• Motivation

The Comfort Zone

Find your edge.

by Toni Delos Santos
90% Mental
90percentmental.com

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“All change is hard at first, messy in the middle and gorgeous in the end“.”  – Robin Sharma

Babe Ruth once said, “don’t let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.” This statement is very powerful because when you think about what holds you back from making a change, the answer is most likely the fear of failure. Baseball is well known as a game where you are guaranteed to fail more than you will succeed when you are up to bat. Knowing this fact, it would lead you to wonder how players get motivated to want to bat when there is a 70% chance they are not going to get on base. The answer lies in their mindset.

Being in sales is like baseball in that it is a game of percentages. The more accounts you call on, the higher the chance that you will earn more business. When you call on a new customer, you know that there is a possibility that you might fail to convince them to use your product or service. If the worst happens and they do not see the value in switching to your product, you don’t look for another job because you failed. You will go back to your presentation and think about what you could have done differently to get a different outcome. Each appointment is an opportunity to learn and improve on what you can do differently next time you meet with a similar client.

The first step is to have a clear understanding of the goal that you want to reach. Once you have the vision of what that success will look like, you are ready to implement a strategy.  Next, you must understand and accept that failure is going to be part of the process. Whenever you learn a skill, you are not going to automatically be an expert. It takes practice, discipline, and hard work to reach that level. After you have put in the time and you see the improvement and then finally hit your goal, I would be willing to bet it was worth it. Putting yourself out there into the unknown can be scary. It is much easier to stay in your comfort zone. This means that you will be content to live a life of mediocrity. The challenge with staying in your comfort zone is that humans are meant to keep evolving. Learning and growing are what makes us interesting and motivated.

You will never reach your true potential both personally and professionally by taking the easy road. There is no doubt that getting out of your comfort zone can be scary, but in the end, the satisfaction of knowing that you had the confidence to take the leap will be worth it! Ray Lewis once said, “Before anything great is really achieved, your comfort zone must be disturbed.”