My story about getting out of the comfort zone

This post might be a little different from my other posts recently, but I somehow felt a need to write about this now. Recently, I have heard the saying about getting out of the comfort zone many times and therefore decided to write something that relates to that saying. This is actually my story in short. A story about a very shy girl, who had to learn to be brave and have faith in herself.

In my youth, I was really, I mean really, shy person. I really didn't talk to new people (I still usually don't unless someone speaks to me first) and luckily I always had more outgoing friends who took care of talking so I could just stand by, listen and smile. I assume many people are like this, but I was so shy that I, for example, simply didn’t have the courage to book an appointment for myself to a hairdresser. I was just simply too shy to talk to a person on the phone. But above all this, I also had terrible stage fright. I just tried to avoid all the situations where I had to be in front of people. And in case something like this was coming up at school, I usually was sick that day, trying to postpone the situation altogether.

I was passionate about sports though, any kind of sport really, and one day I was asked to be a group exercise instructor. And for some reason, I found myself saying yes to this offer. Here is kind of paradox, right? But I convinced myself that this was different from talking in front of the people, this was something I loved myself, so teaching others was just me spreading this love. I ended up instructing groups for many years.

The stage fright lifted its ugly head again during my yoga teacher training three years ago. I was really way out of my comfort zone. Yoga world was so different, in so many ways than exercising and instructing where I was used to. And the fact that of course, I had to teach in English was one extra big factor in this equation. After the teacher training when I taught my first actual customers back home, I struggled with my mother tongue and felt really nervous when teaching. To be honest, I was really afraid before each class until recently. So what happened, that shifted my attitude?

I found myself in a situation where I moved abroad to teach yoga, and this was something I had dreamed of for years. And it was just before my first class in Indonesia, I started to panic. What this situation is, that I have put myself in, I was wondering? Am I supposed to teach this large group of people in English? Can I still back out from this situation? Of course, I survived from my first class even though I realized in the middle of the 90 minutes class that my sequence is too short and I had to make up new sequence in the middle of my first class. After that, I haven't been afraid to teach in Finnish or English, because I realized that the passion to teach is far greater than the fear after all. And because teaching is my territory. 

So what it is that I want to bring into your attention with this writing? If you have a dream, be brave and follow that dream. Yes, it might be frightening for sure, but let me ask you this. Do you want the fear get in the way of your passion and your dream coming true? The truth is, that rarely things that we dream about, can be achieved by staying in the comfort zone. So I encourage you to take a step out from the comfort zone towards your dream, and always have faith in yourself. I promise you that it is totally worth of all the butterflies and shakes. It is about your dream becoming a reality.

PS. Are there any specific you would like me to write about? Comment below. <3

​“Do something uncomfortable today.
By stepping out of your box,
you don’t have to settle for what you are
- you get to create who you want to become.”
Howard Walstein

Photo by Sammie Vasquez on Unsplash