Learning To Dance With Fear

 

Why do we hate getting out of our comfort zone?

One of our biggest hurdles to becoming a great learner is fear. The fear of the unknown. The fear of messing up. The fear of looking bad. These are a few reasons we prefer to be in our comfort zone.

The good news is that any of us can develop the skill of learning how to dance fear. How we do that differs greatly from you might think.

Where does fear come from? It’s actually wired in. It comes from a region of our brain called our amygdala or “lizard brain”. It is in our brain for survival, to keep us alive. It generates fear, keeping us away from danger. Therefore, we duck when we see a flying object coming our way.

But there is a glitch. Our amygdala doesn’t know the difference between the good challenges and the dangerous ones. It also doesn’t know the difference between the good and bad risks. It tends to just avoid them altogether.

While it’s true, that fear is present in a dangerous situation, it is also present in our best learning opportunities. It is present when we compete and perform in art or in music. Learning involves a lot of the elements of fear.

Yes, fear keeps us safe from bats flying at our head but it also keeps us from asking questions when we are in a group. Those little moments when we are stretched out of our comfort zones and we feel fear so we don’t ask.

The biggest thing we have to sacrifice to be great is our comfort. We all want to be successful, yet most of us choose a short-term comfortable activity over long-term, pleasurable results. If it were easy to be successful, all of us would be.

So many of us have incredible qualities, but so few of us actually make of ourselves even a fraction of what we can become.

If we can master our desire for comfort and learn to dance with fear, then we may place ourselves among the few people who truly reach their goals and dreams in life.

What comfortable activity are you choosing over your own success? Decide right now to eliminate one comfort activity from your day, and replace it with an activity that gets you result to where you want to get. At first this may be difficult, but if you forget, just notice and get back on track.