Happy Summer!

Carla Silver

Executive Director, Leadership+Design

This past year I had a milestone birthday, the kind of birthday that makes one stop, take notice and ask searching questions. You know the questions. Are you happy with your life? What's next? Is there more? Frankly, I found it all a bit bothersome. After all, I was - fortunately - healthy, happy and fairly sane the day before the birthday candles were blown out. Yet those pesky voices wouldn't stop. "Change it up," they said. "You are getting too set in your ways," they murmured. And the worst, one from my mother's arsenal of long ago: "If you are bored, you are boring to be with."

 

This is not an unusual phenomenon, and it doesn't take a milestone birthday for it to emerge. We see it in schools all the time.  All it takes is one passionate teacher or administrator, fresh from a transformative professional development experience, effusively singing the praises of a new online pedagogy, TED talk, or article discovered on Twitter.  He talks while filling up his coffee mug in the staff room, and those beastly voices of gentle discontent do their work on those within earshot. "I wonder if my classes are as exciting as his are," they think silently. Others muse: "When was the last time I was that 'over the top' about a PD experience?" or "Do I have it in me to reinvent that lesson on Ancient Greece?"

 

Those unsettling questions can be a force for good if we embrace them. The real question is: can we find joy in embracing them? In my case, my intellectual self knew that I needed to spring out of my comfort zone, yet my emotional self was snuggling happily within the quilted comfort of the familiar. And isn't it always as simple as that?  Our beloved habits hold us in our comfort zone, making it twice as challenging to venture forth in ways that just might be far more stimulating, satisfying or energizing.

 

In our well-lived lives, we inhabit a vast number of comfort zones: the relationship with our spouse, our workout routine, professional ways of being, how we make our morning coffee, the way we take care of routine responsibilities, and on and on. Those comfort zones become comfort zones because they produce outcomes that are satisfyingly undisruptive, gently agreeable to some inner sensibility. For the most part then, aren't these good comfort zones?

 

In the aftermath of my birthday fanfare, I wondered what might happen if I created a habit of taking myself out of one of my "good" comfort zones every so often.  What might be possible if I learned how to blast beyond the solid walls of healthy habits I had created for myself? Said differently, can we create a habit of doing the uncomfortable in the arenas of our lives that supposedly work well?

 

The quest for "the uncomfortable" began with my workout routine. I was quite smug about the fact that I had one, first of all. I was confident it hit all the researched highlights for muscle tone, strength, flexibility, and cardio. I was disciplined; I had a morning ritual; it was varied; my annual physical was filled with positive outcomes. It all worked, right?  And it was downright routine.  I wondered about the many ways - discomforting to be sure - that I could shake this good habit to its core, still getting all the outcomes I wanted, but creating more dynamic energy in the process. What if I took fitness classes? What if I got a trainer? What if I worked out with others? What if I varied the time of day of my work out? Ugh. It all seemed like work I didn't need to do. So, I took a deep breath and did it anyway.

 

First there was the Afro-Cardio class - unusual, yes, but I met an interesting African drummer. I toyed with an Athletic Conditioning class, and ultimately decided I was not meant to be an American Ninja Warrior. In quick succession, with mostly good experiences, followed Nia, Vinyasa Yoga, Cycle Fusion, Body Pump, Kick-n-Cardio and Metabolic Melt. I changed up the time of day now and again, made new friends in the process, discovered new muscle groups, smiled a lot more while sweating, learned about new fitness trends and even hired a trainer-for which my glutes may never forgive me.

I kept the practice of physical wellness, even as I redefined what the habit of a workout meant for me. What was good for me became better, more interesting, and I certainly had more to contribute at cocktail parties. No harm, no foul and the pesky voices were definitely pleased....for the moment.