Have you been following our series of articles on 12 Steps To Leaving Your Comfort Zone Behind Forever? Have been applying what you have learned towards changing your life? If so, you are over three months into making changes to what was your life, and you should be seeing a significant difference. By now you should be pushing through the resistance and negative self-talk that comes with making changes to what you have known and how you have lived for so long. You should be at least a little more comfortable walking through doors of opportunity that you wouldn’t open before. You should also be aware now that you can never go back to where you started when you began this journey. You’ve learned too much, you’ve grown so much, you’ve come too far, you’ve worked too hard, and your world has expanded too large to ever fit back into that tiny box that you once called your life. You can’t go back! The only way now to go is forward.

This can come off sounding fine but the implementation of this can sometimes be a little bit of a trick. So, if you have been making the effort to get out and stay out of your comfort zone, you have also encountered your fair share of challenges and setbacks. Surely you have remained committed. So, you’re out of the woods now, right? Well, not so much. Ask yourself, have you hit a massive and formidable obstacle yet? One so big that it has shaken your resolve and confidence to the core? Have you reached the point where you felt like you couldn’t go on? Have you shaken your head as you thought to yourself “There is no way I can do this…maybe it’s time to give up”? Have you been so scared to move even one step forward that you were ready to run all the way back to your old life, hide your head under the covers and quit? All the while knowing that you’ll never have the life you want? You know, there is a four-letter word that describes that – EASY! Let me ask you, has “easy” ever helped you get what you want out of life? Don’t get me wrong, the other four-letter word – HARD, is not the sole solution either. How about working your vocabulary up to a five-letter word – SMART.

Now that we have changed your language skills a bit, let’s work on your problem-solving skills. Let’s say you have one insurmountable obstacle, and you are standing in front of it. You have no way around it, no way under it, and no way over it; do you turn around and go back the way you came? Where will that take you? To where do you want to go or to where you have already been? Did you find what you were looking for where you were? If not and you still decide to go back, is that smart? No, you are in pursuit of a goal, or you would have not left where you were in the first place. So, you want to go somewhere and now this HUGE obstacle is in your way. The problem remains, how to get to the other side? Now here is where your arithmetic skills come in (notice how we are now utilizing many skills to solve the problem). You know this is not going to be EASY but no matter how much brute force you apply and no matter how HARD you apply it; you are getting nowhere fast. The key is in adding SMART to HARD figuring out what is the best tool you can use to get you to the other side. In other words, learn what tool or skill will work best in this instance to get you to the other side of this problem by working smart.  Then work hard while thinking and using your tools, or skill sets if you will, to get you to the other side. If you don’t know how to resolve the issue at first, LEARN HOW! In the modern world we live in we are blessed with countless volumes of information virtually at our fingertips. Vast libraries of written information, lifetimes of video, seemingly endless hours of audio, and more information are uploaded and created on the web every day. While not all this information is accurate & correct, with some research and a little discernment, there are more than enough sources to learn from. All it takes is commitment, personal discipline, and time to learn whatever it is that you need to know to move forward and blast your way through whatever obstacle you are facing. Can’t is no excuse. What people mean when they say can’t is that they won’t and don’t even get me started on “try”. The only people who can’t do something are the ones that are no longer breathing.

If you are reading this article, it is because you are trying to move forward in your life – not back. Time moves forward, a vehicle’s primary function is to move forward, and humans walk forward, not backward. If you want to get from where you were to where you want to be…you must keep moving forward. Let’s be honest with ourselves, while slipping back into your comfort zone can be easier and a bit more appealing at times; think about all you have learned, all you have done, all you have experienced, and how you feel each time you reach a new level of achievement in life since you left your comfort zone. Could you really go back? Could you go back to a life of mediocrity, boredom, lacking of adventure and excitement? Does watching life through the lens of a television appeal to you more than the adrenaline rush of living it to the full?

In the 1800s when train tracks reached the base of a mountain that was impassable by going over it or around it what happened? They used a “tool” called dynamite and kept blasting holes in it until they had created a tunnel through to the other side. That was 117+ years ago and our “tools” have improved over time. We can do the same task with much more efficiency in time and safety. In the 1900s and going even further back in history, people such as Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, and Benjamin Franklin were able to accomplish great things with their lives with the “tools” available to them in their time. How can anyone say they cannot create the life that they desire and benefit humanity in the process? With the array of amazing “tools” we have at our disposal every day. Again, we can clearly see that the problem isn’t “can’t”, it is “won’t. No one can force anyone to go in a direction that they do not want or will not allow themselves to go in. You cannot move forward if you are focused on what is behind you. Give yourself permission and the power to move forward. Have the confidence and fortitude to keep moving forward towards your goals no matter how obstinate and formidable the obstacles you face can be. Go right through them. Momentum is a powerful force! Push on, ever moving, no matter how slow or how fast, towards your destination. And what do you do when you reach it? You guessed it, keep moving forward. You cannot be stopped!

“Can’t is no excuse. What people mean when they say can’t is that they won’t and don’t even get me started on “try”. The only people who can’t do something are the ones that are no longer breathing.”