Self knowledge: How fast are you sinking?
Yep we all have been sinking. I mean, in our careers. Everyday. This article will explore a bit of comfort zones and discomfort zones and how it can impact on yourself and your life balance. I’ll try to explain my thoughts with some imagens made by me I hope you understand.
Let’s suppose you just join a new company, a new cycle, accepting new challenges and alignment between you and the new job are a kind of a perfect match. S2
You are full of energy and fully charged to do the best you can to deliver the value that company hired you for, and you will seek hard every single day in order to evolve yourself in that expectation.
After some time, you discover better the company goals, methods, mindset, people, processes and you kind of look back to the initial scene and discover that there is a GAP. I would like to call it: The Discomfort Gap.
Yep. It’s not everything great as you planned and that’s fine. After a deep breath it’s up to you to understand what to do with the brand new discomfort gap. Some of us can just live with it, assuming that is the new comfort zone and giving up a lot of our self values.
In this case you just found your new normal and you can be a person who just adapts your entire beliefs into the new reality, adopting every single thing the company says, if your blue and company red, red is your new home. Some people can do it easily, giving up their thoughts even if this means to be entirely in a new comfort zone.
But…. not everybody can just ignore The Discomfort Gap. Either for you or the company to walk over it hurts. Discomfort zones can be amazing to practice Learn, Unlearn and ReLearn, but let’s draw an important line here: Nobody can live out of their comfort zone everyday. It’s just not possible.
Joy must be part of our life and as work is at least 60% the equation in silence can have a huge impact both in long or short terms. Compensation is deeply installed on the core of our minds and our brain will try to find joy in things you may find difficult to control such as raising the number of parties on the weekdays, smoking, sleeping, eating and many other habits that can be bad. By doing that in the last 40% of time available can be harmful for your work life balance. And if you would like to go a little deeper we can call that psychological cost associated, of course it is wider and complex but can fit in this example. You are sinking.
Having said that you already understood you need to decrease the delta between your comfort zone and your discomfort zone.
Let’s look at two examples, slow sinker and fast sinker.
Smaller Discomfort Zone
In this case, you or the company have small changes in the routine or process that needs to be adapted. Either you or the company still needs to change, but, to walk in the discomfort area is not a big deal, you feel you can change or move the company forward. The risk here is sinking so slow you don’t even notice as no one of the parts move. By the time you will compensate in some cases, under-prioritize others and you lose some market value in time. Some people will try to adapt by finding the middle of the equation. Not blue, not red. But this will take some time and some things will move less than the others. It will be a slow discovery to understand which will be your new home as you will in the long term understand which fights you truly understand as important to win. You will sink slowly. (Years)
Bigger Discomfort Zone
Here, the scene changes big time. You and the company always need to dig into tuff discussions and to adapt to things you are not comfortable with. This makes you use a lot of your energy on things that may not be generating you joy and speeds up the sinking speed. You lose less market value as you realize the gap fast and desperately try to decrease the delta, if you don't realize this may harm you hard. You just can’t adapt. You’re so red, that blue makes you dizzy, and looking outside will be a good option to understand why the decision to accept this challenge has been made. This case reading and studying can be a good way to reinforce why you are so red and an excellent alternative to find some joy. (Months)
Conclusion
The discomfort zone makes us learn, unlearn and relearn, but you can leave with it when it is too big as the psychological cost associated is sky high. Sinking is unavoidable. We are all sinking even in our comfort zone, but when we are totally out of our comfort zone we may need to be aware of some side effects. When we don’t find joy in what we do we may need to find joy in other actions that can or cannot be harmful and sure to discover this in the long term is not what either you or the company wants.
Awareness is key to your everydays balance.
As much I still write for me, I hope you like it!
