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.