Get Out Of Your Comfort Zone

Cori (00:00):
Welcome to the Redefining Strength Podcast. Everything you need to succeed on your health and fitness journey. Even the stuff you don’t want to hear, you feel awkward. Good awkwardness with a new habit or routine is a sign usually that we are making a change that we need to reach a new and better result because you can’t do what you’ve always done and expect to reach a new goal. Yet what is really comfortable is simply what we’ve always done and become used to. And we don’t recognize that when we’re young and we embrace that learning process. We don’t really think of the discomfort with things because everything to some extent is new. But at a certain point in our life, we’re doing a lot fewer new things, and so we get really comfortable with our habits and routines and some of them become so mindless we don’t even recognize we’re doing them.

(00:46):
And because of that, anything new introduced does feel really uncomfortable, a little bit awkward, and that strangeness to us makes us question if we’re doing it right. We also don’t embrace being bad at something and that learning process, which is often awkward, we can feel like a giraffe on roller skates and we push back against that versus when you’re always feeling like that, you don’t think about it so much. So that’s why as we get older, we start to see awkward as a bad thing, but if we don’t go through that learning process, we’re not going to make habit changes that we need because we do have to slightly evolve our lifestyle, evolve our identity if we want to reach a new and better result. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt awkward with things like even doing a new form of video, doing the podcast for the first time, all of these things I had to learn how to do, and I felt really awkward and bad doing even sometimes now I feel awkward or bad with a new way of presenting something, and it’s something I have to embrace if I want to get better at it.

(01:39):
So I wanted to discuss how we can embrace that awkwardness and see it as a good thing to truly make the changes that we need. And I wanted to share this quote because I think it’s a great way to frame it in your mind. We crave comfort, but comfort never created confidence. Part of what builds our strength, builds our confidence, builds our ability to overcome, is pushing ourselves outside our comfort zone, ak, embracing that awkwardness. So if we want to reach a new goal, we have to realize that that is building strength, that is building our ability to embrace discomfort. We also get more comfortable being uncomfortable in more ways the more we put ourselves out there because we say, Hey, I’ve done hard things in the past. I can do this again. So talking about tips and especially five tips to help you embrace that awkward own it, see it as a good thing one, and the first thing is really to just say good with it, right?

(02:29):
I’m feeling awkward. Own it. Embrace the suck. Say, Hey, yes, this is a good thing. This means I’m actually making a change because if this felt comfortable, I’d have to question, am I doing too much of the same thing and falling back into the same pattern that I’ve always fallen back into, which has not yielded the goals that I want? So first just say yes, this is going to be awkward. When you’re looking at a change that you have to make are the habits and routines. Look at them and say, Hey, what will feel awkward with this? What is there going to be a learning process? Might I fail? And the more you own that, and you embrace that and you see it as a good thing, Hey, I am going to stumble with this. Good. It means you’re doing something new and you’re going to move forward towards your goals.

(03:09):
Then with that, realize that if there’s something that feels too awkward that you’re feeling too much pushback, pick just a small aspect of it to start with. So tracking, for example, if you are like, I’ve failed with tracking every other time. I know it’s awkward, I know it’s also something I need to do. Say, why have I failed with it? What’s one part of it that I can do that still feels a little awkward, still is pushing my comfort zone, but not so awkward. I instantly have walls come up and I turn back in one more run for the hills, right? So pick one thing. You don’t have to conquer all components of something right away. And where we see that awkward become a bad thing is when we’re trying to push too much into too many different things and we just feel overwhelmed with the changes.

(03:50):
So recognize feeling awkward is different than feeling overwhelmed with things that are different and outside our comfort zone and so far away from where we are now. It’s like you want to think about it as a journey towards your destination. Ride. A road trip, you might be pushing towards a turn that’s like six turns away and you can’t make that turn yet, but you can make the one right in front of you that leads towards it. So you want to think about how you can break down all those different steps into manageable pieces. So own the awkward first, but then also recognize, hey, am I trying to do an awkward that’s not the next step? And break things down because you don’t have to do everything at once, and that can make you have less of a barrier or wall come up against the strange that you’re about to encounter against the challenge or discomfort that you’re about to embrace.

(04:35):
Then number three, understand why you’re doing it. We prioritize what we value, end of story, and if we don’t own our priorities, they become our excuses. So if you’re thinking about making a change and you’re saying, I know I should track, but is it really worth it? Is it really good for me? Will it really help? You are not going to want to push through the hard to do that thing, but if you’re like, okay, tracking what gets measured gets managed, I have this accurate picture of what I’m eating. Oh my goodness, I could actually make smaller changes. I might not have to cut out foods I love because I could work this food in to hit my macros and still have my portions, or hey, I can actually adjust my portion sizes or not have to just only eat off this one approved food list.

(05:13):
If you can sell yourself on all the benefits of the awkward, uncomfortable habit, you are going to find a lot more value in doing it. And when the pain of staying stuck outweighs the pain of change, we embrace the change. When the pain of change outweighs the pain of staying stuck, we don’t move. And so we can’t always change the pain of staying stuck unless we gain more weight or put ourselves in a worse situation getting more injured, which we generally don’t want to do. But we can change the pain of change, which means we can break those habits down, as I already mentioned, but we can also really value them to feel like they’re more worthwhile to do because we see how much they’re going to move forward towards our goals. So break them down to find where the value seems worth it, right?

(05:54):
The effort seems worth the outcome that you’re going to get from it, but understand why you’re doing it, and if you find yourself pushing back against something really, really hard like a change, like increasing your protein, if you’re finding all the reasons why not to do it, recognize it’s probably the change that you need to make. It just feels awkward for some way, and you need to go research all the benefits to truly understand why you should value it and why you should prioritize it, and then find different ways to prioritize it. By putting things first in your day that might fall by the wayside because they feel awkward, uncomfortable, you’ll find any excuse not to do them. So find different ways to create that priority for something you don’t yet even fully value. Even if you logically value it, it’s not part of your habit or routine.

(06:33):
Then from there, set tiny goals to get fast feedback because when we’re moving forward towards our ultimate goal on losing weight on the scale, we are not going to see progress every week no matter how good or perfect we are with the habits, our body doesn’t respond that way. Progress isn’t linear and nothing works perfectly all of the time, despite our best intentions. We’re not perfect with everything, but we need to find ways to see all the clues that success is really leaving us. So that means setting small goals first. So if breaking down your weight loss journey into small, manageable pieces where you’re tracking micro progress towards your goal, instead of expecting 10 pounds overnight, but not only small mini goals within that main goal of losing one pound every few weeks, but also complimentary goals, what other ways are you seeing that your habits are paying off?

(07:19):
Is your performance in the gym improving? Are you able to do another rep with a heavier weight or even just another rep with the same weight? Does your form feel stronger? Are you feeling less out of breath? Are you getting less sore and feeling really recovered? You’re fueling properly? Are your clothes fitting differently? Are people starting to notice? Is your energy better? Are you sleeping better? Is your skin clear? Start to notice all the different clues that success is really giving you and focus on really small ones because while they seem silly or does it even matter? Yes, it does. Even the fact that maybe you’re eating more fruits and vegetables, which will improve your health because you’re getting more micros could be a benefit of you tracking and making these changes and you don’t feel the payoff right away. But that small sign of success, that small change that you’re making will pay off.

(08:03):
But the more we really recognize all those different things and give ourselves ways to see that progress really fast, the more we’re going to embrace that discomfort and feel like it’s truly worth it. We’re going to own the awkward and feel like we’re moving forward towards our goals because of it and want to do more and be able to build on it. Then last but not least, I want you to reframe the struggle and stack the proof. So this goes back to having those many goals, right? The more you then say, Hey, not only saying yes, I lost a pound, but truly recognizing that, oh my goodness, I did this. This is how this paid off, and then relating it back to the habits that you did is super key, but stack the proof. Keep a running list of all the things you’ve accomplished because we get very microscopic in our view at times and very focused on the last couple of days that we’ve done or this one weigh in, and so we say, oh, I gained a pound this week.

(08:50):
Okay, well, you’ve lost 12 overall, even gaining this pound, right? We don’t reflect that. So stack the proof and put it in a place where you can really reflect on it all the time and then reframe any struggles you have. There are going to be struggles in that, but hey, this was learning because this is awkward and new, and in the learning process you have to make mistakes. You don’t get a hundred percent on every single test right from the get go. And if you did, you studied a lot, which is a lot of work, and again, reframing the struggle if you had to put in all that work to get that a hundred percent on the test. So it’s owning that any struggles along the way are that learning process and you improving and making things better, and that’s why the results are snowballing.

(09:26):
So keep that running list of all the success that you’ve seen from all those many goals that you hit in all the different ways and all the different clues that success is really leaving you. And then reframe any struggles to be like, Hey, this is how I accomplish these things by keeping going, okay, if I’m struggling right now, where can I maybe break this habit down? Right? Again, going back to the other tips, like picking one thing and then also making sure that you understand why you’re doing it. So if I’m struggling, okay, why am I doing this? Maybe my why is actually wrong now reflecting, Hey, I thought I needed to do this because of X, Y, and Z thing, but I’m actually including too much cardio maybe, and I need to back off, or I need to include cardio in a different way.

(10:04):
Let me go research why this could be beneficial. But the more we understand why, the more we can also then see when we struggle, why something might not be working in the way we originally intended to work. So just to recap, first, normalize the suck. Embrace that awkward is part of it, and you have to go through that learning process, and just as we get older, we’ve gotten more into our comfort zone and we push it less. But if you want to reach that new and better result, you’ve got to do something new, which means being a little awkward. Pick one or two things, break those things down. Make small little changes that really meet you where you’re at, and then understand why you’re doing those changes. Also, make sure that you set tiny goals and that you’re trying to get that fast feedback on how things are working to see all the clues that success is leaving you, and then reframe the struggle and stack the proof so that you can see when things are paying off or if you’re struggling, what you might need to change and embrace that as a good thing.

(10:54):
But I want you to just think that feeling awkward with something is actually a good thing. On that note, what’s the one awkward, hard, clunky thing that you are going to embrace this week that maybe you’ve been trying to avoid because it did feel so awkward? Reflect on that. It’s probably the habit change or routine change that you need to make the most to see the results that you deserve.

*Note: This transcript is autogenerated there may be some unintended errors.