Success. Achievement. Striving. Thriving. Goals. Stretching. Pushing. These are words, whilst positive by nature, strike fear into the hearts of many people. Me too! Why is that? Because the prevailing belief, and this is something I have believed for most of my life, is that everything we want but don’t yet have is outside of our comfort zone. Yuck. It is suggesting it has to be hard to experience success in life. I want to challenge that thinking this week, and ponder the question, what if success is actually already inside our comfort zone?
I have strived for “success” for much of my life. I have got as uncomfortable as humanly possible (for me anyway) many times in pursuit of this “success”. To become a professional athlete, it was bone-jarringly and gut-bustingly painful to make it at the highest level. I did it and I made it, but I never felt successful. To get the body I thought would bring me admiration, self-love, and respect was muscle-tearingly, and lung-burstingly uncomfortable. I achieved the body, but still didn’t feel “successful”. I worked seven-days per week in business to believe I was a “success”. It was relentless and exhausting, but never led me to the feeling that I was a “success”. So, again, my question; is “success” really outside your comfort zone, or is it already there?
The word “success” has a different meaning for different people, however, I believe, for most of us, it has been portrayed as some kind of external achievement or accomplishment. In fact, the definition of the word “success” from www.cambridge.org is:
The achieving of the results wanted or hoped for.
This definition is damaging as it focuses on people’s value based on what they achieve, rather than who they are. My thinking is this, “success” is not about what we do, it is about who we already are. I am a Christian and believe in creation. I also believe the odds of my existence, and yours, are so infinitesimally small, there is no way our existence is luck. I believe God created no junk, and that I am here for a very special purpose. That purpose, to be uniquely and authentically me. Guess what? I am already that. So, are you. Therefore, “success” is already ours. It is already inside our comfort zone. Knowing and believing this, that we are already enough, that we are already loved, and that we are already a “success” means we can go on and manifest amazing things in our lives.
Let me give you a simple example. As I was walking home after training on Wednesday, I decided to do a social experiment. I decided to say ‘hello’ to every person I passed and see how many of them actually said ‘hello’ back to me. Would you agree this is a pretty simple exercise? Would you also agree, we already have the capacity to do this? In other words, we don’t have to get out of our comfort zone, we just have to open our mouths. Well, just because it is already inside of us, doesn’t make it easy. After the first seven ‘hellos’, I had only got one response. I know why. Because I was being timid in my approach. I was fearful of what they might think, or how they would respond. So, I dimmed myself.
In that moment I decided to tap into my existing comfort zone and be loud and proud. For the rest of my walk home, I boomed out “good morning” to every person I met, and by the time I got home had got 17 responses from 30 ‘hellos’. I knew I could do better than that, so I did the same thing on Saturday, and this time got 24 responses from my 30 ‘hellos’. The only reason I didn’t get more was because some of the people were listening to things and clearly couldn’t hear me. I am telling myself that anyway. The question, did I really have to get out of my comfort zone to do that? Of course not, I just had to decide to tap into the joy, love and “success” that is already within me, and share it with others. I feel my biggest issue, and possibly the same for others, is that I didn’t trust the strength, power, and worthiness that is already inside of me. “Success” is already mine, and yours. All we have to do is tap into it, and let it flow out into our lives.
This week I speak with Adrienne Simmons on my podcast. It is called, Your body is your bestie, and we discuss how our body, mind, and emotions already provide us with everything we need. We just need to treat them like our best friends. So, as you go about your day and life after reading this, I hope you believe and do things differently. Focus on the wonders already inside you and in your comfort zone, and simply share them with the world. Then, watch what happens.