“We cannot become what we want by remaining what we are.” – Max Depree
If you’re not happy with your current level of performance, not making changes will keep you where you are. Think of it this way; if you change nothing, nothing changes.
Of course, you might recognise that you need to make changes, but change is not always easy to make. Doing things differently will mean stepping away from everything that’s familiar into a world of unknowns, and stepping out of your comfort zone can be a tough step to take.
Your comfort zone can be a positive place if you learn to use it as a performance plateau, a place where you can pause for a moment to take stock of your achievements so far and consider your options for the next leg of your journey towards your ultimate goal. But, if you use your comfort zone as a place to stop rather than pause, it can become a negative place. When you stop in your comfort zone, it often becomes a hiding place rather than a place for reflection, and by hiding, you shut yourself off from all opportunities to discover your true potential.
“Resistance is never the agent of change. You have to embrace the actions that are going to get you closer to your goal.” – Ali Vincent
In sport, a fear of the unknown is very often accompanied by a fear of failure.
Fear can paralyse you and prevent you from making the changes you need to make to move and progress. The negative energy generated through fear can also begin a self-perpetuated negative cycle in which negative thoughts generate negative beliefs and emotions, and those negative emotions lead to negative actions, or no action being taken at all. Without positive action, no positive change can happen – keeping you stuck where you are in a bubble of negative energy that keeps the cycle repeating.
Taking the all-important first step out of your comfort zone takes confidence, so it’s important to make that first step a manageable one, using the success of taking it to inspire taking the next. To progress and move forward, you need to know where you’re going, but the confidence needed to get you moving can be grown from setting smaller, more manageable stepping-stones in place that will help to keep you moving from where you are to where you want to be.
“I cannot say if things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better.” – Georg C Lichtenberg
Small steps and small successes provide the motivation and confidence to keep moving, and every step you’re willing to take away from your comfort zone is a step towards discovering your true potential. As Jim Rohn once said, “Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.” In sport, as in life, performances don’t get better by chance, they get better by change.
Champions embrace change.
Don MacNaughton is a High-Performance Coach and has worked tirelessly to help clients achieve success in the world of sport and business over the past 15 years. The next, highly popular, NLP Diploma and Life Coaching Certificate course starts in April 2019. Click here for more information or to sign up.