If there’s one thing I’ve embraced over the last decade of changes and personal growth, it’s this: if I’m comfortable and it all feels easy, I’m not stepping up to my life. Growing babies and businesses has taught me a lot of the power of leaning into the friction of life, although it still doesn’t come easily to me. I ping-pong between staying comfortable and stepping outside of that comfort zone to experience change. Things get easy and that’s my reminder that I need to make an effort to grow. Leaning into discomfort and doing what’s required to tap into my potential and my purpose always feels just out of reach for me. My natural inclination is to stay comfortable, to lean into the laundry list of excuses, to do it later…

But thankfully, God has put enough of a calling on my heart to keep trying (and failing, and trying again), and I want to share with you some perspective I have gained on stepping out of our comfort zones in order to scale up in all areas of our lives.

Be Brave Enough to Prioritize Yourself

(because avoiding it has been the easier, safer route, and it’s keeping you stuck).

I see it all the time. I see the strung out business owner who can do all the things just to keep his head above water. I see the selfless person who gives to everyone else only to find that they have nothing left to give themselves.

Eventually, it catches up with us and we have no water left in the well to pour into others.

Here’s an example I witness almost daily...

To the mom who wants to crawl out of her own body and into a hole because she is exhausted, sore, weak, and can’t fit comfortably into anything she owns without beating herself up in the mirror: acknowledge that this feeling is affecting other areas of your life and make a decision.

Is it worth it to you to prioritize yourself enough to make a change? That change can come in 20 minutes per day (that’s what I’m doing right now). Sometimes we make a goal or a vision into this big scary beast. We go to extremes and believe it’s all or nothing. The mama that wants to finally lose the weight or get healthy may subconsciously believe that she has to neglect her children, quit her job and abandon her husband in order to achieve that goal.

Obviously that’s not the truth; that’s just the lie she tells herself so that she doesn’t have to start. We’ve gotten so used to being uncomfortable that we don’t want to rock the boat and have to learn how to settle into a new discomfort. This is our safe zone. But here’s the thing: one of these discomforts gets us closer to where we ultimately want to be - that place that we dream about.

So yes, right now it feels like the time isn’t there, but it is. It’s just being invested elsewhere. But it’s up to us to own that, otherwise it leads down a rabbit hole of disappointment and delusion that something will magically change or move us closer to our dreams without doing anything to get there.

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It’s Time to Start Toeing the Line…

That potential, that purpose -- we can’t tap into it from the safety of our comfort zone. Period.

When you step over the line and the doubt and fear start creeping in, this is where growth either happens or is halted. We feel that discomfort and we say “okay, that’s my body telling me this isn’t right for me,” but more likely it’s our mind trying to justify the reason we aren’t willing to go for it when it gets hard.

THE NEW LIFE YOU WANT IS GOING TO COME AT THE SACRIFICE OF THE LIFE YOU’RE CURRENTLY LIVING.

It’s time to evolve. You can’t become who you want to be, who you were destined to be, by staying who you are today.

We are constantly weighing the risks: Is it worth the money? Is it worth the time? Is it worth the sacrifice? But we fail to weigh the risk of not doing it. So many times that risk is far greater. The cost of not going after your dreams is so high we can’t put a number on it. It’s costing us our purpose, our fulfillment and the opportunity to live our lives.

I talked about this with former NFL athlete and America Ninja Warrior, Anthony Trucks, on Episode #019 of my podcast and this one idea has really stuck with me: The last person I want to meet on my deathbed is the person I was meant to be.

So How Do You Step Out of Your Comfort Zone and Scale Up?

It’s a continual practice.

It’s not something you just do once. It’s not a singular choice. It’s all the choices combined. I’m not usually envious of people because of how much money they have, their following, their influence, or even their impact… I have eyes for the people who are doing great things and have PEACE and CLARITY while doing it. Every time I’ve gotten the chance to ask them how they get that peace, the answer is the same: They aren’t immune to failure or struggle, but when they encounter it they actively choose to work through it with intention and their focus on their vision. When you know where you’re going, you accept the journey it takes to get there.

Don’t try to go it alone.

Mentors, even from afar, can serve you along the journey. It always blows me away when I’m mentoring a client or someone in my mastermind and they are overcoming some big stuff and I ask them how therapy is going or what their counselor is telling them and they say they aren’t using one. There’s a lot of pride swallowing involved when stepping into your potential.There’s NO shame in getting the help you need to work through life.

Conferences, books, courses, seminars, retreats - they’re all amazing! But therapy is the personalized tool that truly successful people use to continue this life-long process.

Sometimes it starts with working through your stuff.

Seriously. Let’s say you have this vision, a dream, something on your heart, but you’ve had it rough. You’ve been dealt some seriously tough cards in life. To you, this makes it harder to get to where you want to go. So you look at other people who are doing the thing you want to do and you write a narrative:

“if only I had parents like hers...”

“if my spouse supported me like that...”

“if I hadn’t been through the trauma I’ve gone through...”

“if I had unlimited funds like that...”

You know what that’s doing for you? Nothing. It’s keeping you stuck. It’s guaranteeing that you’re right, you will never do all the amazing things you could be doing because you’re not facing head on the realities of your life.

There is a difference between fault and responsibility. When crappy things happen to you, it’s not your fault. But it is your responsibility to figure it out from there. And that can feel so daunting and even make people angry, but it’s true. People are willing to do the hard work without the heart work.

If your dad destroyed your childhood, that’s a genuinely awful thing and it sucks and you’re right for feeling slighted or abused or angry. But what are you going to do with that reality? THAT is your choice and your responsibility.

If you, God forbid, get cancer, that is NOT fair. It’s also certainly not your fault. But what you do from there is your responsibility. The point is that you’re doing something to keep moving forward AND in the direction you want to go. Moving forward isn’t enough.

Put your blinders on.

Get out of your own way in this pursuit of scaling up.

It’s so easy to see what other people are doing and become envious of their success. But remember this: we are only seeing their highlight reel, but we’re stuck seeing every single ugly moment of truth in our own life. We all go through hard times. We all make the wrong decision from time to time. The key is to keep pursuing the next best choice for you.

When I’m diligent with this, I’m literally an unstoppable force. Because I’m no longer trying to compare myself, trying to emulate anyone, trying to produce like anyone -- it’s just me versus me! I’m in 100% scale up mode in the moments when I’m operating from the inside out. Everything I’m doing is to be better than the me of yesterday, and what anyone else is doing doesn’t matter to me and it doesn’t serve me. So everything I put out into the world, from my content to my vibes, is about my mission; my purpose is to serve and add value and it’s stemming from who I am becoming. When I tune out the noise and do that, I’m in a very peaceful, confident place.

The next time you ask yourself if you can afford to do the thing that will push you into your next level of being, I challenge you instead to pause and ask yourself this: “Can I afford NOT to do this? Can I afford NOT to become this?”