How’d you make out with last week’s comfort challenge from “The 4-Hour Work Week“?

For myself, I found I was certainly much more aware of what my eyes were doing while engaged in conversation. As for using the technique with total strangers, that was much harder. Like Tim mentioned, you don’t want to look like a psychopath and get your ass kicked!

After posting last week’s comfort challenge and explaining I would share Tim’s comfort challenges each Friday, someone posted a comment and suggested it was a little bit of a cop-out.

Carlotta’s reasoning was that she had already read Tim’s book and that she’d like to see some new, creative, and relevant comfort challenges created. She suggested it would be a great opportunity for people to accomplish something new.

The more I thought about the comment, the more I agreed with what she was saying. She was right. After all, it’s Friday and what a simple way to end a week of blog posts.

But then my thoughts continued on the subject….

I started to think about coming up with my own, and I started to think more about Tim’s comfort challenges in his book. Some of which are extremely unique and uncomfortable by the way.

Here’s what I decided:

It doesn’t matter what the comfort challenge is.

It doesn’t matter who created the comfort challenge.

It doesn’t matter if it’s relevant or not.

Here’s what matters:

What matters is that you take these opportunities to do something that makes you feel uncomfortable. It honestly doesn’t matter what it is as long as it feels scary.

You need to treat your levels of comfort like a muscle that needs a good kick-ass work out. If you never exercise your muscles, they will become weak and they’ll never get strong.

Regardless of what I post on Friday, and whether it comes from Tim’s book or I make up a handful of challenges, you need to take charge and do something uncomfortable. It needs to be something that raises your heart rate. Something that scares you. Something that is HARD to do.

I do believe that if you give it some thought over the weekend, you’ll start to see the areas where your muscles need work.

Carlotta was right on so many levels, and I can’t thank her enough. Maybe you’re already strong in the area of eye-contact. Maybe that doesn’t make you feel queasy or scared or nervous? If that’s the case, then you need a comfort challenge more relevant to YOU.

It sounds easy – right?

Once a week, over the weekend, daily, whatever; if you’re willing to put yourself through pain and discomfort on a regular basis, you’ll start to see some amazing results.

The fact is, most people won’t ever put themselves through the training and exercise required to strengthen those muscles.

We’re a society that enjoys the benefits of comfort without the effort.

For example, many like to think they can achieve their desired levels of exercise and fitness by only using the Nintendo Wii – a perfect example of comfort without the effort.

It’s far scarier and more uncomfortable to think you might actually need to sweat and raise your heart rate. You may even need to avoid that pizza tonight.

Pain is the enemy for most, and it’s usually avoided at all cost.

So with that said, good luck with your comfort challenge this weekend, and only you can decide when you are out of your comfort zone.

Don’t leave just yet ladies… This one is for you too.

This post was inspired by two of my favorite books that I’ve referenced quite a bit over the years, “Ballsy – 99 ways to grow a bigger pair and score extreme business success” by Karen Salmonson and “The 4-Hour Work Week” by Tim Ferris.

Karen’s first tidbit of advice in the book is that “more important than having talent, you need balls.””

Let’s dive into this a bit deeper, shall we?

We all know that talent matters, nobody is suggesting otherwise. The newborn that enters the world and is playing Mozart at two years old has talent, god-given talent, some would argue.

But what about the rest of us? We all have talent and without balls, the talent means nothing.

For me, I do believe that I’m talented, but I think I could benefit from bigger balls.

So how do we do it?

How do we go about growing a bigger pair?

For this, I’m going to refer to Tim and The 4-hour Work Week.

Tim recognized that many of us have talent but lack the self-confidence to do what it takes to become mega successful.

Tim wants to help us break away from our comfort zones which is something I’ve talked about before.

So how does Tim suggest we grow a bigger set of balls?

He believes we need to train ourselves to become more comfortable with risk and step out of our comfort zones. Tim has provided a collection of “comfort challenges” to help with the process.

Tim is straightforward and honest in letting us know that comfort challenges look simple, but they’re extremely uncomfortable for most people.

However, by practicing the art of being uncomfortable and attempting things outside your comfort zone, you’re actually growing yourself the “bigger pair” which is an absolute essential ingredient to your success.

So here’s my proposal, and I hope you’ll play along with me.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to go through Tim’s comfort challenges. Each Friday, I’ll post a new comfort challenge for you to work on over the weekend.

I’d love for you to join me. If you don’t want to take part, no problem.

My advice is to  just do it. Have some fun with me, and let me know how the challenges affect you.

Ready to go? Yup, we start today.

These are Tim’s “comfort challenges” and if you already have a copy of Tim’s book, you can follow along. If not, I’ll be sharing a new challenge every week or so.

Buy Tim’s book if you don’t have it. It can change your life.

Comfort Challenge #1

From The 4-Hour Work Week*

Learn to Eye Gaze (2 days)
My friend Michael Ellsberg invented a singles event called Eye Gazing. It is similar to speed dating but different in one fundamental respect—no speaking is permitted. It involves gazing into the eyes of each partner for three minutes at a time. If you go to such an event, it becomes clear how uncomfortable most people are doing this.

For the next two days, practice gazing into the eyes of others—whether people you pass on the street or conversational partners—until they break contact.

Hints:

1. Focus on one eye and be sure to blink occasionally so you don’t look like a psychopath or get your ass kicked.
2. In conversation, maintain eye contact when you are speaking. It’s easy to do while listening.
3. Practice with people bigger or more confident than yourself. If a passerby asks you what the hell you’re staring at, just smile and respond, “Sorry about that. I thought you were an old friend of mine.”

Simple right? It may be a heck of a lot harder than it sounds?

Feel free to share your results and comments, if you’d like.

Good luck and have a great weekend!

Noah