Andy reckons I had Stockholm syndrome, that thing when hostages bond with their captors.

He said my captor was my comfort zone.

He might just be right…

Because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t bring myself to leave my ‘zone’, that place I’d been for well over 13 years.

The thing this, I can still remember those hideous Monday mornings…

6am, the alarm clock screeching like nails down a blackboard.

It needn’t have bothered, I’d been awake since 3 anyway listening to the rain hammer off our bedroom window.

It’s dark, it’s cold, it’s wet and I want to be somewhere warm and sunny. I’m not talking about retirement, just somewhere that was a bit more palatable during the long winter months.

Hey ho, like a robot, I hit the ‘off’ button and run into the shower.

It’s still dark outside when I start the car and turn the heated seat to ‘tropical’ - the windscreen wipers having the Monday blues too as they struggle to clear the driving rain from the glass.

On the radio, Meatloaf sings out…

“Nothing ever grows in this rotting old hole, everything is stunted and lost. And nothing really rocks and nothing really rolls and nothing's ever worth the cost…”

And so the 5-day ‘comfort zone’ cycle had begun all over again…

Because at the time it seemed easier to tackle these grim mornings than to give up my job and contemplate starting a new life as my own boss in another country.

In our coaching sessions, we ask them not to visualise what they do want, but visualise what they DON’T want.

Those cold, miserable days were definitely not what I wanted. But still, the comfort zone had me in its clutches as I turned up the seat another notch…

Andy had talked about moving to Spain for ages. But then he operates on some entirely different level where he can just up sticks and go to far off places without giving it much thought.

He even went to Australia for a day (I kid you not)!

But he’s been an entrepreneur for the majority of his working life, so big changes are taken in his stride.

I knew that I had to embrace change. I’d been doing the same thing for too long inside of my comfort zone and felt like I hadn’t personally grown for years.

I was living for the weekends and holidays, and for me there was something fundamentally wrong with that lack of balance.

Another thing that Andy teaches is to break down overwhelming tasks into bite size pieces. He likens it to flying his plane when he ‘always starts with the end in mind and works backwards to put a plan in place’.

So that’s what we did to break me out the ‘zone’…

We took the big audacious project and broke it up into pieces. Don’t get me wrong, there were a LOT of pieces, but we could see a way forward as we started ticking them off one by one.

So 13 weeks later as we crossed the border from France into Spain it was cold, dark and absolutely lashing down…

But that’s okay because this type of rain brings growth, and as we drove further out of my comfort zone I could already feel new life.

Of course I’m still a bit terrified, but it’s not the hellish Sunday night, Monday morning monsters anymore…

It’s about potential, about what we can now achieve together, and that’s just fine with me!

“Like a bat out of hell I'll be gone when the morning comes…”

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Does this resonate? Are you stuck in your comfort zone? If so I’d love to help you break free...

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Post by Jules Le Cornu
Email: [email protected]
Web: Level Up Coaches Club
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/juleslecornu/