While trying be accomplished and successful, we work all week and get our personal responsibilities done during whatever downtime is available. Yet, all the while, we spend much of our mental energy figuring out how we can carve out a few precious hours of comfort.
Comfort can be a double-edged sword. If we languish there too long, we can grow complacent. Being content with our lot may be the key to inner peace, but too much comfort can stymie creativity.
If we stop thinking creatively, we lose our edge, we become satisfied with what is and forget that all good things stem from imagining what is yet to be. The five essentials to business success: “Good enough today is not good enough tomorrow” serves as a constant reminder to be diligent about moving forward.
All successful entrepreneurs will tell you: “Comfort is the enemy of innovation”. Innovation is what has separated their businesses from "business as usual." If you want to own and operate a successful business yourself, get out of your comfort zone.
The First Step
What is the first step?
Create an inner motivation to overcome your natural fear of stepping into the unknown.
Reorganize your thought patterns. Thoughts of failure are the main reason that many don't create successful institutions and enterprises that actually make living on the earth more satisfying and profitable. Get your mind right and devise a plan to keep your finances in balance.
While acknowledging that things can go wrong, begin to imagine your future the way you want and expect it to be. All great athletes will tell you that visualizing the goal is the first step to attaining it.
Taking Action
Picture yourself as head of a successful business even when things are difficult. Doing so actually creates new patterns in the brain that help move you out of your comfort zone.
Before success becomes a reality, first believe that success is attainable. Thoughts and behaviors that seem only to exist in others actually begin to take shape within your own mind and spirit.
Once you have moved beyond your fears, take action.
As the German philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goeth once said:
Action, itself, is a great fear destroyer. Once you start moving in the direction of your goals, you will have no time to think about why you shouldn't have taken the path you're already on. Your old comfort zone will begin to recede in the rearview mirror, and success will draw itself to you just as you continue to do the things that you need to do to move you closer to it.
About the Author:
Al Krulick writes and blogs for Debt.org, a financial help website.