The current human population of the world is approximately 8 billion. Out of that, only 800 million people make some serious effort to achieve success in life. That is just 10% of the total population of the world. But what about the rest?
It might be shocking to learn that nearly 90% of the total population of the world is either not trying to or able to achieve success in life. What is the reason behind this? The culprit here is our ‘Comfort Zone.’ Comfort Zone is the first zone in the run up to success. And, success zone is at zone number four. The transition from one zone to the other is challenging and often difficult to negotiate for most of us.
Most of us seem be hopelessly resigned to our fate. Our real weakness is the comfort zone we cosy up to. We dread the very thought of stepping out of our comfort zone. All kinds of thoughts flood into our mind the moment we think of changing our job or business. What if we do not fit into our new job or business? This is a constant fear that hogs our mind. So, we cling to our secure job or business as far as possible. And, for many of us, our first job is our last job and that is the job we retire from at the retirement age. Bu the thing to remember is that so long as we stick to the safe zone, there’s little hope of making progress in our life.
The moment we step out of our comfort zone, we find ourselves in the fear zone. Because we take time to find our bearings in the new job which creates a strange sense of insecurity, we start blaming others for our failures. That is because we fear that if we accept responsibility for our failures that might stick on us and we may be shown the door sooner than later. If we don’t do that, we try to find excuses for our lapses. This is the zone where we are obsessed with what others think of us.
Once we overcome the fear zone, we enter the learning zone. This is where we begin to focus on learning and acquiring skills required for the new job so that we may eventually sink into our position comfortably. Since the demands of the new job are often different from the job we quit, our learning is not as systematic as it ought to be. Since we need to extricate ourselves from the routine of our previous job and adopt a new routine, we face difficulties in managing our time effectively. We are often overwhelmed by the number of new things that we end up learning in order to adapt ourselves to the system that exists in the new organisation or dispensation.
When we emerge out of the learning zone, we are more confident and start setting goals for our output. Then we develop habits by creating routines that are best suited to the new job or business. As we implement these new routines, we begin to get results and taste success in our efforts.
The ‘comfort zone’ is like the district roads or roads of our own province. The ‘fear zone’ is like the state highway which new drivers are often apprehensive about entering. The ‘learning zone’ marks our transition from the state highways to the national highways where we learn to hone our driving skills. When we are thorough with these three zones, we are ready zip through the expressway called ‘Success.’ All it takes is determination and commitment of an enterprising soul to achieve success.
