Outside the comfort zone
Written by Mike Cheliak on December 16, 2009 – 8:20 am -One of the hardest things we do is to push ourselves beyond our comfort zone. This applies to much of our daily life. Our nature is to look for the path of least resistance.
To push yourself outside of this comfort zone is something that you really should do. The reason is simple. If you convince 
yourself you can’t do something because you “don’t know how” or “it’s too hard”; you have cheated yourself of a great learning and growing experience.
I just completed my 30 runs in 30 days challenge along with my sister Lynne and two friends Greg Collett and Ted Albert. Lynne is in North Eastern Ontario (North of North Bay), Ted is in North Central Ontario, Greg is in Mexico and I live in Southern Ontario.
We could have lived around the Globe and it wouldn’t have mattered. For over 30 days we prodded, poked, encouraged and drove each other along to complete the task. Living outside your comfort zone is much better when done with support!
Living outside the comfort zone for 30 days is something that really opened my eyes. I am (was) a horrible runner. At the beginning I could barely get through 20 minutes and 2.5K. As the days rolled past, my runs increased in intensity and duration and all of the sudden I started running pretty well.
What opened my eyes is what happened on day 30. About a week previous we were communicating on our Facebook Thread, http://www.facebook.com/mike.cheliak?v=feed&story_fbid=174773569308 and I mentioned that I would like to “try” to do a 10K on day 30 but I didn’t think I could do it.
Greg immediately hammered on me with some colourful motivational words and my attitude took an immediate 180 and I knew I needed to move further outside my comfort zone.
On day 30 I ran a 10K in 1:08:08.
Challenge yourself to live outside your comfort zone. Don’t do it for one workout or one meal or one day but for a month. Find a reason, find a cause or find a challenge. Just find something that you can set as a goal.
Make the goal only attainable by living outside your comfort zone. DON’T CHEAT! If you do, you will only cheat yourself and your end result will show for it. Don’t EVER say you can’t (or Greg will yell at you).
Read our Facebook thread and see how we motivated each other. We all looked forward to our daily posts. Finding someone or even a few people to do the challenge together is a GREAT idea. It gives a common goal and support to everyone.
WHAT’S YOUR CHALLENGE?
In happiness and health as always,
Mike C
Posted in Mike's Posts | 1 Comment »
By Lynne Cheliak on Dec 17, 2009 | Reply
Good post Mike! I have to admit that part of the success of the 30 day challenge was being accountable not only to myself but to you, Ted and Greg through our daily posts. There were days when we all felt “ugh….I don’t feel like running today” but knowing that we agreed to all post daily kept us honest!
Confidence was a result of the challenge. Knowing that I (and we) finished something that was tough, challenging and outside the CZ (comfort zone) was a major boost!
We’ll have to do this more often!
Lynne