Overcoming the Fear of the Unknown: How to Break Out of Your Comfort Zone

Welcome to the Soul of Innovation podcast. I am Thomas Anglero, and I want to share with you a profound thought about how we get too comfortable in the lives that we've lived and how we are uncomfortable with a life that we haven't. Let me tell you a story. I went to drop off my car at the car mechanic, and I've been to this car mechanic place several times before, and there's always a mountain behind the workshop wherever they are, and I I was always afraid to go back there. It looked like straight out of a Freddy Krueger— was it Halloween movie? Friday the 13th horror flick. But I said, this time I'm going to go back there. I'm going to go for a walk in the woods. And I went back, tried to see if there was a path, a trail. I found one. I slowly went down this trail that I had never gone before, nervous. Every step I took scared me because I have never gone down this path before. I thought I was walking on private property. I thought every turn that I took down this path, I was walking on down somebody's driveway and they'll be greeting me with a shotgun or a chainsaw or something insane. But every turn that I took were just more trees, more rocks, more dirt. So I finally got to this fork in the road, and how to make a left or right, and there was a sign there, old, old sign. And I went up to really super close and it was a sign that had a picture of a bicycle with an arrow saying— the arrow pointing left and the arrow pointing right. And the first thought I had was, civilization has been here before. I was so scared. I actually was thinking, am I the first person on the planet Earth to ever walk this trail? Would my body ever be found if something happened? And then this sign, obviously it was so old, people had been biking that this bike trail has been biked for so long that this sign, the wood was about to fall off the nail. Inside, I laughed to myself and said, how stupid are you? How stupid? Let me go left. I started walking down that path again, nervous, uncomfortable, not knowing what's down there. What is this decision going to lead me to? Would anybody ever find me? Would everybody ever hear me and my cries out loud? My mind went wild. My thoughts went crazy. My insecurity went rampant. I have forgotten everything about who I am, what I am, what I've experienced in my life, my confidence, my, my motivation to live, my family. I was a vulnerable child, and I kept on going down that path slowly. I was not rushing. But I continued, and so did my mind, so did these thoughts. But as I took every step, I said, "That wasn't that bad." As I rounded every corner and went up every hill, I told myself that wasn't that bad. And even though I was accomplishing something, I was doing something I'd never done before, I'm going down a path I've never gone down before, an outcome can— and any type of outcome can happen now because I've never been here before. And even though I'm still alive, I still worried. And as I went down that path, I got to the end of the path and it opened up into a road for cars. And as I looked down the road, when I finally got to that road for cars, I looked down the road, I saw the edge and the top roof of a home. I said, my God, somebody's been— somebody lives there. I'm not the first person here. People have taken this trail before. Matter of fact, people have probably taken this trail several times this morning. I'm not the first. So I turned around since that's the end of the bike trail and I didn't want to walk on the road and walk amongst cars. There's no pleasure in that while killing time waiting for my car to be fixed. So I turned around and I said, "Let me take the trail back to the fork in the road and then maybe I'll go the other way." What was amazing was not that going back was an easy decision. It was that as I took my first few steps going back, I walked with confidence. I walked with speed. I walked upright. I walked with not a single bit of fear in my heart or in my mind. I was confident. And I caught myself. Why? Just a moment ago I was full of fear, on the same path, the same dirt, the same trees, the same leaves, the same mist and rain falling down on me. Nothing had changed. Maybe a few seconds, maybe at most a few minutes, yet I am now confident. A lot of concern in the world. And I thought to myself, is this the way life is? What we do to ourselves mentally in life, that once we have gone down a road, once we have experience at doing something, we're cocky about it when we have to do it again. We have confidence, we have reference, we're comfortable. Just by simply turning around 180 degrees, I encountered the human fallacy, the way we see life. A road not less traveled, a road not traveled is scary. It's unknown. A decision you've never made. A new job. A new girlfriend or boyfriend. Someone in the bus you have to sit next to you never seen before. Someone on the train. Someone on the airplane you spend the next 4, 5, 8, 12 hours sitting next to. They're so scary. It's so uncomfortable. Life is so scary. Oh, I just wish I was back on my sofa watching Netflix. Oh, there I caught my bullshit. There I realized that this is actually life. This walk I've had here just to kill time while my car is being fixed, I end up having a life moment. So I continued to walk back to that fork in the road. Now realize that that walk I took on that path all the way till I hit the road where was a road for cars, I swear to you that took an hour. Every step was like I was walking in concrete. And yet when I turned around from that road, walking back to the fork in the road where I started, it only took me 10 minutes. Again, life. We've done it before. Comfort. We do things quicker, faster. We believe we're better than someone else. We know more than other people. But yet the first time we did it, it was the same road. Why was I not confident? Weren't we confident when we do that first time? We give somebody a hug, the first time we give somebody a kiss, the first time we do our work assignment, the first time we make a phone call to someone I don't know. Why are we always so— why are you always so scared? What is it about you? What is that trigger inside? The unknown. Why does the unknown make you so uncomfortable? So I walked back to that fork in the road, and after 5, 10 minutes at the very max, I was there. And I stopped at that fork and I go, did I take a shortcut? I'm here already. It was nothing. The entire trail that stressed me out beyond belief was behind me. I had now done it twice, and it cost me nothing. I didn't have a— I wasn't concerned. I wasn't scared. I was fine. I was alive. Nobody had chopped off my head. So I got to the sign in the fork in the road. I said, let me make a right now. Got a lot of time to kill. Mechanics are charging me by the hour. They need to make a fortune on me. This thing could be quick. Let me go to the right. So I took a step past the fork in the road sign, and within a moment, within a millisecond, the unease of going down a path that I have not taken before returned. And I literally stopped. I literally stopped and said, okay, stop. What is going on? Why am I uncomfortable? I am literally only a few inches, a few centimeters from the spot I was a second ago. Why am I uncomfortable again? Is going, is making a decision and doing something I've never done before, is going down this dirt road that I could see very far down. No one's going to hurt me. Nothing's going to attack me and eat me from these woods. Why am I so freaked out? And it's because I've never done it before. It is the unknown. It is the human condition. It is the human flaw. It's not me. It's not you. You see, this walk I took today was really life, wasn't it? It's not your fault when you get nervous. It's not your fault when you know you want to say yes, but you say no because you never did it before. You don't know. That guy asks you to go on a date, go for a ride, go to dinner, go to a movie. That girl invites you someplace, you don't know. Why always think the worst? Why always think something's gonna happen? When you do that, You guarantee one thing: nothing's going to happen and your life is going to stay the same. The pleasure of going to the movies, the spontaneity of laughing together with someone you've not— you just met, the dynamics and the magic of maybe falling in love. The enjoyment of taking on a new assignment and succeeding and realizing that you have a hidden talent you never knew. Being complimented and looked up to by your colleagues, by your boss, being put on the shortlist for the next promotion. Walking down the street with your head held higher because you know you've accomplished something that you thought was difficult, but now you've mastered. None of that you will ever experience when you say no. When you don't go down that path that you've never gone down before. When you say no to something you've never done before, when you say no to that person you never met before, when you say no to that assignment you've never done before, you know you want to say yes. Say yes. Welcome life. Welcome the dynamics and spontaneity of whatever happens in life. For good or for bad, but it's not a 50/50. That expression, "for good or for bad," is actually a 99.99999999 to 0.00000001 of potential of going and being bad. And yet, just because of that infinitesimal small number percent chance of something going bad, you don't do it. You want certainty? You're gonna die. You want love and excitement? Then live. Go forth and spread beauty and light. Om, Thomas Anglero. Reflecting on life while walking in the woods on a path least traveled, never traveled by me, and uncovering that life is a path that I haven't traveled. But I'll never say no again. I welcome new trails, new adventures, new people, new opportunities, new moments. And so do you. Your life is beautiful. Just say yes. Just take that step. Walk through your fear and fall in love. I'm Thomas Anglero. Until next time.