Tell me about a time when you pushed yourself out of your comfort zone

Has God ever called you to step outside your comfort zone? To walk in unchartered territory? Have you ever felt unsure of yourself and your capabilities for something God has called you to do? As you think about what God has called you to do and take action, rely on these 5 Bible Verses about stepping out of your comfort zone to increase your faith. It was two weeks of time alone with God. Time on my knees. Time completely outside my comfort zone. Time wondering why God called me. Time in tears. Time feeling small. Time wrestling the enemy. Time feeling like a minnow in an ocean of whales and sharks. Time trying to remember not only who I am but whose I am. The time away started off well—I was with my family for three days as we visited a university my son had high hopes of attending. My mother’s heart simultaneously delighted in watching his excitement as he was on the precipice of his dreams, while at the same time realizing that the days and nights of having him in our home, the maker of so many of our “family chuckles” was quickly drawing to a close. It was almost too much to process at once. They boarded the plane and my next adventure began: time to begin writing the Bible study God put on my heart, followed by several days at a conference before heading home. As I took my place at my computer and stared at the blinking cursor on the blank screen, the enemy began what would be his relentless pursuit for the next 12 days. “Who do you think you are?” “What do you know ...

For much of my young adult life, I struggled with crazy, irrational fear. More specifically: A fear of speaking up. A fear of the awkward, stretched silences that inevitably followed the question, “How about you, Joyce?”—a question that hung in the air as my cheeks burned red and I scrambled to find words for the thoughts that, moments before, spun so clearly in my head. This fear followed me through the years, only growing deeper as I grew older. Around college time, I began to feel mildly claustrophobic in social situations. I gravitated toward the back of classrooms. I could handle small groups only—buffered by one or two of my close friends, I was comfortable enough. Parties were doable, enjoyable even. But venturing out alone was a no-go. The years slinked by as I became more and more adept at shying away from social experiences and meeting new people. My social circle was small, tight-knit, and that was just fine by me. Come graduation time, though, I hit a wall. I realized I had chosen a degree before figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. Did I really want to be a psychologist? Why did I get a psychology degree anyway? Who was I, four years ago with no professional experience, to think that psychology was the perfect career path for the rest of my adult life? I panicked. I realized I had lived most of my life in my comfort zone, a warm and cushy bubble where I could ride out the years without venturing into the strange and scary “real world” full of jobs an...

• When in your comfort zone, your brain doesn’t want anything to change. Your needs are met, you have zero stress, and your brain recognizes that the body is surviving. It’s a recipe for steady performance. • Your brain especially doesn’t like change. It requires so much energy for day-to-day activity that it doesn’t want to give extra resources to the attention required to do new things. • Getting out of your comfort zone from time to time creates just enough good stress to ramp up your focus, creativity, pace, and drive, and it helps you respond to life stress when unexpected things happen. Change can be an uphill battle as it is, and depending on what the scenario is, your brain might not do you any favors. There are ways to help your brain adapt to change a little more easily, but first, there are a few things to understand about your brain. Your brain is busy. It hogs a ton of your energy resources to do what it needs to do every day, especially when you’re sleeping. Your brain is lazy. Because it needs so much energy and there’s so much going on up there, it doesn’t want to do extra things. It doesn’t know the difference between a good new habit and a bad new habit, so it tries to get you to do what you’ve always done, by staying inside your comfort zone. Your brain wants to keep you safe. Your own survival and the survival of the species depends on avoiding danger. Humans are built to live in a world where we have everyday threats to survival, like hungry cheetahs. ...

Shutterstock Before I started Uncommon Clarity in 2004, I read Alan Weiss’ book Getting Started in Consulting. Any independent professional, whether consultant, painter, lawyer, or something else is in the marketing business first and foremost. Hanging a shingle on the proverbial door might let you call yourself a consultant, but it doesn’t let you practice it. Weiss' book made this perfectly clear. It also identified almost two dozen different ways to become known, many of which left this introverted, Scandinavian, engineer quaking in her boots: However, after looking at each suggestion separately and reading Weiss’ concrete steps, I couldn’t see any reason why I couldn’t give each a try. That first year in business, I figure I was out of my comfort zone 99% of the time. The second year, it was more like 75% of the time. By the third year, that number was closer to 60%. I was getting comfortable. Too comfortable. It was time to stick my neck out farther! I felt like a different person from the one who sheepishly hung that original shingle emblazoned with the bold promise of uncommon clarity. And I liked that feeling! I was even a little worried about my marriage, not for any concrete reasons, but because I wondered if my husband liked the person I was becoming. I felt that different. So I pushed onward until I’d accomplished everything on Weiss’ list. None of them had killed me! As a matter of fact, most were enjoyable. But not networking. I’ll never be a fan of networkin...

Comfort zones can be a silly thing. To some extent, I think everyone can get stuck “in the zone” every now and then. And if they are lucky, someone or something will come along and push them right out of it. I’ve been hearing a lot about comfort zones lately and almost all of these conversations have been with women. I know men that appear to have comfort zones as well but maybe they only talk to other men about it. Maybe they never admit to being in that zone. The comfort zone is that place where you feel like you are in control of your surroundings, you are doing exactly what you think you are qualified to do, and you are hesitant to make a change. Change can be hard but so beneficial. After speaking at the “Mind the Gap” session at the This is an enviable position to be in. To have two advocates looking to move you up the ladder is almost unheard of. The problem is that this very capable young woman didn’t really like the new things she was asked to do. There was lots of negotiating and trying to smooth things over with unhappy people. She was feeling like she was being thrown into the middle of a boxing match. The woman really liked her job and appreciated the potential her superiors saw in her but she was uncomfortable with some of the new responsibilities, while at the same time a little afraid to tell her boss that she wasn’t really liking the new tasks. Some people are meant to stay in their comfort zones. They do great work and are extremely dependable. What they ...

A few years ago, I made a vow to get out of my comfort zone. I was in my late 60s and had been observing a close friend so ensconced in her routine that if anything went slightly awry she became completely undone. When the TV remote misbehaved she’d crumple emotionally and tell me, “Death will be a relief from all this.” When her computer had its own mind, she’d scream at it, turning red in the face. Watching her was a warning sign. I didn’t want to slide unconsciously into these habits, waking up one morning a slave to my comfort zone. False Sense of Security It’s easy to want to crawl into a safe place as we get older and life becomes more complicated. We start having physical limitations we didn’t have when we were younger; our eyesight dims, our hearing goes, “What?”, or our knees complain when they see stairs. Body maintenance becomes a priority on our To Do List. These issues erode our confidence and our rapidly changing world sometimes makes us feel we can’t keep up. In order to get a sense of security, I think it’s easy to fall into a routine of comfort, not wanting to venture out and explore the world or try new things. Staying in the safe zone gives us a false sense of control in this chaotic world. Pushing Our Boundaries Helps Our Brains Security and confidence have to come from inside. When they do, we can be free to enjoy the comforts or venture out of them for new experiences. Pushing our boundaries keeps our gray matter active and growing. It’s new experienc...

Have you heard the saying, “A comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there”? It can be difficult to shake the anxiety that often goes with doing things we’re not used to or comfortable with, precisely because we have either little or poor experience with whatever is outside our comfort zone. However, learning to push those boundaries for yourselfis helpful for advancing and succeeding both in your career and your personal life. If you don’t know how to begin taking healthy steps to leave your comfort zone, here are some tips on things you can do that will encourage you to take risks and learn to embrace uncertainty.