Suppose you come to think of possible consequences of staying in your comfort zone for a long, long time. You will realize that your knowledge and skillsets will hit a plateau. It will make you less competitive in the job market all in all. When you are too comfortable in your career path, you naturally stop putting any effort into spotting newer opportunities. There are really high chances that you will be too afraid to take important risks. And as a matter of fact, it will deter you from doing anything that can potentially throw you off your comfort zone.
Getting too comfortable comes with its own baggage. It can severely affect your performance in the long run. If you make it a habit, you are more likely to do just the bare minimum. This can have a serious impact on your career and your reputation. Doing new things in a way is like putting yourself out of the comfort zone. After all, you are simply putting yourself in an unknown situation, and you have no clue how you are going to perform.
However, you grow as a person when you challenge yourself. This is what makes us human and has enabled us to evolve. Multiple studies show that challenge catalyzes the process of personal development. When the pressure on any individual is on the right/optimum level, performance increases. When you enroll yourself into a new course or venture into new unknown territory, you automatically put yourself under the right pressure, which helps you grow.
1. Have Sustained Motivation
Proactive people are motivated to pick up new tasks and projects round the clock. They happened to have both extrinsic as well intrinsic motivation. Even more importantly,e what matters the most is their self-discipline or what some call “self-motivation.” They can easily distinguish what they need to do and what is not worth their time and efforts. They can follow the things that need to be taken care of without falling out or being distracted by things or circumstances. Some proactive people are just fortunate enough to have it in their personality, and with some, it is the part of nurturing that they get from their parents. However, the majority of the people have to work on it.
2. Makes you Pro-active
To understand proactivity, we need to differentiate the difference between being reactive and being proactive. A reactive person is someone who follows the order or essentially responds to external stimuli. It can be a request from a client or an order from upper management. On the other hand, a proactive person thinks ahead of the situation and acts beforehand. It goes beyond simply preempting situations and adverse events. It involves having to plan and execute the request even before it is asked. In other words, proactivity is the ability to act and further take responsibility for the planning decision-making to achieve previously established goals.
Take up work that you think will help you in accelerating your career. Be proactive and not reactive. It means does not let unnecessary calls and emails dictate your day. Being reactive will eat out the majority of your time of the day. Do remember to set aside the time you dedicate to the work that requires your reaction or response, but never let it hinder the work you’re focused on the moment.
3. Helps you focus on what is important
We know people who have goals and various aspirations in life, but they never have time to seize them. Proactive people take time for themselves to reflect on what is important and plan accordingly. They plan how they would want to spend their time. People who begin their day with a plan have a significant advantage over others. If you have your priorities for the day mapped, you are less likely to fall into someone else.
To be proactive, it is essential to have your priorities clearly defined. This will help you stay clear in the head and focus on one thing at a time. There are simple methods that can help you focus on your priorities. One such method is the 2+8 prioritization system. You are expected to set 2 objectives that you have to accomplish no matter what and set eight other tasks related to these that you will try to complete. However, it is important to have a plan in place right from the beginning of the day, or the least important things will take over your day.
4. Helps you set your own deadlines
Proactive people are aware of the consequences of procrastination. They plan things in a way that they can finish whatever is on their plate. On the other hand, when we are given a project, we think of the latest possible time we can start the work. Instead, if you start imposing deadlines on your own self, you will be amazed to see the results.
If you abide by the deadline, you will note your progress with time and eventually be more productive. It also nudges you to complete work in time and not falling for the trap of thinking “it can be done later.”
5. Helps you know your “WHY”
It is the most crucial and challenging step to follow. You have to identify and understand the “why” behind doing what you are doing. It is important to know what is that one thing that is holding you back and preventing you from becoming a pro-active person. Upon identifying, you can mitigate the exact problem.
For example, there may be a particular time of the day when you do not feel like doing anything. Or there may be laziness when the work that you have is not challenging. At that point, you must remember why you started what you started in the first place. It is imperative to pay attention to things that are around you. Your environment, people, and the kind of job you are in.
How to keep yourself challenged?
If not all, then most humans, at least I know, acknowledge that they feel the need to grow and get better at what they do. We also keep hearing people complain about their life situation. They tend to forget that they first need to take responsibility to change themselves. And it is also important to understand that no change can actually happen if you stick to your comfort zone. No matter how much you hate it but the optimum level of stress is essential to keep you going in the race of life. We tend to have a myopic view of what we can do and what we can not do until we leap to see what is on the other side. It takes you to win over your existing pre-conceived notions to know what you are capable of. In the following part of the article, we will explore how we can challenge ourselves to become the best versions.
Keep up the learning curve
I don’t know if there is even a need to put it out there that continuous learning is important for your growth and development. Just like nutritious food is indispensable for your physical growth, a constant flow of information is important for our mental growth. Heraclitus rightly said, “The only thing that is constant is change”. It holds true right now more than any other time. COVID-19 has taught us how all the planning and predictions can fall flat. The only way of dealing with constant change is continuous learning.
Write down your goals
The simple physical act of jotting down your goals (preferably on a physical paper) makes the goal tangible. Often, we set goals do not realize that the goals that we set in our heads are not rooted in reality, and some parts are intangible. It makes us wonder at places that are not directly related to our goals and waste our time. Our goals have voids that we often fail to see in our heads. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to write your goals down so that you are left with no excuse for not paying due diligence and not waste time.
Disconnect from technology
We all live in an ever-transforming digital world where everyone is connected to technology in one way or the other. When I say connected to technology, there is a great proportion of people who are addicted to the same. For those who are addicted, here come’s Digital Fasting or Unplugging. It is a voluntary process where you stop using your technology for a stipulated amount of time. You unplug or disconnect all of your devices from the internet, like your computers, laptops, smartphones, tablets, etc. It all depends on your relationship with your devices, as many people decide to do digital fasting for some hours, days, weeks, months.
Wake up early
Early risers grab many benefits as they get plenty of time for introspection and getting themselves in the right frame of mind. You can think of what level of motivation you will get when most of the world is still sleeping, and you start running for your goals. Think, you have done many things until your competitors wake up and start their day. Early risers can make their morning routine calm and leisure instead of rushing fast for their work while leaving or skipping many things behind. Early morning hours are somewhere quiet hours in which you can peacefully think and can make good decisions. This way, you can get an early start to achieve your goals. Waking up early will also help to follow the other below-listed practices easily.
Exercise
Starting your day with good movements energies the body and freshen up your mind. Muse writer Kat Moon says that ‘‘the science-backed exercise tip will increase your mental processing speed.” Find what kind of exercise is good for you and schedule it in your morning plan. In the beginning, you do not have to go for an intense or long workout. You have to do some good physical activity/moments that help you get your blood flowing and help quiet any mental chatter, like stretching, walk, push-ups, sit-ups, etc. It will help you to gain self-control and releases GABA that makes your brain feel smooth.
Meditate
You should start your day with meditation as it improves your focus and emotional stability. It helps to release down your stress level. It trains your mind and influences how you should react to challenges throughout your day. You can also make great decisions for the life you want to truly want to live and get clear on how you want your day to go. You should go ahead for simple meditation in the morning, and you will surely feel good and satisfied. For example
- Sit in a comfortable position
- Close your eyes and try to focus on your breath
- Inhale through your nose for 4 counts, retain for 4 counts and exhale from your nose for 8 counts
- Every time you feel distracted or thinking about something else, bring it back to your meditation.
- Do this at least 3 times.
- After doing all the times, release your count and stay seated, and your eyes close for a moment. Slowly open your eyes.
Write journal daily
People have used journaling for a variety of reasons. Some use it to write down their daily-life anecdotes, and some use it to consolidate their complex thoughts. Following are some unique ways journaling daily can benefit you.
- Process your thoughts better: If you choose not to acknowledge feelings inside you, they tend to grow, especially if they are negative. Journaling sheds light on your thoughts, making them shrink.
- Good for mental health: There are extensive researches to back the fact that journaling is helpful for your mental well-being. It makes you acknowledge your thoughts as is, enables you to analyze, and then make you informed to take calculated action.
- Great tool for prioritizing: Penning things down, what you want, or need to do ensure that you are not missing on something important. It is a great place to capture and prioritize things.
