Trusting Yourself Outside Your Comfort Zone

I was coaching a Big Stretch recently up in the mountains of Spain. This is a powerful week-long holiday/course in which we ask the participants to identify an area of their life where they want to stretch and take big steps forward.

As we all know stretching out of your comfort zone is scary. And it should be! Any goal that is only exciting is too small and we will grow out it far too quickly. Any goal that is only scary is too big and we simply won’t go there. So the right kind of goal is the one that is both scary and exciting!

So much for the theory, but what about the practise? When you are sitting in front of a big stretchy goal often one of the challenges is “Can I trust myself to be able to handle this? Will I be able to handle the challenges inherent in this, and succeed?” We had just this question arise on the course.

Of course there are no guarantees that any decision we take will work out as we want. Once we start walking along a path we often get pushed off course with unforeseen situations or obstacles. That’s par for the course. It is these challenges that help you grow as human beings, they are a necessary part of your life. However if you feel you can trust yourself it is so much easier to take that first step.

Up in the mountains I set an exercise that really helps with this question. I asked the participant that on the next hike he take a walk through his life and identify as many times as he could remember when he hit a challenge and what he did to overcome it. When he reported back the stress was all but gone from his face. He said that he had seen many times (and some he had forgotten about until he did this exercise) when he had indeed hit a challenge, and got himself through it successfully. Sticky situations where he had come up with a solution that until faced with the question he would never had foreseen himself finding. He saw just how resourceful he was in the face of challenges. That information was enough for him to commit to following his heart and trusting himself that he would take care of whatever arose.

Sure he went on to make a clear plan of how he would achieve his goal and what contingencies he wanted in place to move on with it. However, that process of seeing that he could trust himself to take care of not only himself, but his family too, was a key ingredient in the process.

Are you feeling a little low on self-trust right now? Do you need a proverbial walk up in the mountains to gain the self-confidence? If so, and you’d like some help, then do get in touch and lets have a chat about how I can support you in gaining the mental mindset to move your life forward.