Stuck In Your Comfort Zone

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Christmas is here!
With Christmas comes the end of one year and the beginning of a new year.  Like hanging a new calendar for the new year, the beginning of a new year is the traditional time to evaluate our lives and commit to making some changes.
What were your New Year's Resolutions for 2018?
How long did they last before you gave up on them?
Have you learned that lesson and don't even set them anymore?

Let's look at this from another angle for 2019:
What is something that you have always wanted to accomplish, but have never given it a serious effort?
What is the biggest challenge you are facing in your marriage, profession, and personal character?
What would your life look like next Christmas if you...

1. Developed the courage to chase you life-long dream?
2. Face that big challenge that is keeping you from having the marriage of your dreams?
3. Stepped out and pursued your passion instead of just settling for a paycheck?
4. Attacked that "thing" that you really need to change about yourself (get back into shape, stop looking at porn, stop drinking, spend more time reading the Bible every week, etc.)?

Does that short list seem intimidating, or even impossible?  It isn't.  You will never completely turn your life around in one year, but it doesn't take an entire year to start replacing bad habits with good habits, either.  The key is to START!

There is a simple Success Formula that can help you get started and keep you going once you are in motion towards becoming the ideal you.  

Define--Learn--Do

Define

The first thing you need to do is to write down the answer to each of the 4 questions above, each on its own sheet of paper.

Be specific.  Give each one lots of thought and lots of detail.  The more detailed the better.

1. What is your dream?  What does your life look like when you get it?  What does it mean to the world when you get your dream?  Who do you have to become to get your dream?  Who do you have to serve?
2. What is your vision of the perfect marriage?  How do you feel every time you think about, or see you spouse?  How can you serve your spouse better?  What if you stopped thinking about your own needs and hurts so much, and focused entirely on serving your spouse's needs and stopped hurting her/him so much?
3. What are you passionate about?  How can you best use that passion to serve others, especially Jesus?  Is there already a company or organization that exists where you could maximize your passions and gifts, or do you need to step out and start something totally new that doesn't exist yet?
4. What is that one vice that you really hate about yourself?  Can you defeat it on your own, or do you need to get some help?  How is this one character failure negatively impacting every aspect of your life?  What would it feel like to be free of the grip it currently has on your life?

These questions are to help you get started.  This is what I meant when I wrote, "Be specific.  Give each one lots of thought and lots of detail.  The more detailed the better."  Don't limit yourself to these questions, but recognize that this is something you need to spend some time on.  Don't be intimidated by the process, but don't just breeze through it either.  The more effort you put into this step, the easier and more successful the next two steps will be.

The "Define" step is critical.  Until you truly define what you want your life to look like and commit to putting it down on paper, nothing in your life will change for the better (with the exception of the rare "happy accident").  This Success Formula is a mere 3-step process.  If you don't have the character and work ethic to do just 3 things, then success isn't in the cards for you.  I know that right about now some of you are making excuses to yourself why you aren't even going to attempt this.  That's why I titled this article STUCK In Your Comfort Zone.  

You're not where you are in life because it's where you want to be (although you have chosen it).  You're there because you've gotten lazy and complacent.  You give more time to making excuses and justifying your failures than you do setting goals and chasing them.  When is the last time you actually set a goal?

This is the way you change all of that.  This is the way you break out of your Comfort Zone and begin to realize the incredible potential God has placed in you from your conception.  This is how you live your God-given purpose!  

There is also one other thing to keep in mind here:

You can't do any of this on your own.  You will daily need to lean on God for His help and guidance.  Remember, according to St. Paul "...you have been called according to His purpose."  It's ultimately not our own purpose we seek to accomplish, but His.  The ultimate goal is to glorify Him, not ourselves.  This is actually one of the reasons to begin this process- it helps us to realize how feeble we all are, and how much we need the Lord God Almighty who created each and every one of us.

Learn

Congratulations!  You have made it to step two.  For some of you, this step may be the most challenging because you just took the time to clearly define what you want your life to look like at the end of 2019, but now what?  If you already knew how to have the life you wanted- you would already have the life you want.  Make sense?

That's the enigma the LEARN step unravels.  This step is built on another simple 3-step process:  READ--LISTEN--ASSOCIATE.  Albert Einstein said, "You can't fix your current problems with the same level of thinking that created them."  This actually makes a lot of sense when you think about it.

Up to this point we have all made, what we felt at the time, to be the best choices.  The problem is that time has proven how unwise too many of those choices were.  If we were able to go back in time 10 or 20 years, there are numerous choices that we would make differently based on what we know now.  

This is ultimately the advantage that READ--LISTEN--ASSOCIATE gives us.  It allows us to learn from people throughout the ages to make better decisions today.

Reading is the crucial key to this whole process, and to any real education and personal growth.  Reading is the way that we make permanent and lasting changes within ourselves.  Once you have done the DEFINE step, reading is the how to start putting it together.  Books are a true blessing from God.  Good books are the collection of human wisdom from thousands of years ago to the present age.  Everything we need to know about turning our DEFINE into reality is written in a book someplace.  You just need to find it.  

Reading is the foundation of all great education and great learning.  Any reading program must start with the Bible.  God's Word is the foundation of all wisdom and our ultimate purpose- How we can  best serve Jesus.

After the Bible, I would suggest the Antioch Academy's TOP 50 Booklist to get your reading program started.

Listening is the next component to learning.  You have to find a quality audio training program that you can plug into every day.  You need to listen to at least 3-5 personal development audios every day.  This is essential for your education and growth.  

Audios are versatile.  You can listen to them while you're driving.  You can listen while you're working out.  You can listen while you are doing anything else.  This is a huge advantage over reading.  You can listen to an audio anytime, anywhere.  It's what Rob Robson calls NET learning- No Extra Time.  Listening to quality audios is something you can do while you're doing the stuff you are already doing.  Simple!  Easy!  So what are you waiting for?  Need some suggestions for this too?  Okay.

• Downloadable Audios from the Antioch Academy for Christian Discipleship
• Rascal Radio (from LIFE Leadership)
• Christ for Disciplers podcast

The final piece is Associate.  There are a couple of ways to accomplish this piece.

1. Leadership Challenge Groups
2. Mentor/Coaching
3. Accountability Partner
4. Seminars and Classes
5. Small Group Bible study

The purpose of association is to help you get uncomfortable with being the "old" you.  Good association will encourage you to keep working at your plan.  It will help you see your victory in the victories of others.  Good association will help you kill bad habits by spending more time with positive people who will encourage you.  The power of association is often underestimated when it comes to making changes in our lives, big or small.  

This is ultimately what church is all about.  It's a regular meeting of like minded individuals who encourage each other and worship God together.  There's a reason the Bible tells us not to give up meeting together.  Friends, family, and mentors are all a blessing from God.  We need to get around positive, like-minded people often to help us recharge our batteries and re-energize us for the daily pursuit of our purpose.

Finally, a mentor/coach/accountability partner is crucial.  We have to have someone that we can meet with and talk to who has more results in life than we do.  We need someone who can see our struggles from the outside and help us to re-frame our situation.  Their advice and perspective is priceless.  Having a mentor is a huge shortcut in the process of change.  Finding someone who is truly qualified to mentor you can be a challenge, but it is worth all the effort it takes to do so.  Fortunately, the old saying, "When the student is ready, the teacher appears", has more truth to it than most people realize.  When you commit to your journey of changing yourself and your associations, the right person to mentor you will show up when you least expect it.  Keep your eyes and ears open!

DO

Finally, how do you put it all together?
At the LEARN step you are starting to do some things, but don't get fooled by that activity.  The DO step is about actually working on your plan.  This is the piece that takes courage.  This is where you ask for help, have those difficult conversations, discipline yourself to kill bad habits and work to form new good habits.
This is where you do the physical work of changing.
Orrin Woodward has developed a 4-step process for change and growth called Plan-Do-Check-Adjsut (PDCA).  This is the process that you will learn to master, because it is the process to change and grow in anything.

Plan

Once you have defined what you want to change, and what you want the outcome to look like, you need to make a gameplan.  This is made up of small goals and the steps you are going to take to achieve them.

Your big goal is what you want to achieve by the end of 2019.  In order to get there, you have to break that big goal down into 30-day goals.  This is where you define the specific tasks that must be accomplished by the end of this month to keep moving you towards your BIG goal.

DO

This step is pretty simple: DO your plan!

CHECK

This is the step where you take an honest look at what you have been doing.  Recognize what's working and what isn't.  Don't fall into the trap of looking at the results of your work to support what you already thought.  You need to be honest about your results.  It's okay if things didn't work out the way you thought they would.
Maybe your plan is solid- you just have to get better at doing it.  Where do you need to develop and improve skill sets?  One of the reasons why many of the things you are doing are outside of your comfort zone is because you aren't very good at them.  As your skills increase, so will your comfort level and effectiveness.

It will also be helpful for you to think through this step with your mentor.  This is a place where he will see things that you don't, and he can offer another perspective on the feedback you are getting from doing your plan.

Adjust

That brings us to the final step- ADJUST.  This is where you take your feedback from the CHECK step and make the necessary adjustments to your plan.  Then it's just a matter of running the PDCA process for another 30 days...for the next 12 months.  You will PDCA your way to a brand new you for next Christmas.  Let that be your Christmas present to yourself, and the world, next year.

I don't know if that seems too easy to be true, or if it sounds like way too much work to even get started; but you can be sure of one thing:  If you do nothing to change in 2019, nothing will change for the better in 2019!

Beat the New Year's rush and get started today!

Merry Christmas!

Jason Fredrick