is a given, for most people, and accepted fact that uncomfortableness is a sufficient reason for NOT doing something.
The primary sensations we enounter when approaching the “walls” of the comfort zone are fear, guilt, unworthiness, hurt feelings and anger. When feeling any one or, especially, a combination of them we say we’re uncomfortable. After messing with our comfort zone for awhile, we tend to feel discouraged; and discouragement is the primary barrier to living our dreams.
Why would anyone want to be comfortable? And I don’t mean in the sense of a comfortable home, car, boat etc… Where there is comfort there is no growth… there is stagnation. And where there is no growth there can only be decay.
At any given moment in time you are either growing or decaying. I know some of you won’t like that last statement. The truth sometimes stings. Get uncomfortable with that.
If you are not growing in your industry you are decaying as new technologies make your current skills useless. If you are not growing in your personal life you will continue to live out the skills you learned before your eighteenth birthday. Ninth grade skills work perfectly… in ninth grade.
Many parents want good kids. Studies show that the average parent spends less than 17 minutes per WEEK in a meaningful conversation with their children about something important to the child. That’s less than 2 1/2 minutes a day! They want good kids but are unwilling to get uncomfortable and talk to them.
When I married my wife, Toni, our vows didn’t say “for comfortable or worse.” They said “better!” And better is a constant change, consideration, behavior and/or attitude.
To be uncomfortable is to risk; to stretch; to grow.
The only thing I am willing to get comfortable about is being uncomfortable.
Ronald Cavage is the co-owner, with his beautiful wife Antoinette, of Independant Group, LLC. A company dedicated to the growth of Leaders and People with Dreams.
Here in the state of Arizona we have what is called the AIMS test. This is suppose to be an indicator of a certain level of education that all high school seniors must pass to graduate high school.
Well, during the first few years of the “trial” phase there was such a high level of failure that the state had to make a decision if it was to enforce the testing for graduation.
They had the choice to either hold the teachers responsible for teaching this material in a way that the students learned and retained the information or…
You guessed it… make the test easier!
When did we, as a nation, give up expecting Excellence as the standard?
Why are we so afraid to hold the parents, teachers and students accountable? Is is so much to ask a mother or father to sit with their child once and a while to support them in the educational process?
Now don’t get me wrong. I love teachers! And like many professions there are a lot of worthy, loving and giving educators. However, let’s not kid ourselves either. There are plenty that only show up because they get paid to be there.
I recall my high school history class. My teacher never taught one thing. I’m not kidding. Our grade was determined on a particular number of accumulated points. Each quarter he would pass out a packet of papers listing what we could write about to earn anywhere from 5 to 20 points. Depending on how many papers we turned in dictated whether we passed or not. Not once did he ever stand up and instruct.
How is this acceptable?
Mediocraty has become the norm because it is easiest to accomplish. No one will judge you for living BIG. In fact, many won’t even notice you. But what kind of existence it that? Why would anyone want to be remembered for not being remembered?
Make this you year or significance. Go after your dreams with a vengence. Leave those behind that don’t want to run fast with you. You’ll catch up to someone else further up.
Make this your best year ever.
http://www.compassion.com – Strive for Excellence – Compassion CEO Wess Stafford talks about building excellence by focusing on fundamentals.
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