Can you imagine driving up a road in a strange city to an apartment that you have rented to run Retreat Training and realizing this is totally the ‘wrong’ side of town?
There is rubbish everywhere, groups of lads walking around, overgrown gardens and you felt like you are on a movie set. A young woman that was walking past your car nearly jumped out of her skin when you wound down the window to ask her if she knew where the apartment was. You did not feel safe and knew your people had paid a lot of money to come and train with you and this was not the right location to have it in at all.
Luckily, this is one of my only accommodation horror stories in over 20 years of running retreats. But it was a lesson learned about getting too comfortable with how I organize my events and support others to do the same.
Getting comfortable and confident in what you do is great but letting it stop it stretching and teaching you is not, and that is what happened to me. I let my standards and procedures slip a little and the result was I ended up in an apartment that I also suspect was operating as a brothel and being threatened by the owner before I hightailed it out of there and found a last minute alternative at one of the participants beautiful homes. The perfect solution to what potentially could have been a dangerous situation.
It made me think about what my level of comfort is – where my safe zone lies, and how it has become stagnant in certain areas of my business. So I have done three things:
1. First, I had to think about what is a safe or comfort zone and how does it affect my retreats and training. I defined it as those things that we do without thinking about them, space we feel safe in and the boundaries that we set around ourselves so that we keep ourselves protected and secure in our business. I took time to look over my systems and what is not being done because it is outside of the ‘safe’ zone. Within this, I examined my business to now and also past employment to look at patterns where I had not stepped up and therefore lost opportunities. I can see this has happened a lot for me I hesitate and therefore lose momentum and an opportunity that is there to stretch me fly by and I am still no better off.
2. Once I had identified what was outside the safe zone that I could be stretching into I started looking at how this could be done. For me, it was doing mind maps with steps towards each goal, but within that identifying what makes me anxious and stops me expanding so that I can clear those blocks and move forward. Part of this was healing some relationships in my life, letting go of past hurt so that I can move forward emotionally and spiritually.
3. Lastly, I have started to take real action – step up and away from past safe zones. And while I am pushing against an invisible rubber band, sometimes it is stretching further away and it actually feels really good. A prime example of this is I had put off marketing some international retreat training – because I told myself it will be ok people will sign up, then the realization that no they won’t unless I get out there, get on podcasts and interviews and make myself known to others!
It has certainly been a month of change for me and so now I challenge you to look at what is in your safe zone.
1. Do you want to stay where you are and not move up and forward in your life and business?
2. What is stopping this movement and what makes you hesitate the most?
3. What is the worst case scenario if you stretch outside of your safe zone?
4. Now you have thought about the worst case what about the best case?
My best advice from my terrible accommodation experience is – look what your safety nests are, where do they sit in your safe zone and how far can you stretch them to make your business bigger and better than ever while taking you on the path of your destiny.
