Prepping for a task outside your comfort zone….
Elise here, I head up Impact and customer success here at The Mindset Development Group.
Last week I had an in-person workshop delivery to a prospect which involved leading and presenting something that’s not in my ‘usual’ role.
This is a ‘new’, ‘unknown’ situation – both red flags to our inner chimp mind, the part of our brain whose job is to protect us from potential risk!
So I applied our Mindset Development Group toolkit to support me to offer my potential in both my knowledge and skill of the content, and actual delivery of the workshop.
Here are the 6 tools I used to step out my comfort zone confidently….
The Lead Up:
1. Deliberate practice – In the confidence module we focus on competency based confidence – aligning our self belief to our skill level. This involves objectively identifying areas we are weaker in and focusing our practice here.
2. Block out ‘big rock’ time in your calendar to rehearse and prepare and treat this time like a client meeting – not to be moved/ or overtaken by ‘urgent’ tasks.
3. The empathy and attunement exercise – stepping into the shoes of the attendees and asking, what would make them say ‘that was a great use of my time’
The Day of:
4. Visualising – mentally walking through the presentation and situation. This mental rehearsal helps us prepare for the outcome we desire and focuses our brain on the key activities we need to execute to achieve this. During the visualisation ask ‘how will I feel when delivering this’, ‘how will I feel afterwards’ to engage the emotions and senses.
5. Affirmations – creating statements based on my ability that prove limiting beliefs from chimp wrong. Affirmations build our confidence when two key elements are met. One, they are tailored specifically to your circumstances. Two, they are repeated. Once you’ve crafted an affirmation statement repeat it to yourself at least 10 times. This signals to our brain ‘this is important’. For an added bonus, write it out on paper 10 times.
6. Breath work – using the 4-5-6 breathing technique from the Mindfulness module of The Mindset Development Group framework to calm nerves and focus 5 minutes before starting the presentation. This breathing exercise is particularly useful because breathing out for longer than we breathe in physical helps to calm the body and counteract physical symptoms of the stress response we might be feeling, for example; racing heart, butterflies, or tense muscles.
Stepping out of our comfort zone can feel tough, but these tools make it easier and encourage us to live to our potential.
The Science Of Comfort Zones
The above tools are all evidence based confidence building tools, taken from our Thriver Programme which takes the latest thought leadership in psychologies and neuroscience and applies it into a toolkit to help us build our mental resilience to thrive through the challenges of life. This means if you implement these tools, the science suggests they will have positive impact.
If stepping out your comfort zone confidently is something you would value from learning, reach out using the contact form below and send us the message COMFORT ZONE. We’ll get in touch and point you in the direction of some helpful resources.
To find out more about our next Thriver Programme head here
