Sundaymail Editor
Hunt for Greatness
Milton Kamwendo
Fear not! Faint not! The comfort zone is that place that is familiar and insulated from change.
It is the place where you start living by habit instead of a deep hunger for change and growth. The comfort zone is that fantasy place where you use the least amount of energy and you do the least amount of learning and hope to have the most amount of satisfaction and motivation. The comfort zone is where fear becomes shelter and brace.
In the comfort zone you cannot grow, you can only go down. It that space where you threaten nothing, change nothing, fear nothing, believe nothing, dare nothing and everything is just grey and familiar. The comfort zone is not usually not created by others without your complicit participation.
You are the one who creates the comfort zone in your mind and choose to live in it and insulate yourself from any threat. There can be no greatness in any comfort zone. You never grow in a comfort zone. Your answers always lie beyond your comfort zone.
Why linger for a day longer? Get out of your comfort zone and start growing and hunting for greatness. As you step out of your comfort zone you step into the zone of change, creativity, and challenges. Change that does not challenge your comfort zone is no change at all. Beyond the comfort zone you step into the zone of greatness. You step into the zone of total possibilities and miracles.
The Familiar
At first! Everything is new, it is an adventure, you are learning and growing. You feel challenged, you fall but get up and you keep searching and digging deeper. All things are possible when you believe in the fight. It a calling to greatness, but soon you triumph and begin to settle. It all becomes familiar territory. No more need to prepare and the adrenalin is no longer pumping. No more need for adventure, because everything is now in place.
You start thinking retirement and idle games. There is no more challenge; it all is now a matter of ease because it soon becomes so easy. Slowly you sink into a rut and you also know that you cannot live life in this poor unchallenging way.
If you are no woke, you do not realise that you have slid into the comfort zone and fail to realise that the comfort zone is merely the starting zone and not a domicile. You were never meant to live in the comfort zone. Its a mere fig-leaf. It is better to pursue challenges, fight battles and brave the unfamiliar than settle into the routines and rut of the comfort zone.
The familiar is overrated. You cannot grow when everything is all too familiar and every day looks like every other day. That is not a life but death while you are living. Do not allow the familiar to clip your wings and make you settle into lifeless existence.
In familiar territory, dreams are replaced with antiques.
Vision is replaced with old VHS videos of the past. Step out of the familiar. Set new goals and determine that you will not die while you are alive. You will not die in your winter while sitting in your comfort zone. Determine that you will not become a mere passenger in life. Determine to grow and do great things.
Determine to step out of the familiar and to challenge your limits. Determine that you will embrace the spirit of adventure, exploration and action and not just any wandering familiar spirit. Get out of the comfort zone!
The Friends
Who you hang around with determines where you hang around and the zone you live in. Friends that pull you into the familiar leave you where you are and raise the wall of your comfort zone. Friends that do not read, that follow the familiar, do the familiar, complain about the familiar are likely are likely neighbours in the comfort zone.
You never go far with friends that enjoy and seek to protect the comfort zone and its luxuries. Hang around people that threaten your mediocrity and challenge your world view. Comforts zone are shaken but radical decisions to leave them. Hang around friends that see big things, talk big dreams and are taking big steps. Stop playing in the kids pool with others who fear swimming in the great waters.
In Psalm 107 verses 23-24, the Bible gives this apt description: “Those who go down to the sea in ships, who do business on great waters, they see the works of the LORD, and His wonders in the deep.” You will not see anything deep and do anything great playing at the beach with friends that are too scared to get wet, and who love the familiar.
Be that friend yourself who is not seated in then scornful seat of the comfort zone or settled in the familiar, mediocre comfort zone.
Refuse to be entangled into friendships that are mere fellowships of complaining and self-pity. In the heartland of the comfort zone there are no ideas there. When you change your friends, you change your life. When your friends move out of the comfort zone, hold their coat-tails and follow even if the trip is uncomfortable.
There is no greatness doing what you have always done and remaining where you have always been. Be bold, be brave or be forever bored in the comfort zone. Do not remain in the comfort zone because you are trying to please and entertain friends that love the comfort zone. Be too busy to be bored because you are out of the comfort zone.
The Fantasy
Life is not what you imagine it is. Greatness is not a mirage or mere delusion. It is what it is. Stop living in the fantasy and the myth of the comfort zone and face the brutal realities of life.
There is no safety in settling in the comforts of the past or the fantasies of the present. There is no glory in living in Neverland.
Change happens and it is here to stay. When change visit you in the comfort zone it is extremely painful. You have a choice, to boldly embrace change or to stay the course of the compromised life of the fantasy of the comfort zone. Dare to take a bold path in life.
Likely, you will not just get out of the fantasy of living in the comfort zone, but you have to push yourself beyond the gravitational pull of the comfort zone and enter into the zone of new possibilities.
Greatness is work. The comfort zone is deferred work. It always catches up with you. Get out of the comfort zone requires mental effort. You just have to be sober and vigilant. Stay awake!
Break the mould! Stop living a lie and living on borrowed fame and mythical fuel. Instead of seeking comfort and pursuing fantasy, deliberately seek purposeful discomfort. Set goals that challenge you and shake you out of complacency. Set goals that shake you so much that your weakest parts do not survive.
Go on the wing and refuse to live in fantasy-land. Take a look at your brutal reality, but do not settle, rather dare to take massive action and move forward. Dare to venture beyond the limits of fantasy, and barriers of fear. Do not let your life goals fall victim of the fantasy of the comfort zone. It is better to search in the maze of greatness that to remain within the borders of the cheese-less fantasy world.
The Fear
What keeps people in the comfort zone is fear. Fear is only real in the mind and requires a host who is in the comfort zone for it to fester.
When you take a stand and move out of the comfort zone it is a fearful and scary enterprise. Refuse to be a prisoner of fear and a pilgrim of lazy fate. Do not let the fear of leaving the comfort zone limit your potential and shrink your dreams.
Dare to dream big and do big things with one condition: you have to get out of the comfort zone. Look at fear in the face and do not be scared to go beyond your past and present fears. Do not be afraid to step out of the comfort zone, waving your angry fist at the familiar and resign from fellowships of the bondage to negativity, cynicism and recreational complaining.
Hunting for greatness means that you are willing to feel the fear, but you refuse to settle in its fear’s arms.
The next level of your growth demands that you break free from fears that hold you back and keep you caged in mediocrity. Dare to step forth out of the boundaries of the comfort zone. Going for greatness means that you are constantly on the move, walking out of comfort zones that are trying to trap and befriend you. If change does not feel uncomfortable it is likely not change but mere re-arrangement of the familiar. Step out of the comfort zone!
Committed to your greatness.
Milton Kamwendo is a leading international transformational and motivational speaker, author, and a virtual, hybrid and in-person workshop facilitator. He is a cutting-edge strategy, team-building and organisation development facilitator and consultant. His life purpose is to inspire and promote greatness. He can be reached at: [email protected] and His website is: www.miltonkamwendo.com.
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