We trained high school and college youth leaders. They, in turn, would eventually lead our summer children’s program. So we spent a couple days in each community and did a variety of training exercises. What was really interesting during the visits was that I found myself becoming a student rather than a trainer!

One of my favorite games during the training, is something called “Beyond the Comfort Zone.” This is where we put the students in a gym and mark off three distinct areas. The first area was called the ‘comfort zone’, the second area was called the ‘stretch zone’, and the third area was called the ‘scared zone’. And so, with three distinct areas in place, Jules, a training guru,  would then ask a question and allow the participants to analyze their position and feelings. The participants would then move about the gym into their zone.

So, for example, a question would be, “If you had to give a speech in front of 500 people, where would you go?” Some people might go to the comfort zone, but probably not many because public speaking is something that always rates higher than death when it comes to the things that people fear most!

Some people would go the “scared zone.” They might say, “Oh my God, public speaking is the worst thing in the world!”  On the other hand, some people would go to the stretch zone and so forth.  I have to say, it was quite interesting to see where each of us landed with some of these questions!  Jules went through a variety of different questions during the exercise – each one very telling and enlightening for the participant.  If you were in the scared zone, she would ask people, ‘what would it take for you to get into the stretch zone?’  She would get all sorts of answers: “Well, maybe if I did it with a friend” or, referring to public speaking, “Maybe if it was a topic on what I love,” and so on. We always came up with answers that would move us from the scared zone to the stretch zone or the stretch to the comfort zone.

During the exercise, I thought “This is an incredible game!”

Jules asked, “Where do you think all of your growth happens?” And we all agreed that growth happens in the stretch zone. Now, this was probably something that we already knew, but it was a fun and illuminating exercise to really see visually and physically, where we happen to be, and that we all grow most in the stretch zone.

So my question was, “What do we need to do daily to move from our comfort zone to our stretch zone?”

I have come up with three things that I do and that can really help:

1.   I learn from those who have done what I am trying to do. So, for example, when I was trying to run marathons. I went from not running at all to running three marathons for Team Diabetes. That was probably the scared zone for me at first. But, I moved to the stretch zone when I learned from people who had already done it. You can take the same approach for business or anything you want to do.  Learn from speakers or others that have done what you are trying to do!

2.    Don’t do it alone. It’s kinda like sex. It’s always more fun with a partner! Learn from others. Get your support team together. There are a lot of people out there who would like to help and support you. Using my marathon example, I learned that I was not alone. Going to online communities or running groups really helped me. The socializing helped reaffirm that I was not by myself with these challenges.

Sometimes diabetics tend to think that we are the only ones on insulin; we are the only ones that have to test our blood, that we are the only ones that know what a blood glucose low is. And yet, others are out there too - struggling everyday with our same challenges. Support each other! Small actions like volunteering or opening yourself up will move you from the scared zone to the stretch zone.

3.   Make leaving your comfort zone a habit – daily. We generally are creatures of habit.  We do the same things with the same kind of people.  Instead, try to make it a habit to leave your comfort zone.  I know when I started doing some work in New York City, I was going from my comfort zone of Canada to a scared zone.  There were times that I’d be in New York and I would be walking the streets and I would think to myself, “What am I doing here?” I would feel so uncomfortable and I felt that I was so over my head.

But to grow, we need to go into those stretch zones, we need feel a bit uncomfortable and we need to make that a daily habit. And they don’t have to be big things. Small things matter too. For example, take a different route to work, read some different magazines, hang out with some different people or ask good questions! Kids ask good questions all the time and sometimes we don’t. Leaving our comfort zone will ensure our personal and professional growth!

If you do these three things, I think that you will find that you will be moving not only from the comfort zone to the stretch zone, but also from the scared zone to the stretch zone. And the stretch zone is where all the best learning happens.

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When Christina plays tennis, she doesn't always win. She's not a bad player; quite the opposite. The reason she doesn't win all the time is that she prefers to play against someone much better than she is. When she does, it pushes her to play much harder than if she played someone below or even at her level. In fact, she gets mad at herself if she wins too often or too easily...it means that she's not challenging herself enough.

Who we choose to compare ourselves to or compete against significantly impacts our future performance. Lots of people are so afraid of losing, they choose to play against someone they know they can beat or at least compete on a level playing field with.  These people will definitely win more often than Christina. And they may improve somewhat. But they won't advance as far as Christina in the long run. How can they? They are not pushing themselves or learning anything new.

We do the same with our careers. All too often, we compare ourselves to those at our level.  Why not compare ourselves to someone way beyond ourselves? If you own a small company - don't compete against other small companies - compete against the biggest and the best.  If you're a mid-level employee - don't aim for the job just above yours, aim for the top job.

If we compare ourselves to the average, then the average is our benchmark. If we compare ourselves to the best, then that's the bar to beat. We should request to be on the team of people smarter than ourselves, demand to be the junior man on the senior team, plead to be the inexperienced one on the project staffed with all the most experienced people. If we always surround ourselves with people much better than ourselves and openly declare that we're there to learn and to compete and to improve...then we will learn, we will compete and we will improve.

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Everyone knows WHAT they do. Some know HOW they do it. But very few know WHY they do what they do.  Only those who know WHY are ones who lead.  Discover your Why at WHY University.

These are thought-provoking questions that will encourage and enhance personal and professional growth.

They apply to kids and adults and can be asked at home or at the office --- you choose the situation.

1. Is this an obstacle or an opportunity?
2. How is this like your life?
3. What is this costing you?
4. What is your next step?
5. What is your definition of “success?”
6. What did you learn from this?
7. How would you do this differently?
8. How can you apply what you learned?
9. What specific action steps will you take?
10. What else is the matter?

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www.FunTeamBuilding.com

Whether we see ourselves gracefully gliding across a dance floor or sitting comfortably at the sidelines, every day we dance to our own rhythm of life—sometimes fast and chaotic and other times slow and repetitive. How we interpret that rhythm determines our view of ourselves and our lives.

I have found that first and foremost, wildly successful women such as Claudine Fletcher believe in the power of choice in order to manage the one thing in life that they truly can control: their reactions to life’s complications. This core belief—that they have the power to choose—affects every aspect of their lives: their strength and energy to build fulfilling careers; their ability to show compassion and create caring relationships; their talent for leading others, and their proclivity for living interesting lives. It is the source of their joie de vivre.

When I ask successful women to describe their life as a dance, I repeatedly hear that while it includes many unexpected reversals, twists, and turns, they look upon their dance with a sense of humor, joy, and pride. Their ability to enjoy their dance springs from their capability to “foresee” themselves adapting well to change through the power of their choices. As such, they choose to live in the moment and stay flexible when faced with unanticipated outcomes.

Who wouldn’t want to get in step with a woman such as Claudine Fletcher quoted above; a woman who can describe her life as a dance with such enthusiasm, energy, and happiness?! We feel drawn to those who radiate warmth, confidence, direction, and compassion; those who live life to the fullest and want us to join in the fun.

But, who is Claudine Fletcher?

I heard about Claudine via word of mouth, as I do most of the women I interview. Their peers, employees, daughters or mothers, friends and bosses refer them to me because they respect and admire these women and believe that their stories contain valuable lessons. Sometimes when I first approach them, they hesitate at the words “wildly successful” because, after all, they’re human. Not everything in every area of their lives is perfect. They get depressed, hurt feelings, and experience bad days and major setbacks like the rest of us. But they don’t stay down long.

Women admire other women as much for their ability to overcome challenges with grace as for developing wonderful businesses—maybe more. Claudine, like the many wildly successful women I’ve interviewed, sees life as a great adventure despite many complications. While many survived amazingly difficult situations, survival is not the same thing as growth. The importance of their messages comes from their transformation into stronger, wiser women with more courage and grace than ever before.

To get in step with the rhythm of the wildly successful women, do the following:

1. Embrace each moment
2. Believe in the power of choices
3. Remember the importance of flexibility
4. Accept change with gusto

Have fun,

Pam

Besides writing and speaking on topics relating to women in business, entrepreneurship and success, Pam loves to encourage others to try things they’ve never done before to expand their interests and relationships. Pam and her husband did just that by renovating a house—with their own hands and writing about it in their newly released she-said, he-said book Under the Carmel Valley Sun: An Adventure in Remodeling, Relationships and Red Wine. Check it out at www.underthecarmelvalleysun.com.  

We all remain in the same spot or same mental state when we simply look at our lives in one dimensional terms: I am bored, I am unhappy, I am lonely, I am overweight, I am struggling financially, etc. What happens when we start to add another dimension to the mix and start asking ourselves targeted questions?  It’s a skill we often overlook. Better or targeted questions are not just the simple plain-jane questions of ‘why’?  Why am I  X, Y, or Z?  Why does this always happen to me?  Why is it hard for me to lose weight? Why can I not find a partner?  What is wrong with me?

A better question would be what choices did I make that lead me here?  Then go deeper:  What decision could I make at this moment, on this one day, in this very hour that would shift my eating or relationship habits? This small nudge, this little different question will shift your entire outlook. You are taking back your power; you are owning your life and your experience. Now we are getting somewhere.

Keep going deeper and asking yourself more and better questions.  What alternate activities could I engage in when I am bored or lonely besides hours of television and bags of calories? Since I know that Mr. Wonderful isn’t going to be knocking at the front door, how can I get more involved with other groups or activities?   What skills or interests do I have that would benefit other people less fortunate?  How can I best serve others? Not only do these questions go deeper, but they become less ‘me-focused’.  Some of the better questions come out of our experiences….

Experience makes us wiser: How will I feel after I buy those shoes, eat that second sleeve of cookies, or go out ‘just one more time’ with that negative, destructive person?  Our desire for comfort is a strong seductive pull leading up to that moment and often times during the experience, but then what?  Often times the experience of what comes after can be a wonderful deterrent and great learning lesson.  For instance, as we get older we know that the third or fourth drink in the evening is a bad idea because we know how sluggish we will feel in the morning and we value a productive, healthy day more than the extra drink.

The flip side of this experience is to take a moment to be fully aware and remember how you feel after something great has happened.  Even though I feel like procrastinating on this difficult and intimidating project because I hate the work and am not sure if I will do a good job and I just know it will be hard, I also know I will feel productive and successful when it is over.  I have worked on challenging projects before and have figured them out and I felt great about my accomplishment!  I have succeeded before and I can do it again. The sooner I get started the sooner my feelings of fear will turn to triumph.

So what is the essence of all of the tons of self-help books, seminars and information that are available?  I will tell you what it is – it’s the A-ha moment.  The book, the chapter, the paragraph, the sentence, the moment, the concept that made you say “a-ha, I see myself in that example”, or “that’s exactly what I do or how I feel when I spend, eat, get into a relationship, or ,“I get it, I had never thought of looking at my issues that way” and of course, one of my favorites, “It’s not just me; other people have the same issues”, etc.  Those A-ha moments are the catalyst for growth. They are the pre-amble to asking yourself better questions.  They are a blessing and a gift to help you along your path.

And so as you continue your journey, try this new approach – shift your questions and shift your perspective.  How wonderful to be able to manage this process and pull from your past experiences to move you forward. We are entering a new decade and embracing a new year and there’s no time like the moment of now to start asking better questions.

It’s easy to understand why. So much of the focus of business in the developed world in the past several quarters has been cost reduction, synergy-expense recognition and restructuring. All that is vital, of course, to healthy companies and healthy economies. While we have experienced some skilled and finely tuned cost-cutting, there is precious little evidence of the only thing – revenue and profit growth -- that will really enable employment expansion, new job-creation and increased capital investment, which are critical for long-term economic growth.

But there is reason to be optimistic if you read a few recent tea-leaves.

• Exhibit One is the experience of an exciting startup that is a leader in location-based services for mobile consumers and whose board of directors I am joining. Using their application, anyone anywhere in the U.S. can quickly find nearby businesses, people, movies, pizza, taxis, weather, news, you name it.                                                                                                         This company is experiencing explosive usage growth, and revenue is coming along with this increase in demand for their innovative product, which was not possible before the omnipresence of wireless networks and smart mobile devices. The revenue is sourced both from consumer subscriptions sources (in a hybrid model where network operators pay a fee to subsidize their customer use, and where subscribers pay for preferred content and access) as well as advertising.
• Exhibit Two: Another company on whose board I sit, is seeing demand is increasing for its leadership training and development courses. These areas unquestionably were cut during the downturn, and companies are now looking hard at retaining their key employees through development programs as well as creating an alluring ‘HR’ brand by investing in talent.

The start of any growth strategy begins with your customer. We are in the battle for customer’s time and attention in any industry involved in this “convergence” world – telecommunications, information, entertainment or internet. Because this such a competitive world – we must be uniquely respectful of the time that our users have to spend with us.

So, starting with the customer, the primary thing to be concerned with is their happiness or satisfaction with our products and services. At EarthLink, where I ran the $1B consumer business, we tried to organize the entire division around the 2.5 million customer relationships.  Satisfied customers tend to positively influence other customers, and – especially in such subscription businesses as telecoms – since so much of the shareholder-value-killing churn happens early in the life of the customer, taking care that your newcomers are feeling positive is extremely important.

Of course, big catalysts for growth are such innovative products and services and the location-based products I was discussing a moment ago. And surely, as growth returns, much of it will be based on new products, services and features that might not have existed even months ago. Among these:

* Increased personalized services, reflecting your unstated wants and needs, based on what we can know about your location, or habits, or behavior.

• * Also, expect enhanced aggregation services, marrying much of your diverse data and deriving intelligence about what to recommend you do next.

This is not “crystal-ball” stuff; many of these applications are starting to emerge as personal data goes to the cloud and then value is added by companies or other customers. One innovative example of this comes from Nike. Their new Nikeplus website allows users to store all sorts of data about their workouts (distance, speed, even their mood) to a profile that can be protected or shared with other users. Nike brings coaching and even encouragement from other users to their individual customers, and allows the customer to control the extent to which they want to participate.

The companies that will grow fastest in the next upturn are those that deeply understand their relationship with their consumers, and those who can deepen that relationship measured by time spent, use and attention. The borders between network services, hardware, applications, content and software are becoming more fluid, and that will continue to evolve. But those companies that triumph will be those who really profoundly understand their customers’ wants and needs and supply products and services that rise to meet that demand, whether articulated or not.

For more on this topic, check out a recent interview I did as part of my membership on the Customer Experience Board, a group of global executives. The report can be downloaded here http://www.customerexperienceboard.org/  Click on the link to download the Benchmark Report on Competition and Convergence in the Communications Space, where I was a featured contributor.

Craig Forman is a speaker on innovation, media convergence, and change. He created the growth strategy for EarthLink’s $1 billion consumer business. He led Yahoo’s News Division to #1 in traffic, ahead of CNN. He has also successfully started and advised several successful software, content and telecom start ups. He was part of the founding team to take the search engine, InfoSeek, public.

Early in his career, Craig was a WSJ reporter and bureau chief in Japan. He was part of a team nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. In addition, Craig has appeared on CNN and NBC providing news commentary.

Open your arms.  Open your heart.  Be open-minded to alternative ways of being.  To “experience” something is about stimulating your physical senses.  This is about feeling, smelling, tasting, fearing, loving… not just book learning.    
 
But Maslow means even more than sensory experimentation.  He means that the healthiest try on other ways of thinking, behaving and being.  They want to run on to the playing field.  They want to dive into other cultures, ethics and gods. They want to hear the languages, enter the buildings, wear the clothes, taste the cooking and most of all be with those who are different and foreign. Hungry for experience and always open to testing, measuring and even challenging their own ways, the best human beings enjoy subsuming their selves amidst what’s new, exotic and even strange. 
 
This is a growth and change mindset and like young, expanding minds, those who are more open to experience are more adaptable.
 
I think it’s most important to remember that being open to experience means taking action, about “being game” as the Aussies would say, and periodically having a bit of courage.  It’s also about being a willingness to test your belief systems, broadening your sense of beauty, honing your perception of what is lasting and true.  And take one step further -- it’s about swimming deeply in how and what you feel.
 
These individuals don’t just observe more and respond better to change they try on ideas and take actions to see how they themselves react.  This takes one out of thinking and into the realm of emotion.  We’ll learn again and again that to succeed at life, “Feeling is as important as thinking.”  This is a quote from Bill Bradley, the former Senator from New Jersey, who also spent the first half of his life feeling his way to dominance on the basketball court. The point here is -- that it’s one thing to watch someone ski down a mountain, get married or be interviewed on live television.  It’s quite another to do those experiences yourself. 
 
I’m sure you know people who actively avoid new experiences.  Someone I’ve known many, many years lives a couple of miles from where he grew up.  For 35 years he has performed the same job among many of the same people.  He takes the same vacations every year and even sits in the very same chair every time he’s in his home.  His life and his mindset are frozen.  His is a life of experiences missed.  

Don't do that!  

Donald Van De Mark series on the 19 Personality Traits of the Best Human Beings: Introduction: The Good Among the Great: Personality Traits of the Best Human Beings 1. Superior Reality Recognition

The Clearer, More Efficient Perception of Reality Andy Grove, founder of Intel absorbs reality The Role of Reality and Choice in Your Destiny  

Donald Van de Mark has interviewed hundreds of leaders in business and politics including: Andrew Weil, MD, former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley, Jack Welch, Starbucks' Howard Schultz and Intel's Andy Grove, in his nearly 3 decades as a correspondent and anchor at CNN, CNBC and public television. He integrates practical tips from these great leaders to provide a riveting motivational speech on the personality traits of successful people. Donald is also the host of the corporate training video, The Wisdom of Caring Leaders. 

Listen to Donald's upcoming webcast on Profiles of Successful Leadership with the American Management Association on September 2nd at Noon EST. 

*Abraham Maslow, was a renowned psychologist who focused more on health than disease.  Van de Mark reviews 19 traits that Maslow identified in the best people.