One thing that have noticed as my years in retirement march onward is that my comfort zone is continually shrinking.  By “comfort zone” I mean tasks and activities that I pursue with no dread, no hesitation, and that do not tax my coping skills much at all.  When I was younger—particularly during my working years—I clearly had a huge comfort zone.  I think back over some of the things I did regularly and know that those same activities today would push me into heart palpitations.  Back in the good ole ‘90s, I would routinely fly out to cities I’d never been to before, armed with only an Avis map and handwritten directions from the customer, and drive all over creation looking for their site.  Today, if I leave the house without my cell phone to go one mile to the grocery store, I feel ridiculously vulnerable.  When I had responsibility for a business in New Jersey, I used to drive out there a few days a week traveling with morning commuting traffic heading into NYC.  Talk about a harrowing drive!  Now, if need to drive a four mile stretch on the Turnpike in the middle of the morning on a Tuesday (when there are maybe three other cars on the road), I stay in the right lane and grip the steering wheel for dear life.

What has happened to me?  What happened to the single 35-year-old woman who said an enthusiastic “Yes!” to moving by herself to Mexico?  I spoke no more Spanish than “Hola!” and “Dondé está el baño?”  The job was horrifically ill defined and the best I could expect to do was to only disappoint everyone a little.  And yet, off I went!  Today, I freak out navigating a direct flight to Atlanta to visit my family.  Maybe the real question I need to answer is not “What has happened to me?” but “Why does it matter?”  So that’s what we are going to explore today.

This whole topic has been on my mind lately because Friday I gave a lunchtime webinar for ALMA (The Association of Laboratory Managers).  This was the first time I’d give a seminar in about a year and, believe me, the couple of webinars I did last fall for Lab Manager magazine were equally horrifying.  I am well aware that for most people, giving a public presentation is more fear inducing that the prospect of dying (seriously!), but I had gotten really comfortable with public speaking.  I spent my whole career giving presentations.  By the time I retired, I could get up and spontaneously give a 45 minute seminar on something I knew virtually nothing about using slides someone else put together.  The audience would shed tears of joy and throw flowers at my feet.  I was that good at public speaking! 

By comparison, let me describe for you what these last couple of weeks have been like preparing for this on-line seminar.  To start, I am a very linear thinker and when something is weighing heavily on my mind, I can think of nothing else until it is done.  I know this about myself, which is why I didn’t sit down to draft the slides until a couple of weeks before the presentation date.  I was completely incapable of doing any other task on my To-Do list because all of my energy was consumed by thinking about this seminar.  It’s like if I took the time to call McAfee to negotiate a renewal of my anti-virus software that I would somehow have no capacity left to do an effective job on the webinar.  I continued to bathe regularly and call my Mom every night, but that was about it.  Trish was extremely patient, even when she knew I was sort of using the webinar as an excuse. (“I can’t cook dinner tonight.  You know, webinar in 10 days and all.”)  DDay-2, I sat myself down to do a dry run.  I stumbled awkwardly through my slides, although I did hit my 40 minute target.  For the next 24 hours, I played games on my iPad while I thought through slide transitions.  DDay-1, I did another dry run and this time it went quite smoothly.  I managed to sleep that night without pharmaceutical intervention but did manage to bite my tongue (imagine that), raising a nice painful ulcer.  Yay. 

On the Big Day, I was bundle of nerves.  What if I lose my place or forget something important that I want to say?  What if I start to ramble or, worse, rush along and finish too quickly?  I remembered my first public presentation very early in my career.  I was so nervous that I motored through a 20 minute presentation in 10 minutes.  I think I only took one breath during the whole thing.  Well, spoiler alert, it went fine.  I settled in quickly, made a few good jokes, told a bunch of stories, and only forgot a few things or snubbed a few transitions.  Since this was a webinar, I was speaking into the Great Void so I can’t tell for sure how the seminar was received.  However, I did get some positive feedback through chat, had a whole bunch of hits on the blog site and even picked up a new subscriber (my personal measure of success).  The sense of relief I felt that afternoon was like having successfully defended my PhD thesis!

So why does all this matter?  Well, I accepted the invitation to do this seminar for two reasons.  The first being that I was flattered to be asked and wanted to say yes.  The second is that I instinctively know how important it is to push myself outside of my comfort zone.  This was effortless when I was younger!  I just did what I needed to do.  There was no fear or at least fear didn’t stop me.  I don’t want to get more and more fearful as I get older.  I don’t want my sphere of activity to get narrower and narrower.  Your comfort zone is like a muscle.  If you don’t stress it regularly, it gets weaker.  And a weaker comfort zone means that your range of experiences and richness in your life gets weaker, too.  No, I didn’t work this hard for so many years to let my world close in on me.  So I push.  Probably not often enough nor hard enough, but I have been trying to say “yes” more often than “no”.  This is how I learn.  This is how I grow.  This is how more wonderful people and experiences and general richness come into my life.

Trish, bless her, kept her mouth shut throughout all of this.  She didn’t say, “What is wrong with you?  This should be a piece of cake for you!”  She knew instinctively to not judge someone else when they are pushing outside of their comfort zone and that’s an important message as well.  No one should be ridiculed or shamed for struggling with something that you may find easy to do.  If someone is uncomfortable, they are truly uncomfortable and they are not going to get past it through shame.  What they need from you is validation, encouragement, and, if needed, help finding a workaround if the trigger is just too much.

I will leave you with this thought:  don’t let the fear of being outside your comfort zone stop you.  If you don’t push back against those walls, they will continue to close in on you.  Don’t let that happen.  Make yourself drive downtown every now and then.  Do something that you dread—you will most likely feel very glad you did so and find that it wasn’t really all that bad.  And, sure—say “yes” to giving that presentation!