One of my business and personal philosophies is to always be learning something new. Learning a new skill opens my eyes to new possibilities, renews my curiosity, and heightens my joy of exploration and discovery. The challenges excite me and frighten me, taking me quickly out of my comfort zone.
Once out of my comfort zone, uncertainty creeps in. I wonder "can I do this?" I fight the pull my comfort zone exerts, urging me back to the safety of what I know. Gradually, I conquer the new skill and all its possibilities become clear and my comfort zone expands.
Lately, my pursuit of new skills has led me to fulfill an ancient dream, learning to play guitar. Learning guitar is a skill that will take anyone out of their comfort zone. For starters, pressing tender fingers on steel strings is painful. Practice too much and you end up with blisters. Those blisters complain when they are applied over and over to a computer keyboard. The simple act of typing becomes a punishment that probably is outlawed by the Geneva Convention.
Once the fingers become accustomed to pressing down on steel strings, another torture is added. That of twisting your fingers into unnatural positions to play chords. Some of these chords have been aptly named "Satan Chords" by my friend Sarah, a fellow sufferer. One such chord, the B minor had become a bête noir for me. Difficult to achieve but necessary for a number of my favorite songs.
Looking for an easy way out, I begged and pleaded with Chris Bannon, my guitar torturer, er, teacher, for a work around. Some other chord I could play instead that would work almost as well. I wanted the easy answer. Instead, he patiently showed me how to play the B minor chord again. Rats! Is there no escape?
The B minor chord backed me into a corner because it is one of the main chords for my all time favorite song. To learn the song, I had to learn the Satan Chord. So, I did. The "why" was big enough so I stretched my comfort zone (and my fingers) to accommodate the necessary chord.
To take my mind off the pain in my fingers, I thought about how small business owners often try to stay within their comfort zones in the day-to-day running of a business. They get stuck in the rut of "this is the way we've always done it." Making changes is inconvenient and sometimes frightening.
I hear things like "we don't need a website" from businesses that could clearly benefit from having one. Or, "I have to do everything because no one else can do it as well as I can." I even had a client who ran a professional practice who rented a second office so he could do the five years of tax returns he hadn't gotten done. His thinking was that it was too expensive to hire an accountant to do it. We all have blind spots.
The simple truth is that breaking out of our comfort zone involves effort and risk. We'll only do it if the "why" is powerful enough. For me, learning guitar had a big enough "why." It was a dream from childhood that I needed fulfilled. Learning a B minor chord had a big enough "why" because not knowing it meant I couldn't play my favorite song.
For the business owner, learning a new skill or trying a new marketing strategy or learning to delegate has to have a big enough "why" as well. If your goal is to get out of the office in time to have supper with your kids, then learning to delegate becomes an important enough goal to conquer. If your goal is to achieve a certain level of financial comfort, then the "why" becomes powerful enough to encourage you to try new strategies to reach that goal. Business as usual quickly loses its comfort if it can't get you from Point A to Point B. And in the process of leaving our comfort zones, we become better business owners (or guitar players). The personal growth leads to business growth. Each goal achieved leads us to the next larger goal in an ever expanding comfort zone.
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