Stretch Yourself Beyond Your Comfort Zone

True Abundance is achieved by stretching yourself beyond your comfort zone to pursue your passion

When was the last time you stretched yourself to achieve more than what you settle for? Switch your routine? Drove a different route to work? Took a risk? Every day of your lives we are presented with choices. The easiest – and safest – option is to stick with what we know, snug in our comfort zone.

But the price of playing it safe can be high. By following the same schedule day after day, or staying in a job that brings not joy or satisfaction, you may be giving up your chance to line an amazing life. To achieve true abundance you have to be prepared to stretch beyond your comfort zone and pursue what you truly want in life. It’s all about stretching yourself from where you are to where you would like to be.

CLOSE THE GAP

If you stress over bills, you need to find a way to close the gap between your income and your expenses. If you are miserable at work, it’s time to change your job. No matter how good, or how successful, you are at what you do, if the highlight of your day is clocking out time, where’s the passion in what you do?

If you are a mom spending the best years of your children’s life at work, make sure it’s what you want. My heart and my experience tells me that no mom, after her children have left home, wishes she had spent less time with them when they were growing up.

What about using your skills to start your own business? Mompreneurs have every skill need to succeed. Communication, building relationships, and multi tasking are second nature to women. Being a mom trains you to become mentors, coaches and teachers. Anyone who runs a home has organizational skills.

Life is not a dress rehearsal. We get one shot at it, and there are no second chances. Allowing your life to just drift by, succumbing to the push and pull of circumstances, or postponing your chance and true abundance by allowing past choices to determine your future, makes no sense.

DECIDE WHAT YOU WANT

The first step towards stretching yourself is deciding what you want. Whether it’s earning enough to cover your bills or traveling the world first class, does your blood pump and your heart race when you think about it? If not, imagine and set your sights higher. It takes the same amount of energy to imagine a big dream as it does a small dream so Dream BIG.

Step two is committing to your goal and stick to it, no matter what roadblocks and detours you encounter along the way. If achieving what you desire is easy everyone would be successful, but everyone is not. Only the exceptional few that push it a little further, stretch themselves and go beyond what is required are successful. Welcome challenges as part of the journey. What is a thrill ride without adventure?

The third step is the most important step of all. It is accepting that the greatest obstacle standing between you and the life you deserve is you! For most of us, it’s not the destination, but our fear of the journey that holds us back.

Now understand there are a lot of excuses, but fear is the mechanism behind them. Fear is disabling. It stops us from seizing our chance to seek a better life. It stops us from moving on from jobs, relationships and commitments that are well past their use by date. It’s an inviting emotional handicap parking space that you keep using as an excuse not to move forward.

Self doubt is the single greatest barrier you will ever have to overcome in life. If you don’t think you deserve to live your dreams, you’ll come up with a thousand excuses whey you won’t. “I’m too old, young, busy…” “I’ll wait till the kids are grown.” “I don’t have enough education.” I need a lot of things to get started.” Thinking this way is opening the door and inviting failure to come in.

It takes courage, not confidence to pursue the life you deserve. If every successful person waited to become confident, the list of achievers would be a very short one. Ever achiever I know had the courage to pursue their dreams despite of their fears, doubts and setbacks.

There are no guarantees in life, but worrying about the what ifs is like saying, “I’d like to be an optimist, but I know it wouldn’t work out.” It’s setting yourself up to fail and it saps energy you could be using to stretch yourself and propel yourself forward.

Give yourself permission to live spectacularly. There are no penalties for not achieving the goals you set, so what do you have to lose. Stretch Yourself! Go for it! You may surprise yourself by achieving abundance beyond your imagination.