What I Want vs. What I Actually Do.

How my comfort zone has the potential to slaughter my dreams

“Don’t justify your dreams, execute on them!” -Gary Vaynerchuk

I am no Gary Vaynerchuk, nor do I have his fortitude or his bravado and showmanship about me. What I do have, however, is a small history of uncomfortable experiences that have helped to make me stronger, and an endless sea of animated GIFs through which to illustrate those experiences.

But, before I get into those, let me start off by saying one of the most cliché, but ever-so-true, statements. Magic starts to happen the minute we step outside of our comfort zones. I love to draw, write, and push my creativity to the limit, however it’s hard sometimes because I consistently worry what people say and how they would judge me. For a very long time, I stopped trying to be myself and constantly trying to “fit in”! I was too scared of doing things that I love to do in fear of being rejected or hearing the, “Oh, look at Sam, trying something again new, he will eventually quit or fail at it!” Until one day, I decided to try drawing something and shared it with my family! At least they couldn’t make fun of me too much, right? God bless my parents, they were extremely nice and supportive, even though my drawing of a house sitting on a hill, was thought to have been a rocket ship flying through the clouds, by my dad.

Fast forward to a few days later, I finally realized my drawing skills were just not good! I don’t want anyone to think I was being negative, sometimes you just have to accept what is, and I was just not the best at drawing. However, in that moment, I overcame my fear, stepped out of my comfort zone, and tried to pursue something new and creative, something that I’ve waited to try out my entire life.

My comfort zone deceived me for the past 30 years in the sense that it tricked me into believing that I had an abundant amount of time to do things, when in reality, I know that years can fly by in the blink of an eye without me having accomplished much of anything. This is when I decided not to let my comfort zone dictate my dreams.

Here are a handful of uncomfortable situations where I’ve fully taken Gary Vee’s advice and if it applies to you then, “take the cold bath bravely”, you will be better off for doing so.

“Hard to be affected when you can’t hear anything”

Last year, I was working on my Master’s degree program at Nova Southeastern University. During one of my classes I had to give a presentation, and I began my presentation by stuttering and slurring my speech. What a great way to start a presentation, huh? I honestly could imagine my Professor questioning herself, asking herself if I was drunk. Worst part of it all, I couldn’t place the blame on drinking, I had just got off work and was wearing my Police uniform. So, definitely no blame there! Now, I don’t think that I need to go into the reasons behind this juggernaut of discomfort. I hope that someone reading this has been there or in a similar situation. Having that many eyes and ears on you is a daunting experience.

Instead of packing it up and running out of class… (which was exactly what I wanted to do and my brain was screaming at me to do). I chose to stick it out and managed to get my words together. I reassured myself that I knew and memorized all of my key points to the presentation and I had nothing to worry about. I cleared my throat and ignored all the snickers and weird looks I was getting from classmates and I delivered my presentation and refused to look back. By the way, I got an A on that presentation! Boom to all those who were snickering at me! The key point here is, who cares about subtle hiccups, they don’t really matter, the end result is all that matters.

“Click the snooze button! Why the heck would you do that? One life, get up!!”

It’s agonizingly painful to get out of my bed before the sun come out! My girlfriend and I say it all the time, why did we get such an amazingly comfortable bed, it’s like it just traps you. But, I know I need to do it, I know what works best for my body. Getting up early will make the remainder of my moring amazing and smooth — by eating breakfast, watching the news, enjoying my cup of coffee, all of these things will help my day run more smoothly and I won’t feel so rushed. However, I sometimes find myself waking up 30 minutes before work, jumping in the shower and running out of the house, arriving 30 seconds before 7:30 am roll call.

So, why don’t I wake up early every day? I’ll tell you why I don’t, because my bed is my arch nemesis! When my alarm wakes me up early and I know I can either …..

Or

One thing that I started recently to help me wake up a little earlier is meditation using Headspace. This app has allowed me to stay in bed, however I am awake and meditating during this time and on the plus side, I am simultaneously relaxing my mind, helping me to prepare for my day mentally.

“Patience Matters”

Most things I’ve taken on throughout my life have resulted in failure! I constantly feel as if anything and everything I try takes me back to Elementary school, when I was in aftercare and I couldn’t fold a paper airplane that could fly further than 2 feet, but, I never gave up! A few years later, before I left Elementary school for Middle school, I was the Paper Airplane King! And still to this day I can fold a mean paper airplane! My life experience has taught me that, most people stay close to the ground, where it’s safe, if they fall, it won’t hurt that bad, but when you choose to fly high like my paper airplanes, the fall may kill you. And I am okay with that because for me there is no ceiling and there is no floor, that is all in your head.

I’ll stop here, but really, this is just the beginning. Who knew there were so many uncomfortable things in the world?

From negotiating your salary to reading an amazing book like, Crushing it! Memes seem everlasting, so here is to making this list longer and longer and I hope it will, leave a comment below!

“There will be people in life who mentally block you from going after what you want. Look those people in the freaking face and tell them your truths truths! Its on them if they judge you!” — Gary Vee

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