Stepping Outside of Your Padded Comfort Box

“What…!?” That’s probably what your reaction was when you saw the title of this post. And then perhaps you spotted the little image of a vacant cell to the left there. Now then, likely you think that either I’ve gone absolutely bonkers or that I’ve got something amazingly profound to talk about. I’m hoping it’s the latter but either way, hopefully I’ve piqued your curiosity enough to take notice and read through this post…

If you haven’t realised by now, I have a somewhat vivid imagination. I find that if I can come up with an illustrative scenario for a given subject then it can help me to grasp the full sense of the concept and it can also help me to convey it to other people.

Something else I have a particularly leaning towards is words and language, hence my tendency to waffle on at times! So I was thinking earlier on today about some of the things that can hold us back and prevent us from moving forward in making money online, even maybe stopping us altogether. It was then that two metaphorical sayings came to mind and I found myself merging them together.

If you’ve seen or heard any training from any of the good Internet Marketers then you will likely have heard them, at some point, emphasise the importance of “thinking outside the box” or “stepping out of your comfort zone”. What I would say at this point is that both these concepts are absolutely essential if you want to move forward and be successful in your online business.

Have you ever found yourself at a point where you come across something that you perhaps hadn’t anticipated or weren’t ready for? For example, you’ve made a start with your online business and you’re happily chugging along in your own little world, perhaps following the instructions of a mentor or the author of an ebook or course. You then come across a particular instruction that makes you stop and go, “Woah, woah, woah! I don’t know how to do that!” or, “I can’t see ME doing that!” or, “I don’t want to do THAT!” So you treat it like a brick wall and either try to forget about it and think that maybe you can just ignore that bit or turn around and try something else. Either way, you’re not dealing with the issue at hand.

Putting your ebook or course aside and logging on to the Warrior Forum to browse the WSOs for a ‘shiny object’ is NOT the answer! No doubt you would eventually come across something that seems awesome and you decide to buy it. You start to go through the information and it may actually be awesome! So there you are, chugging along in your own little world until you reach a brick wall again and you go, “Woah, woah, woah…..!” And….. well, you get the picture!

Do you see where stepping out of your comfort zone comes into play? Instead of giving up, actually try tackling the big, scary thing that appears so ominous! After all, let’s say that the training you’ve been working through is amazing and can help you to succeed, yet you find yourself covering 59% until you reach that one little percent that causes you to feel a little unsettled. Perhaps the remaining 40% would be a doddle for you, but all because you’re not prepared to tackle that 1% then you’re sacrificing the whole other awesome 99%! Hardly seems to make sense, does it?

Now if this is describing you then don’t feel bad. I’m not here to point fingers and elevate myself. Far from it! I am guilty of doing exactly this myself. In fact, I found myself at this point as I went through my very first purchase of content from Alex Jeffreys. Now Alex absolutely blew me away with his teaching. He still does. The guy is from a comparatively rare breed who just ‘gets it’. I knew that the stuff I was going through was gold, but I reached a point where he started talking about a strategy that unsettled me. There was absolutely nothing wrong with it – far from it – but for me to implement it would involve me stepping outside my comfort zone. What did I do? I bought another WSO course and started going through that…

So now I had a new course to progress through. The problem now was that I was falling victim to distraction and a lack of focus so I wasn’t really accomplishing anything. I still couldn’t get Alex’s teaching out of my head but at the same time I felt disheartened at that one little thing that I wasn’t happy with. So I decided to go back through Alex’s teaching again from the beginning, working my way through all of it and I was determined to just accept even the part that unsettled me and try to not allow this to bring a veil down over my eyes like it had done before. No, this time I was going to go through the entire thing from start to finish, come what may. And that is what I did.

What was my conclusion at the end of the training? I was amazed by the whole thing and figured that it was worth my stepping out of my comfort zone and tackling that one little obstacle for the sake of it fitting together with the rest of the amazing training.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this sort of thing for yourself, but if you have then you likely found that it changed your whole mindset and approach, am I right? It. certainly has done for me. Now I have to be honest and say that I haven’t yet actually acted fully on tackling the obstacle, but I am in the process of doing so and I am going to go all the way with it, there’s no doubt about that at all. But here’s the remarkable thing about it all…

As I said, just having that change of mindset caused me to have a whole new mindset in general and has actually got me “thinking outside the box”! I have actually been surprising myself at just what I’ve been coming up with recently, especially with regards to product ideas and ways to grow my online business. I’m not going to say too much about that now, but suffice it to say, if all goes to plan, I’ve got something that I feel is pretty awesome on the horizon!

Not only have I been “thinking outside the box” but many of the ideas I’ve been getting (and getting excited about!) are things that would require me stepping out of my “comfort zone.” But is that phasing me? Nope!

Okay, so hopefully now you see how I came up with merging those two phrases together. But why did I say “padded box”? Well, I think of this being like the comfort zone. It’s all nice and soft, completely enclosed, boxing us in where we’re nice and safe. But if we just stay in there, refusing to step outside, then the box becomes more like a prison, a padded cell that keeps us confined as we’re going crazy with the frustration of jumping from one ‘shiny object’ to the next and getting wound up and disheartened because we’re not progressing with our online business.

Yes, by stepping out of our comfort zone and thinking outside the box, we can be set free from the confines of that prison and truly move forward to success!