There is a lot of talk about your comfort zone and reaching outside of it. Everyone can agree that occasionally stretching of your zone is a good thing for you but very few people want to do it. Let’s face it, it is stressful and sometimes a little scary to set out of it, heck it is called a comfort zone for a reason. I’m comfortable there, it is safe and cozy and I know exactly what is expected of me. Outside of it is dark and scary and worst of all, I might fail.

See that is what really bothers me about stepping outside of my comfort zone, the fear that I might fail and that is just ridiculous. Of course I might fail, nobody gets everything right the first time they try things. Cognitively I know this, but emotionally, I still grapple with the fear of failure. In fact, it sometimes takes me actually outlining the worst case scenario before I’ll take the first step out of the zone. You know what? Almost always the worst case scenario is not that bad. The price of failure is typically minor and almost always the risk can be mitigated down to almost nothing with the proper procedures, whether it is rappelling down a mountain for the first time, starting your own business, or talking to complete strangers.

I have a friend who, among other things, is a SWAT instructor. I had done some web work for him so he signed me up to participate in an advanced pistol training class that was being held. At this class were a combination of police officers and National Guardsmen. I was the only civilian there. I borrowed some BDUs from my friend so I’d blend in better and went to the course.

The very first thing we did was take a test to gauge our current pistol skills. These were things like drawing the pistol from the holster and putting one shot in the chest in under 1.5 seconds, drawing, firing twice, and reloading in under 3 seconds, etc. Well these were all things that I had never really practiced before so predictably, I did very poorly. In fact, out of 100 points I scored 0. I didn’t feel too bad since the scores ranged from 4 up to 95 with most in the 30s, so I felt that I scored appropriately.

So then the instruction and drills began. It was tiring but interesting and I definitely understood what the instructor was trying to get us to do. The whole morning we did not even shoot, we just practiced things like holding the pistol, drawing it, squeezing the trigger, etc. After lunch the shooting began using our newly learned skills. We were drawing from the holster and shooting paper plates and I was having a terrible time with it. Normally, I’m a decent shot but I was just having a serious disconnect between what I wanted to do and what I was doing. Clearly I was the slowest in the class.

This frustrated me greatly because I rarely have difficulty learning new things. I typically pick up concepts quickly and move on, but this pistol class was eating my lunch. We ended the first day and I was totally disgusted. In fact, I didn’t want to go back the next day at all. I started to make up an excuse for why I couldn’t make it, but then I just stopped myself. What was the penalty for failure here? What if I did worse today, what would happen? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Why did I just want to say home? Because I was outside of my comfort zone and I just wanted to run back in and feel safe and smart again.

So I drug myself out to the range. I told my friend my frustrations, hoping that by verbalizing them I’d realize how silly they were. He said that I’d get it, I just needed to keep practicing. Well the morning dragged on and I was still not hitting the target that well and my muscles were sore from all the previous days work. This was a mistake coming back. But I persevered. And then a strange thing happened. It all came together. I found the balance I was missing, I relaxed and I let the training take over. Soon I was hitting the targets regularly and I felt that thrill of accomplishment and success.

At the end of the class we did the exact same test over again to show how far we had progressed. This time, I was fluid. One of the last tests was draw the pistol, fire two shots to the chest and one to the head. When I saw the hole appear in the target at the head I let out a yell of satisfaction as I finally put into practice everything I worked hard to learn.

At the end, I was the most improved student in the class (not hard to do when you start at 0) and I picked up some valuable skills. All because I moved outside my comfort zone and persevered. There is such a great feeling of satisfaction when you move forward, especially because you know that your zone has now expanded a little and what was once uncomfortable now becomes comfortable and much easier. So I encourage you to stretch your zone out and explore new experiences.