Jonny Grover

“Highly successful persons may routinely step outside their comfort zones, to accomplish what they wish” Wikipedia

About a year ago I was sitting talking to the head of sales at the company I work for. He is a very respected and successful business man. Although he has had much success he has not let it go to his head and is very amiable and a fun guy. We were talking about life and work and he started talking about a practice he adopted years ago. He told me that he tries to scare himself every day. This is more than just spooking himself; He scares himself by getting out of his comfort zone, doing something that at first he doesn’t want to do because of fear. Seth Godin calls this Quieting the Lizard Brain and Steven Pressfield coined The Resistence which is a similar concept.

I started from that day to try and scare myself everyday. My daily scare is not always a big thing, sometimes it is simply talking to a cute girl and getting her number, other times it is going to a party by myself and making new friends, and sometimes it is big thing like going to Mexico with a humanitarian group (by the way that trip changed my life). Even writing this blog has been a way to scare myself.

We all have fear and we try to avoid pain, failure, and disappointment; However, in so doing we also miss out on the opportunity to find success, happiness, and joy. I have seen so many amazing things come from getting out of my comfort zone, ignoring the lizard brain, and scaring myself that now I’m addicted to it.

My challenge to everyone that reads this is to scare yourself everyday…Start today! Do it and see how much happier you are and how much more fun you have. Start small, say hi to next cute guy or girl you see…but don’t stop there…keep pushing yourself and you will find that this simple principle will change your life!

As you start scaring yourself, share your experiences by commenting on this post. I’m excited to hear all the crazy things you do to scare yourself.

Did you ever watch the Joy of Painting with Bob Ross back in the 80′s and 90′s? It was on PBS and it was probably the most boring show on TV, but sometimes there was just nothing else to watch. For those who have not seen this program and those who just want to remember those late nights that you could not sleep and turned Bob on here is a clip.

I remember watching Bob Ross and the most amazing part was when he would be painting a long and things were coming together and then all of the sudden he would put a big black line somewhere on the canvas. I would be so shocked by this random line and think to myself “He has just ruined that beautiful painting”. Sometimes he would leave the line and work on something else. Then he would come back to the line and finish what he had started. As he continued to paint I started to see what he saw the whole time. He would transform that black line into a tree or a mountain. As the episode came to a close, he would put the last few touches on his materpiece and then end the segment with “Happy Painting and God Bless my friend” Everytime the painting was beautiful and I was amazed at how well everything worked together. I wondered why I even doubted him.

In our lives we have similar experiences. We are the painting and our life seems to be turning out just as planned, then all of the sudden out of no where we feel something happens ruins our painting. It seems to be a black line down the canvas of our lives. When these moments happen, what do we do? we turn to the Painter or God and say “what do you think you are doing?” This is not how it is suppose to look. After time we gain perspective and as we look back at the situation we realize things just worked out. It might be years till we see the masterpiece start to make sense, we just can’t give up on the Painter.

I have had many things in my life recently work out that initially I thought were not going to turn out. Has everything worked out as I had hoped and dreamed, no. My plan is to continue to trust in God…I know He has the paint brush in His hand and is painting a beautiful picture. My job is to be the paint, the brushes, and the canvas, ready to be used as tools in His hands. As long as I’m doing what I know I should be doing God will guide me to where I need to be.

As a product manager for a technology company I help design software and try to make it flexible, powerful, simple, and intuitive. It is a difficult thing to accomplish. Recently I read a blog about how great technology needs to do 3 things great and everything else it can either do ok or not at all. This is counter intuitive to how most people think. Most people want one gadget to do million different things. However, if you think about it your really don’t want that, because it would do a million things ok and nothing great.

This principle does not only apply to technology, but life. People want to be a jack of all trades or a renissance man. Everyday people try to be the best employee, best father, best husband, best citizen, best person. That is a nice goal, but it is impossible. Math would agree, if you give a 100% in one area there is nothing left for anything else. If I really want to be the best employee I would stay at work all day and all night.

I would even extrapolate this into making decisions about where to go on a vacation, which car or house to buy, or who to marry. We try to make the perfect decisions, but their is no such thing. Each decision has its trade offs. Good decision makers just know what 3 things they want and make a decision that meets those 3 needs.

So my challenge to you all is to find the 3 things you want and get an A+ in those areas. The rest settle for a C or even quit trying so that you can focus your attention on the top 3 things. Quitting has a bad connotation, but really that is what prioritizing your life is all about. Learn how to sacrifice the trivial things so that you can excel at the important things in life!