Sandler Trainers: Suzie Andrews and Jim Stephens http://www.starkassociates.sandler.com/
Behind The Business: Todd and Elaine Damschen http://866411zapp.com/
Entrepreneur Radio: Don Reiman http://echelongroup.com/ http://donreimancfp.com/
Suzie Andrews from St. Louis is a well-known change agent in the Sandler Network. Suzie talks us through the process of getting out of your comfort zone.
What experience in our lives has created a feeling of comfort by feeling that we have achieved finality?
On the other side of fear is success and a comfort zone is a disguise for fear.
How do we wake ourselves to self-awareness once we realize we’re in a comfort zone?
Resources, coaches, people around you who can recognize and help you work through the specific issues that you need to challenge.
Personal, motivating goals to challenge the fear and break out of the comfort zone. If we plateau we may not want to rock the goal, but goals help us move past contentment with the status quo.
Fourteen years ago, Suzie joined Ken Stark at Sandler and was motivated and aligned with the vision of that franchise. She built a cookbook, but felt very uncomfortable getting in front of groups. She hoped to rely on Ken to get in front of groups and he pushed back asking, “how can you rely on me when your success is hinged on you speaking in front of groups?”
It helped Suzie realize that to breakdown those comfort zones you need to take one step at a time to break it down. Her stretch goals expanded as she became more and more comfortable with small groups and moved to train groups larger than 1200. Practice creates a different outcome in results and our belief system drives everything. We create a mental toughness through Sandler that makes it hard not to be successful.
The choice at the crossroads is do you power through or hit wimp junction and stop. We are driven by alignment to our personal mission and vision and if we come into contact with discomfort about realizing our ambitions then we need to develop a resistance to that situation. If you have an absolute commitment to your own personal development, self-worth, and goals then you will find success.
But, a lot of people don’t have the guts to get past their fear, they don’t trust it, and they don’t challenge it which pushes them back to being okay where they are. If that’s the reality then it has to be okay.
Any president and CEO needs to examine themselves and look at how much work they are doing to put themselves out of their own comfort zone in order to set that sort of example for the people they are leading and their team. If you are vulnerable enough to share and own your weaknesses and your comfort zones and then engage with transparency then it allows for a space for the individual to engage their team and look for their own personal goals and measurements of success in order to understand people’s goals and line yourself up to helping them be successful.
We learn by observing others. If we look at ourselves and see who we’re most drawn to: those that don’t have armor on and face things head on as a challenge and a process for their own development.
The key to take action to get outside of your comfort zone is to get very specific about what actions. What are you trying, when are you trying it, and how are you going to measure what you are going to try. Generally the approach to change is I’ll give it a try and then wonder whether change took place or not.
This world of at-leaster mentality is the core of living in the comfort zone. The at-leaster, for the most part, lack confidence and self-worth. They create a perpetuating mindset of “at least I’m where I am,” “at least I’m...
