Meeting yourself at the precipice of discomfort

Welcome to the Soul of Innovation podcast. I am Thomas Anglero, and it's October 2018, and I just got back from one week high up in the mountains of the country of Georgia.

Wow.

To talk about going outside of my comfort zone, I pushed it in many different ways, and I wanted to share reflections of what happens when you do something like that. First of all, the biggest thing when you go outside your comfort zone is that moment when you have to make the decision and you say yes to doing something that maybe you've never done it before. Maybe you don't find it interesting, right? I've never hiked thousands of meters up the side of a mountain. I'm not sure if I would find it interesting. Um, the trip was with 7 other couples, husbands and wives. Um, all these people I don't know, so I had all the reasons, and I could probably list some more, many more as to why not to do it. But I said yes. And all those were good reasons. All of them were the reasons that we all use for insecurity, like, well, I don't know those people. Oh, I don't do those type of things. Oh, that's scary. I could lose my life. Because you're at the edge of literally thousands, hundreds, or sometimes we were at 2,000 meters and you could just fall off and turn to dust. But I remember when my wife asked me, I said yes. I don't think I took that long of a moment.

I don't even think I took a moment.

I just said yes, 'cause I knew that what she asked me to do was so absolutely so far from anything I could even imagine. That I had to do it. I, I absolutely had to do it. You know, eat your own dog food. I talk to people, thousands of people a week, and I'm always giving them advice, and they're asking me for advice. And I said, this is it, I'm calling myself out. How many times have you called your own self out? It's really easy for us to give people advice And it's really hard for us to follow our own advice, but what's even harder is to call yourself out. That's the ultimate one, to call your own bull, to say, you know what, you're full of crap. You're talking to yourself now. I'm full of crap and I got to do this. I must do this. I am going to be this. And that's why without hesitation I said, "Yeah, yes, let's do it." She got so happy.

I earned brownie points.

One of the things that I experienced was when we were in Georgia, it's— well, we landed in Kutaisi, K-U-T-A-S-I, Kutaisi Airport. And then we had literally a 5-hour drive to Ushba, and U-S-H-B-A, Ushba, the mountain of Ushba. And we stood at the Grand Hotel Ushba. So it's a plug for them, wonderful people. And Ricard is one of the owners who's Norwegian. The rest are local people. And he's also your guide up the mountain. Fantastic experience.

I highly recommend it.

You land in this country that is, plain and simple, outside of their capital. This is third world. And you drive for 5 hours in roads that— one of the roads was really funny. One of the people had done some research and they found that one of the roads were winning one of the top 10 worst roads in the world. And you get to the Grand Hotel Ushba, which is not a grand hotel, just a nice place to live. Um, tell you no more, go look at the website.

And you get there, and what shocked me was the transformation due to the air. I have traveled the world and I have forgotten what fresh air feels like inside of my lungs. I know this is a weird statement, but only a few times in my life have I felt fresh air inside of my lungs, where the air is so clean, it hasn't been recycled.

It is pure because there is no industry, there is no infrastructure, and you are thousands and thousands of miles away from any industrial anything.

This is the air that's been around there, and I know air moves around the planet, I'm not an idiot, but still, this is fresh air from the planet and it's going into my lungs. And I felt it, and I actually noticed a difference. That was such a big surprise. And then the next surprise I had was that everything stopped shaking. And I guess that's because I wasn't surrounded by so many damn mobile networks, but that's a whole other story. Everything calmed down. I started calming down. And I realized, as we stepped out the cab, or the van, we all went in a van, and I just took my first few breaths and felt this instant change, this metaphysical change, this cellular change, this spiritual change, that this was gonna be a good week. And at that moment, I knew that by me doing the simple action of saying 'yes' to an activity, a thought, an event that I've never done 'Nor have been interested in doing, nor have I never imagined would change my life.' How many times do we say no to things when, damn it, if we'd have said yes, it would have changed our life? Take a moment now. I'm sure some of you listening to this right now know what I'm talking about. Just take a moment now and think about it. Just have flash thoughts come back to your head. Things when you were, maybe a few weeks ago, months ago. Things that happened back when you were in your 20s. Things that happened back in high school. That's a lot of things we have a lot of regrets on. Life is made up of so many moments. And if we would have said yes to one, just one of those moments, What new path, what new outcome would have happened to you? From an external point of view, maybe you would have found that you're good at something. Maybe you'd have found you were horrible at something. Maybe you'd have found someone. Maybe someone would have found you. Or more significantly, while doing that activity, you would have had an epiphany, a new thought. And that would have created a foundation for a new you. All because in a moment of decision, you took the hard road. And you said yes to something that made you uncomfortable. There's so many stories on, you know, get comfortable with being uncomfortable. And my last week was absolutely the outcome, the amplification of getting uncomfortable. Our base camp was at— or the hotel we're at was at, I think, 1100 meters. And We climbed to as high as 2,700 meters. That's where I stopped. The remainder of my group went all the way up to 3,100. I couldn't go any further. I'll admit it. I'm not going to lie. But we climbed, I think, for 5 days, 4 days. We climbed every day, 2,600, 2,700 meters, 2,700 meters. And then there's one day— no, sorry, 2 days the group went to 3,100 meters twice. They actually touched the snow. You're in a foreign country. The rock formations, the rocks, the soil, the dirt, and even the water, which is fresh melted water right off the glaciers that we were looking at, everything was different. There is no comfort because you've never been here before. You've never felt the things you felt before. The only thing that's familiar are the clothes that you have on. The people around you are not familiar. It's one of the most relaxing feelings that there is.

I remember listening to a Will Smith quote in which he was jumping out of an airplane.

The actor Will Smith. And he said that just as he jumped out the airplane with a parachute— and he never jumped out of an airplane before with a parachute—

he said absolute fear took over him.

He thought he was going to die. And just at that moment in which he jumped, right as he jumped and he realized there's no turning back He called it a moment of bliss. When you do something that you know that you've not done before, you know that you don't know anything about it, you're right at that precipice. Of bliss. I cannot tell you strongly enough how important it is to do the things that make you uncomfortable. Now don't do things you don't believe are right, against the law or against your ethics. That is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about those moments where you could do it, you just don't feel like doing it. That's what the moments I'm talking about. I believe that all those moments that we have an opportunity to do something and we have to make a choice of, 'Yes, I'll do it.' 'No, I'm not gonna do it.' It is actually moments of growth. And that's why they pop up all the time. They pop up, they occur all the time so that we are constantly growing, or have the opportunity to grow, if we choose the path less traveled, the one we've never done before, the most uncomfortable one. I think a lot of us don't, or have not met ourselves often enough. Our deep core Self. Is the point of life to someday meet you, meet ourselves? Isn't that an interesting reflection? To do so many different things, to be so many different places, to love so many different people, to experience so many different events? Are the accumulation of all these things a journey so that someday we get to meet our True Self? With that perspective, then I think you and I look forward to the next opportunity that we create that allows us to make a decision when we're uncomfortable. Now it's not gonna be that bad. It's actually really exciting. Because you may meet yourself. On our final day of climbing, I stood with another one of the husbands, and we stood at the top of this mountain, and he had a Gorman sports watch that said 2,700 meters, whatever, 2,750, I don't know. And we were celebrating because we made it to the very, very top. And it was beyond description. From all 360-degree sides, we could see all the other mountains as far as the eye can see. We're so lucky that it was a clear sky day, so you saw these snow-covered mountains in the distance, but he surrounded us and the sun was burning down on us in all his yellow glory, not a cloud in the sky. I had to travel all the way to the country of Georgia, to a mountaintop, to meet a part of myself. I didn't— never knew I was— that part of me was so happy. I never knew. How incomplete I was until that moment. We both stood there, slowly turning 360 degrees Embracing life. We understood that that was life. That was it, that moment. I didn't know that that's where a piece of me was, waiting for me on that mountaintop, because I said yes to something that was completely deep inside my 'uncomfort zone.' It's an interesting way of looking at it. That piece of us, the true us, lies inside of everything that makes us uncomfortable. And our goal in life is to go and do those things that are uncomfortable. And when we accomplish those things that are uncomfortable, we find that missing piece. That makes us a little bit more whole every single time. What a beautiful way of looking at life.

This is Thomas Anglero for the Soul of Innovation Podcast.

Share with you, you, and a piece of me that I found on the mountaintop, on the top of a mountain in Georgia. 'Til next time. Take care.