Life begins at the End of Your Comfort Zone | Adela Strakova | TEDxBITSHyderabad

what is it that you always dream of but never had the courage to do so in october 2017 i received a phone call from my indian friend he was telling me hey i just quit my job and i want to set up my own venture in india come and join me my response was i was laughing come on i have no business background and you know my last experience in india wasn't the best one in fact i visited india in 2000 20 years back it was a trip with my folk dance group to ahmadabad there was a fog dust event a fog dance festival that we attended i just really remember the time when i stepped out of the delhi airport all the senses were attacked the sound the smell honking there was so much crowd on the streets i even remember there was a beggar trying to hold my hand asking for food after two weeks in india i lost about five kilos because i couldn't eat any spicy food and i felt sick and i told myself i will never visit this country again after 20 years i'm standing here i'm back here what has changed i don't think much has changed about the country itself there are living even more people than 20 years back there is still a lot of noise smell dust and you still eat spicy food that i don't eat what has changed is my attitude attitude towards challenges and attitude towards stepping out of my comfort zone so what is comfort zone it's something that we feel very safe comfortable there is no fear no anxiety similar when our parents holding us on the other side there is an area of panic imagine what makes you panic it could be mountain climbing swimming in the sea or it could be bungee jumping public speaking like tedx or maybe it's just telling your parents that actually you don't want to be an engineer or a doctor or maybe that you want to marry that person which is from a different community so what makes us jump from the known the safe place where we feel calm and comfortable to something unknown that makes us panic research say that between the comfort zone and the panic zone there is a zone which is called optimal anxiety and that space make us grow imagine that you would never step out of your room of your house imagine that you will never go through the fear of stepping into the college you will never find your first job because you are afraid of to do so we would forever stay in our little nest be afraid to step out to the world of unknown my biggest leap from my comfort zone was five years back at the time i was working in an embassy back home in slovakia i had very comfortable life so i decided to go on a journey to taiwan my little vacation i always dreamed to go to taiwan for vacation i loved that country when i went there i was so happy when i came back from the vacation something happened i went to the to the job that i was taking before the first day and i started to cry i just couldn't imagine that i would do this for my whole life at that time my job was very stable i had a good pay i was engaged i was about to get married i had my family and friends that loved me everything was perfect but i felt that i want to switch off that autopilot that was said by my family friends the society that what you should do with your life is to get good grades find yourself a good job get married and have kids i realize that i don't want to live that ordinary life anymore so what i did i quit my job i applied for a university in taiwan it was an arts university and i left my and i left my fiance family and friends behind in slovakia and stepped to the unknown it wasn't easy when i arrived to taiwan i was back in my student years and i was not that young anymore it was uncomfortable i didn't have a paycheck i had just a stipend that i have to survive on i was living in a dormitory with three other girls in one room it wasn't easy but was the beautiful part of stepping out of your comfort zone or starting your life afresh from scratch is the freedom imagine that you can just erase everything what happened in your life and you start again so i was like an alice in the wonderland when i came to taiwan i wanted to go everywhere i wanted to try everything and i did a lot so apart from traveling i also ventured to different explore my talents and skills because we step out when we step out of our comfort zone we challenge ourselves and it pushes us to discover our secret talents and skills so i was traveling i went to new zealand i went to bali i went to vietnam they were all amazing trips and i learned a lot about myself how can i handle difficult situations when i was in vietnam there was a flood in the city when we were staying for in so we had to leave the city on a boat i even traveled to ladakh recently during the recent crisis i was not afraid that something will happen because i went through a lot of challenges before so what also makes us uh why we should stay a step out of our comfort zone is that it prepares us to deal with change do you remember the scene from english of english shashi an indian comes to us she doesn't speak english well she goes to a coffee shop and she orders a water but the lady at the counter asked her do you want steel or sparkling she doesn't understand and during the communication shashi just leave the coffee shop with tears in her eyes i love this scene why because i was in a very similar position when i was 19. when i was 19 i went to uk to manchester because i wanted to improve my english and i also wanted to make some money for myself during summer so i went to uk i found myself a job in a pizza delivery shop and i remember my first day at work very similar situation happened only i just couldn't leave the counter because i was on the other side of the counter i was serving the customer so what happened i was supposed to take the order with the address but i couldn't i didn't understand the address so i asked the customer again again again until the customer starts yell at me at that time i was in my panic zone i couldn't hear anything i couldn't see anything my brain just shut down and i literally fainted what i realized at that moment is that my comfort zone was so little that all it took one person yelled at me over the phone and i just fainted i realized that i have to expand my comfort zone so i'm ready for this world to face the challenges so the next day i didn't quit my job i stayed in a pizza shop but i was doing different jobs not taking the others during my stay in manchester i was wandering the streets of manchester and trying to understand the streets talking to people to improve my english and understanding and then after a few weeks i realized i realized like shashi did in the movie yes i did it and now i'm standing here and from these 19 years old girl in manchester working in a pizza shop i'm delivering a tedx talk and at the same time i'm leading a team of english speakers in a foreign country thank you so why should we leave the safe nest through why why should we do it we grow we gain experiences during the journey as we grow and it also make us prepared prepared for even bigger challenges it's not always that we decide to step out of our comfort zone sometimes you are pushed away out of your nest imagine something very scary happens to you it could be a major injury it could be a disease it could be that your family has to relocate to a different country imagine that somebody who is very dear to you just passed away very scary how will you deal with that situation few years back my father got a very severe disease after few months he passed away i was very sad you can imagine i felt like my whole world just collapsed but after a few weeks i recovered and i realized is just a next step to make me stronger this is just another experience in the sequence of other experiences and i was back on track pretty soon so how do we do that how will we step out of comfort zone and start to feeling comfortable in those new spaces i have three approaches that i would like to share with you and there is also a researcher on this topic andy malinsky he is a professor of organizational behavior and he also teaches to do several things so first approach when you have to deal with a new situation is to ask yourself questions free questions the first questions is what is the worst case scenario what could happen so when i was approached by my now co-founder to come to india and set up a venture i was thinking okay what is the worst case scenario what could happen i will not do good job i will lose some money i will lose some time well and eventually i just have to return back to slovakia and find another job what is the second question i ask myself is what is the best case scenario what could happen well maybe we will be the next big thing maybe we'll be the next google or facebook and it will impact thousands and thousands lives that made me very excited and the third question i asked myself is what is the most realistic scenario what will really happen and i thought of well i think it will be up and down there will be a lot of challenges there will be a lot of failures but i will have a great learning and i think the magic of stepping out of your comfort zone is to embrace the realistic scenario that could really happen because failures are only our first attempts in learning and as the most valuable assets we gain during the life the learning through our experiences good or bad ones so the second approach when you have to deal with uncomfortable situation is to combine the comfortable with the panic so similarly me coming to india was a very panic situation for me because i have the memories from my experience 20 years back that it was horrible so i prepared myself i'm combining the comfortable with the panic zone so during my spend time already two years here i do something which is very comfortable for me i do run i do salsa dancing and i cook my own food so it just makes me comfortable in an uncomfortable country for myself at the same time you notice that i'm very sorry this is not my comfort zone definitely i was checking myself so many times that nothing will fell off during my time on the stage why i do that because i want to make my point that we should always take the opportunity to challenge ourselves so i'm very sorry which is really zone of panic that it will just unwrap by itself but at the same time i'm wearing dancing shoes because that's my comfort and my third advice of how to deal with uncomfortable situations in your lives is do small changes little changes that take you out of the comfort but they are not too emotionally challenging so free of my life i realized i was doing this all the time i since i went to uk and work in that pizza shop to quitting my stable job coming to taiwan exploring southeast asia new zealand to coming to india there were little little changes that i did for so many years that prepared me for bigger changes so coming back to october 2017 when my friend called me to come to india set up a venture and i was laughing and i told him no way forget it after the call has finished i was thinking what is the worst that could happen to me what is the best and what realistically realistically will i gain from this that i thought how can i make myself comfortable in that country if i would come and am i ready for this challenge did i make some preparations for myself think about what you are dreaming and don't find the courage to do so because of the fears that you have in yourself think about what could really happen what is the worst case scenario or is the best case scenario and what will you learn from your experience so when your friend calls you with an opportunity you will feel ready to spread your wings and fly to the unknown thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 67,136

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Life, Career, Impact, Leadership, Social Entrepreneurship, Struggle, Travel

Id: SucvjUnhkGI

Length: 16min 17sec (977 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 22 2020