On Purpose with Jay Shetty - 3 Ways to Get Out of Your Comfort Zone & 3 Ways to Challenge Yourself This Week

Episode Date: December 9, 2022

Today, I will be sharing with you three ways for you to break out of your comfort zone and the endless possibilities if you start following your curiosity. If you keep growing and stop being too comfortable, you will see yourself achieving a whole lot more.If you want to pre-order the book, 8 Rules of Love, go to https://8rulesoflove.com/Key Takeaways:00:00:00 Intro00:01:36 Prepare for the year ahead00:02:11 Breaking out of our comfort zone00:03:42 What is a good goal?00:04:49 You learn in the uncomfortable moments & change your environment00:07:57 When comfort creeps in00:10:39 Figure out your blind spots00:11:35 The uncomfortable became comfortable00:13:08 Complacency and comfort lead to a crash00:15:39 Be limitless00:18:24 Follow your curiosity00:21:58 Three things you need to do next yearLike this show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps! Post a screenshot of you listening on Instagram & tag us so we can thank you personally!Want to be a Jay Shetty Certified Life Coach? Get the Digital Guide and Workbook from Jay Shetty https://jayshettypurpose.com/fb-getting-started-as-a-life-coach-podcast/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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And I'm coming along. Okay, that was a very large cracker now. Listen to the obsessions while chocolate. On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Being limitless is about being comfortable with discomfort. Do you think you were comfortable taking your first few steps as a baby? If you think about being a child, you did something uncomfortable every few months. You started to walk when you couldn't. You started to crawl when you couldn't.

You started to roll over when you couldn't. You started to put yourself to bed when you couldn't. You started to eat things when you didn't know you could. You started to talk when you didn't know you could. You constantly grew and you grew fast and look what it created. Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every single one of you that come back every week to listen, learn and grow.

Take a moment to just thank yourself for showing up for yourself by listening today whenever you're tuning into on purpose. You're doing something good for you. You're stepping outside your comfort zone. You're investing in yourself. And so take a moment. Take a beat to just honor that. I mean, we're coming to the end of the year now. And I hope that you've had an incredible year of breakthrough transformation, transition And I hope that you've had an incredible year of breakthrough, transformation, transition. I hope that this has been a year that you will look back to and remember for all the good things. And if it's been a tough year, then I want to set you up for success next year. And if you've had a great year, I want next year to be an even greater year. So I want you to tune

in to all of our episodes up until the end of the year because I'm going to be an even greater year. So I want you to tune in to all of our episodes up until the end of the year because I'm going to be giving you the insight on how to make 2023 the most incredible year. Now it's about this time of year actually a couple of months ago when I start preparing for the year ahead. So I spend October and November December every year working a little bit harder so that I'm feeling better in January, February, March of next year. I find that doing the work this year and pushing myself a little bit more allows me to come back feeling excited, feeling positive, knowing the winds are coming rather than the anxiety and the stress that often comes with the new year. And today I want to talk to you about that because this year when I was doing it

and last year when I was doing it, I realized I was really using every bit of resilience and grit that I had. I was pushing myself outside of my comfort zone. And that's what I wanna talk to you about today is our comfort zone, our comfort zone makes us feel cozy, it makes us feel warm. And I find that a lot of us during the pandemic, we had to find comfort, we had to find peace, we had to find stability.

That was the need of the hour. That was the need of the years. There was a need for each of us to find comfort, to find peace, to find calm, to find stillness. And what I realize is that often we stay in the space, we needed last season. Right? How many of you feel that that you've stayed energetically in the space you needed last season, but you can tell that the season is changing. There's new things happening, there's new growth, but there's a level of pace that you've got stuck in. And if you're feeling that way, like, yeah, I just feel like I've been a bit slower, I've been a bit lethargic, and maybe you didn't like that. Now, if you like that, that's awesome. But if there's a part of you that knows that you have more potential, that knows that next year, you want

to be more activated, that knows that next year, you want to get after some things that are really important. The thing that's most fascinating about this is that I don't think we recognize how much growth, learning, and moving forward towards something are part of happiness. I think we think of goals as success and achievement. And because we've made it about the result, because we've made it about the bestseller list, because we've made it about the charts, because we've made it about the best seller list, because we've made it about the charts, because we've made it about the rich list, that does become about success and achievement. But who we become in the journey towards our goal, that's what goals are for.

A good goal is a goal that makes you better than you were. Right, that's a good goal. A good goal is not one you reach. A good goal is one that makes you better than you were. And so I think we often don't realize that striving, moving towards something without the pressure of getting there is actually good for our mental health.

It's actually good for our happiness. I'm reading this from a journal, Psychologist Conducted a Study where people documented major life events in an ongoing diary over the course of three months, nine months, and four and a half years after the events happened.

People who engage in a variety of experiences are more likely to retain positive emotions and minimise negative ones than people who have fewer experiences. A study conducted by Yale researchers found that the only time we learn is when there is uncertainty in our emotions. It's impossible to learn in any atmosphere that is too comfortable and familiar. You learn more when you're challenged or when you have to work harder to keep up. So I love those two studies

because we start recognizing, okay, well, I need to have new experiences, I need to put myself in new places. And I only learn when things are uncomfortable. Now I don't need to make my life uncomfortable on certain, but what if I have a discomfort day, right? Or maybe you're like, Jay, I already have uncomfortable mornings,

maybe I just need to look at them differently. So an example of this is I walk into a lot of stores and if you're like me, I've been, you know, I generally, I'm living in LA address very casually. I'll be wearing sweats, wearing my new favorite L-wood sweats, shout out to Justin and the team at L-wood, if you're not wearing L-wood sweats. This is not an ad by the way. I'm just a big fan of the brand and I'm genuinely wearing it right now. But I walk into a store in those sweats. What I find so often is that I'm in my comfort zone wearing sweats and then when I see something

that's different to that item of clothing, it's hard for me to imagine myself in it. And anyone who knows they've only worn the same thing for two years, totally can relate to this. And then when you start putting on things that have a different silhouette or have a different outline or make you look a bit different, it's challenging, right? It's challenging even to change what you wear.

So imagine how challenging it is to change how you think, what you believe, your values, right? We get so stuck, I have a friend who literally has been wearing sweats for the last three years to dinner anywhere everywhere. Now, I don't have anything against sweats, but it was really interesting that I was having this conversation with him. He's struggling in some of his work stuff right now, and I was telling him how he needs to change his environment if he's to change his mind. Changing your environment includes your office space, your mind space, your, the first thing you see in the morning.

I think we underestimate the power of the first thing you see in the morning. For most of us, it's news, notifications, negativity, and noise. What if it was your favorite work of art? What if it was a picture of your family that brought you joy? What if it was the name of your brand? What if it was your favorite lyric or affirmation? What is the first thing you see in the morning? Now, I want to talk about what comfort does. When you stay in comfort, it's and comfort, it's interesting because it creates something and what it creates is complacency. And I want to give a scaled up example of this. So I read a book a few years ago, it's a book that truly changed my life.

It's called Exponential Organizations. And it's all about how the greatest companies in the world think exponentially. And so this was one of the first books that talked about the idea that Airbnb has access to more real estate than any hotel company in the world. Uber has access to more vehicles than any car service. Instagram has more access to media, but doesn't make any. Think about that in 10 to 20 years,

these companies have achieved what it's taken companies 50 plus years to achieve. And a lot of these companies achieved that within their first 10 years. It's unbelievable because there was a lot of complacency and comfort from all these other companies where these other organizations, these exponential organizations, were able to supersede and move super fast past them. And comfort and complacency

creates this stagnation. And there's two sentences that are always quoted as being frames of mind that hold us back. And there's seven word phrases. One of them is we have always done it that way. I have always done it that way. I always do it that way, right? How many times does that thought come up into your mind or in your language? Of, yeah, I know how to do that, we've always done that, right? And the other one that we see a lot is, if it's not broken, don't fix it. If it's not broken, just counting,

don't fix it, right? Like those two statements, create comfort and complacency. So what I want you to do right now, is I want you to reflect where in your life, are you starting to see comfort creep in? Because that's the other thing about comfort. It doesn't break in.

Comfort creeps in. That's why we don't see it. Comfort creeps in. It doesn't break in. If it broke in, you'd notice it. But comfort creeps in ever so slowly that you don't even know how it got involved, how it got engaged, how it was invited in. And so I want you to become really aware of where are those blind spots.

I had a friend ask me the other day, what are your blind spots, Jay, for next year? And I thought, what a brilliant question because if I know that I'm not blind, and that's why it was a genius question. And so what are your blind spots? Think about that for a second. What is something in 2023 that you're not even aware of that might affect you? What is something that you think you've been blind to or you're often blind to. I realize for me, one of the biggest ones every year is getting so good at saying no, learning how to say no is a blind spot for me. I over commit, I over give, I over serve, I over push because I want to be there, I want to show up and it's challenging and I'm trying to understand.

So that's me pushing myself out of my comfort zone. But what I've realized is that really pushing myself out of my comfort zone is learning how to say no. Right, it's really interesting. I was speaking to my friend from Yes Theory, Amar the other day. And Amar was saying that for years Yes Theory, if you don't know the amazing YouTube channel, what they do is they

said yes to a lot of crazy challenges, right? They've gone and done incredible things like find their way out of a country that they got dropped in without a phone, going to like hidden places across the world, tracking in the snow and ice, and all these different physical and mental challenges. And he was saying that doing the next big thing, which was uncomfortable when they started, actually became comfortable. Think about that for a second. The thing that used to make you uncomfortable now has started to make you comfortable. So he said that we realized that we were in our comfort zone. And he said that now,

the greatest root to being out of his comfort zone is actually being alone with his thoughts for 15 minutes, meditating in the morning. So I love that idea that what is it that used to challenge you before? Now you may even have mastered it or pushed yourself to create a discipline out of it. Now you have to find that next challenge in another way. What you've conquered is no longer your discomfort zone. And so I want you to think about that. That sometimes you'll find what are you complacent about, but sometimes it's what have you conquered,

what have you built, what have you achieved, that now isn't challenging you in the same way? And the interesting thing is that complacency and comfort lead to a crash. And we see this with companies, we see this with individuals. I love the examples of, I remember a few years ago, I interviewed Mark Randolph, the co-founder of a huge company. But at one point, he had a small company, and he said that they were around $52 million in debt. And he said they would have done anything

to get the company off their hands. If someone offered them $52 million, they would have taken it to be at zero, just to break even to get out of it because it wasn't going in the right direction. And he said that they even flew, they saved what they had, flew to this company, this big company, who was going to buy them. This company turned down buying them for 50 million. And this bigger company turned down buying them, I heard like three times. That big company was blockbuster. and that small company was Netflix.

Mark Randolph, the co-founder of Netflix, was telling me this story on the podcast. He was one of the first ever guests around three years ago now, three and a half years ago. And it's incredible, right, that a company like Blockbuster with the success that it had, it just doesn't connect. You're just not aware because you get complacent, you get comfortable. Another good example that I like to talk about is Nokia. How many of you remember snake one?

And how many of you remember snake two? And how many of you are still waiting for snake three, right? Like it didn't happen, complacency, comfort. And so you don't even know what complacency and comforts deal from you. That's what's so interesting. They're such fascinating thieves. Well, they're such fascinating thieves that we don't even know what they'll steal from us. I don't want them to steal your potential. I don't want them to steal your service. Now, this doesn't mean you have to hustle or you have to

like push yourself and become productive. That's not my point. My point is, where are you getting complacent and comfortable where you don't want to be? That's the question. The question is, and how can you push yourself harder and how can you make yourself work more? That's not the question. The question is, what is the area in your life where you're getting comfortable and complacent that you don't want to get comfortable

and complacent in. And the other question is, what are your blind spots? What are those areas that you're not even conscious of that are affecting your potential? Being limitless is about being comfortable with discomfort. Do you believe that people were comfortable going to the space or moon? You know, do you think people were comfortable? Do you think you were comfortable taking your first few steps as a baby? If you think about being a child, you did something uncomfortable every few months, right? You started to walk when you couldn't. You started to crawl when you couldn't. You started to roll over when you couldn't. You started to put yourself to bed when you couldn't. You started to eat things when you didn't know you could. You started to talk when you didn't know you could. You constantly grew and you grew fast and look what it created.

And for some reason, when we finish college, we finish school, whatever it may be, it's feel like you're grown up, like you're a grown-up, right? You're grown up, no more growing left. Doesn't make sense, you're a grown up, no more growing left. Now if you're grown up, keep growing. A good way to learn about a place is to talk to the people that live there. There's just this sexy vibe in Montreal,

this pulse, this energy. But what has been seen is a very snotty city. People call it Bosedangeless. New Orleans is a town that never forgets its pay. A great way to get to know a place is to get invited to a dinner party. Hi, I'm Brendan Francis Newdum, and not lost as my new travel podcast, where a friend and I go places, see the sights, and try to finagle our way into a dinner party. We're kind of trying to get invited to a dinner party.

It doesn't always work out. I would love that, but I have like a Cholala who is aggressive towards strangers. I love the dogs. We learn about the places we're visiting, yes, but we also learn about ourselves. I don't spend as much time thinking about how I'm gonna die alone when I'm traveling,

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Listen to not lost on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Not too long ago, in the heart of the Amazon Rainforest, this explorer stumbled upon something that would change his life. I saw it and I saw, oh wow, this is a very unusual situation. It was cacao. The tree that gives us chocolate. But this cacao was unlike anything experts had seen. Poor tasted. I've never wanted us to have a gun fight.

I mean, you saw the stacks of cash in our office. Chocolate sort of forms this vortex. It sucks you in. It's like I can be the queen of wild chocolate. We're all lost. It was madness. It was a game changer. People quit their jobs. They left their lives behind so they could search for more of this stuff.

I wanted to tell their stories, so I followed them deep into the jungle, and it wasn't always pretty. Basically, this like disgruntled guy and his family surrounded the building arm with machetes. And we've heard all sorts of things, and you know, somebody got shot over this. Sometimes I think, oh, all this for a damn bar of chocolate. Listen to obsessions while chocolate on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcast. I am Mianla, and on my podcast, The R-Spot, we're having inspirational, educational, and sometimes difficult and challenging conversations about relationships. They may not have the capacity to give you what you need. And insisting means that you are abusing yourself now. You human! That means that you're crazy as hell, just like the rest of us.

When a relationship breaks down, I take copious notes, and I wanna share them with you. Anybody with two eyes and a brain knows that too much Alfredo sauce is just no good for you. But if you're gonna eat it, they're not gonna stop you. Yep. So he's gonna continue to give you the Alfredo sauce and put it even on your grits if you don't stop him. Listen to the art spot on the iHeart Video app Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Right, if you're a grown up, keep growing. I want to be a growing up. I think we've just put these phrases into the world that have stunted our growth when you think about curiosity killed the cat and I'll get on to that. Curiosity didn't kill the cat complacency did, but if you always heard that as a kid, you became more safe. You became less pro-risk. And there's benefit in this. I'm not saying there's no benefit in safety. There is. But there's also benefit in the opposite.

And I think what I'm finding is we're not trying to choose an extreme. We're not trying to choose one or the other. What we're trying as a collective is to find that middle path. How many of you were first comfortable when you started doing what you are doing now? I'm sure none of you were comfortable. I'm sure you still feel discomfort when you try something new.

All the best stuff happened when we put ourselves into uncomfortable situations. All our best stuff came from that, right? Reflect on that for a second. How many of your best moments came from things that, right? Reflect on that for a second. How many of your best moments came from things that were uncomfortable? Now, I want you to take the opposite path. So, we talked about one pathway. Comfort leads to complacency, leads to crashing, right? Comfort, complacency, crash. And that's the journey we go on. We start with getting comfortable. It creeps in.

As it creeps in and it develops, right, we end up getting complacent. And then as complacency develops, we crash. Now, even before comfort is casualness, right? So you may not even be comfortable, but there may be like a casual feeling around certain things. As you become more casual, you become more comfortable. And so I want you to ask yourself, where are you starting to see signs of that journey? And how are you going to limit that journey controlling you?

Now the opposite journey starts with curiosity, right? Curiosity. There's a beautiful quote by Zig Zigler that I love. You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great. Curiosity. What are you curious about? What are you not leaning into? What have you been thinking about for two years?

Oh, I really want to do a podcast. Oh, I really want to write a book. I really want to act. Whatever it may be. You're curious about it, but you haven't followed that curiosity why because you've been comfortable and complacent. I'm doing a world tour next year, everyone. I am so excited and I want you to head over to jsheditour.com to get your tour dates and buy your tour tickets and I want you to head to

eight rules of love.com to buy and pre-order the book. But jsheditour.com, I'm coming on tour. Now, it's a big tour. It's like, I'm going all across the world. I'm excited for you to sell out every place, obviously, that I visit. It's, I've never done it before. I'm super new. I mean, I'm very comfortable being on stage. I love that part, but I've never traveled so much to so many cities in such a short space of time, but I'm curious. I've been curious about going on tour for such a long time.

So here we are. And so curiosity helps you build competence. As you get curious, what you have to do, the mistake we make is we let curiosity's remain a passion, which means they give us diminishing return. So here's the thing, if you're passionate about something, if you're curious about something, but you don't get good at it, it gives you less and less joy. Have you ever found that when you want to learn a language, but you don't learn it quick enough,

and now it just frustrates you, right? Almost the idea upsets you, even when someone says it at dinner, it triggers you because you know you haven't made progress, right? If you say, I really wanna launch podcasts, I really wanna write a book, but you don't build your competence in it, then when someone brings it up, it kind of like makes you feel uncomfortable.

So we create our own discomfort because we don't build competence. So figure out that course, that program you need to go on to build your competence, your skills. We now have over a thousand J. Shuddy certified coaches and I found that all of these coaches have built an incredible competence, not just to be great coaches, but to be great parents, partners, professionals, friends.

So curiosity leads to competence, which leads to crushing it, right? We have that choice. Do we want to crash? Or do we want to crush? And there's only one led a difference in those two words, and it's you, right? It's a choice that you make,

that you take the path of curiosity or you take the path of comfort. Now, I'm not saying that you shouldn't be comfortable in your life, that you shouldn't have comforts in your life. That's a different conversation. I actually find that I live 75% of my life in my discomfort zone, and so my personal life is very comfortable. I have a very comfortable bed. I travel very comfortably because 75% of my life is uncomfortable. When I get off a plane, I have to do something uncomfortable. Right?

When I wake up in the morning, I often have to do something uncomfortable early in the morning. And so I've tried to make my life surrounding that comfortable so that it can catch me. So that not everything is uncomfortable, right? You can't have a life where everything, so my personal needs are comfortable, as opposed to my challenges that I take on.

Now, I'm going to ask you this question. What are three things you know you need to do to transform your life next year? What are three things you know you need to do? Here's the thing. You know your life better than I do. I'm not here to tell you what to do. I'm here to help you figure out how to do it and how to think about it. What are the three things you need to do?

I'm going to tell you what are the three things stopping you from doing those three things. The first thing is you need to set challenges, not just goals, challenges. And I think this is the mindset switch. We keep setting goals and then we keep feeling disappointed that we don't reach them. Set challenges. What are you challenging yourself to do? Not where are you trying to get? Not what goal or target you trying to hit? What is a challenge you're setting yourself? I challenge myself to go on a world tour, right?

That's a challenge. My goal isn't do a world tour. My goal is my my challenges Do a world tour, right? Go on a world tour. I challenge myself to take a world tour. I get exciting You're competitive with yourself. We always say that oh, no, I don't compete world tour. I challenge myself to take a world tour. It gets exciting. You're competitive with yourself. We always say that, oh no, I don't compete against anyone. I compete against me. Right, we all say that. But what does that mean? It means you challenge yourself.

A competitor's only role is to challenge you to become better. That's what competitors are for. That's what comparison is for. It's not to make you feel worse. It's to make you want to be better in things you care about. So if you're going to make yourself your own competitor, that has to be how you use it. So find someone in your life that challenges you, but challenge yourself. Someone that keeps you accountable.

Share an audacious challenge with yourself and the person that you want to have in your life. One that makes you feel a little uncomfortable, but you're excited about it. Right? The second step is figure out what in your day to day needs to change. What in your environment needs to change? What about your environment is getting too comfortable. Have you created a weekend routine that's too comfortable, a morning routine that's too comfortable? And I don't want you to be harsh on yourself and I don't want you to make big changes.

You can listen to my episode on habits to help you figure that out. And the third step is I want you to repeat these three affirmations. I even want you to write them down. I am ready to go to the next level. Repeat that after me. I am ready to go to the next level. I am ready to go to the next level. Now this one take it internally. I can do hard things. I can do hard things. I can do hard things. And the third one is, I will not settle for less than I deserve. I will not settle for less than I deserve. Thank you so much for joining me today.

I'm so grateful for all the love, all the energy this year. We've got a few more weeks to make 2020 too amazing. And I'm going to be starting 2023 with the bank. We've got so many great episodes for health and wellness, for mindset, for your gut, for your heart health, for your mental health, deeply powerful conversations with people that we know and love. I'm so excited for 2023, and I'm gonna help you be excited and energized for it as well.

Keep tuning into On Purpose. I'll see you again next week. Or tomorrow. Thank you so much. Take care. again. Hey, it's Debbie Brown, host of the Deeply Well podcast, where we hold conscious conversations with leaders and radical healers and wellness around topics that are meant to expand and support you on your wellbeing journey. Deeply well is your soft place to land, to work on yourself without judgment,

to heal, to learn, to grow, to become who you deserve to be. Deeply well with Debbie Brown is available now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Namaste. The therapy for Black Girls podcast is your space

to explore mental health, personal development, and all of the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves. I'm your host, Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, and I can't wait for you to join the conversation every Wednesday. Listen to the Therapy for Black Girls podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever

you get your podcast. Take good care. When my daughter ran off to hop trains, I was terrified I'd never see her again, so I followed her into the train yard. This is what it sounds like inside the box-top. And into the city of the rails, there I found a surprising world, so brutal and beautiful that it changed me, but the rails do that to everyone. There is another world out there, and if you want to play with the devil, you're going

to find them there in the rail yard. Undenail Morton, come with me to find out what waits for us and the city of the rails. Listen to City of the Rails on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Or, cityoftherails.com.