Stop Staying In Your Comfort Zone!
I recently interviewed some of my acquaintances about work, and I realized that some of them are choosing to stay in their comfort zone. They told me that they don’t like it if they have to do something new in addition to their regular workload. Here is one of my acquaintance’s story:
I have a friend – lets call him Budi – who has been working as a bartender in a restaurant for a year and a half. He’s in his twenties, and has been a bartender since he left school. Surprisingly, Budi still has exactly the role and responsibilities as the first day he started working. All of his colleagues had either been promoted or moved on to new positions, but he hadn’t. Why? Well, it turned out that whenever his boss asked him to do do something new like preparing an inventory report, Budi would say that he had never learned how to make a report like that when he was at school. “I do apologize sir, I don’t think I’m capable to do that because I have never done it before.”
Budi lost his chance to improve his skillset, and with it lost his chance for a promotion and a better life. If he had taken his boss’s challenge, he could have achieved more and become a trusted employee. He was too afraid to make a mistake, and by trying to avoid failure, he stayed in his comfort zone. Personally, I think that your youth is the best time to take as many opportunities as we can; our mistakes will just become moments where we learned something, and will be less costly than if we made them whilst in a more senior position.
One day, I asked him a question, “Budi, what do you want to achieve at work?”
He seemed confused with my question and scratched his head. He gave me a weird smile and replied, “I’m not sure. I just work and follow the flow. As long as I get my paycheck every month, that is more than enough.”
Alright, I have to respect his point of view. There are two kinds of people; people with a fixed mindset and people with a growth mindset. I think it’s safe to say that Budi has fixed mindset; he doesn’t want to grow, and prefers to stay in his comfort zone. A fixed mindset is the mindset that someone has when they believe nothing can change, or might even prefer nothing to change. People with a fixed mindset tend to avoid challenge, and dislike when someone tries to give them advice and feedback, or try to change something.
Budi doesn’t realize that he can’t be a bartender for years; the world will change around him and he will eventually be replaced by someone younger. Suppose that Budi had a growth mindset instead. He might take challenges, learn how to prepare inventory reports, read books about cocktails and other beverages, watch videos on YouTube about bartender skills, and practice mixing his own drinks. A few years later, he’ll be an individual with a lot of experience and added value, and could rise to become the bar manager or perhaps beyond as a bartending influencer or speaker. There are a lot of things he could achieve.
Here’s the research that I did about people and their mindsets. I gave several of my acquaintances questions, to try to understand their mindset.
My questions were as follows:
- What is your goal at work environment?
- What will you do when you have a chance to do more thing at work?
- When someone give you a feedback about the quality of your work, how are you going to deal with it?
- One of your colleagues successfully got promoted, how’s your feeling? Here the summary of their answer in a table below:
| NAME | What is your goal at work environment? | What will you do when you have a chance to do more thing at work? | When someone give you a feedback about the quality of your work, how are you going to deal with it? | One of your colleagues successfully got promoted, how’s your feeling? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Michelle | As Marketing, I think perhaps the main goal in my working environment, is to ensure the brand, team communication, guest service and overall image is always well-kept and in the highest standard, whatever the cost. However, the most important goal for me would be to guide my team to reach their fullest potential and achieve their goals and dreams. To be able to contribute to your team’s achievements is more fulfilling than the work itself. | If I am given more work, I usually do a lot of multitasking while just taking it 1 day at a time. | I handle criticism very well actually, having being brought up in the city where the working environment is pretty tough and hectic. I just listen. Criticism is more expensive than compliments, so take it if its useful and if its not useful, then use it as a fuel to prove them wrong. | Happy of course. Let’s celebrate their promotion! Haha |
| Nanda | Create a system that can make people work easier and can be an identity of my office | I’ll take that chance as long as it doesn’t out from my main responsibility | I’ll say thank you and try to do better | Absolutely happy. I’m not a crab. I always support my colleagues to achieve their goals |
| Diva | My Goals is giving the best at work. When we are giving the best it’s mean I do the best for my performance and also for the company side, and from there I know how far is our skills and performance, so I can improve more and more | I’m very happy to get more to do because that means they are trusting us for doing that job, and they are know I can do and handle it. | If someone give the good feedback I’m grateful, it means I did a good job. if someone give the bad feedback I’m gratefull as well, so they are telling us what bad things in our self, then we know what we need to improves. | Of course I’m jealous, they can get promoted but why I can’t? But from there I learn something, so I need to push my self more than before, and Improve what is my weaknesses. |
| Ahmad | Comfortable at work and to support each other | Give the best to achieve what they want from me, even it doesn’t meet their need at least I gave my effort. | Always do the best because the biggest responsible is to our God. | It’s so hard not to be jealous, but I will take it as a motivation to be better and of course I will congrate my colleague |
| Topan | My goal in the work environment is to gain experience, knowledge and find relationships. | If there is an excessive opportunity at work, I will take full advantage of the opportunity. For example, improving product quality and service quality so that it can provide greater benefits to the company. | To be honest, I will be very happy with criticism from other people, it can increase my enthusiasm and improve myself in providing services to others in the future | To be honest, I don’t have a problem if my colleagues promote first than me. So, that way I can introspect why this is so and look for the advantages of my friend from what side, that way I can encourage myself so that I can be like them |
| Bhunz | People do work based on SOP, no less and no more. Everything is in accordance with the portion | Yes, I do when my work done | Listen, notes, and evaluated. | Feeling put less effort than him |
| Sagung | My goals at work environment are I wanna have a positive vibes like good friend which can be a good team work, can cover each other’s flaw, and boss can appreciate his workers without distinguishing | I will take all chances at my work to improve my skill, even if my boss will compensate more money or not, because I believe effort won’t betray the result | If someone give me feedback, I’ll thank for it. Cause it’ll can improve my self to be better | I’ll feel a little bit jealous, but it makes me realize I have to fight more to get a successful result |
| Ainun | As Human Resources, to coordinate people within an organization to achieve the organization’s goals. | I’ll take it, meaning I’ve to do multitasking and that’s fine as long as I could manage my work and time as well. That would be not easy, but there are always things to learn. | I’ll happy to hear what they thought, for me doesn’t matter good or bad, later on, I’ll filter which ones I think are good because I’m the one who understands what’s best for me | Of course happy for them, Everybody deserved something better |
| Arix | My Goal is keep motivated and love the job so by this everyday will be easier for us. | If I have A chance to do more think at work, well for me I just do it without thinking anything in the beginning and also will learn something more interesting. | If there is a feedback about my quality of work , well I’ll take it of course and really appreciate what someone said to me , this think actually I’m looking for because by this i can change what is supposed to be changed from myself. | One of my colleagues got promoted, of course I’ll be very happy with that. |
| Ana | I am planning to be at Marketing Head Position | Keep going with my integrity, increasing sales and keep commited to give the best contribution to the company, also spread positivity and hard work with all my colleagues | I will receive it as a compliment, if it is an appreciantion feed back, but if it is a critique I will review my working method, my attitude and develop based on the company’s requirement | I am definately very happy for them, and it gives me spirit that I can have the same chance. That also mean that the company is in a healthy condition and perfect system in term of supporting their employess carrier. |
| Yeni | My goal in my work environment are first, get many positive connections, that able to improve me as professional and individual. Professional means that I can improve my skills, get to know people who work in the same industry and clients. as individual means become mature, able to think in the wider view, able to work with different type of people. second, skills and knowledge. as you might know, my basic is Language/Literature. This subject is too wide and on the first time I looking for a job I don’t even know what type of work I should apply for. So in the work environment, I expect to improve my skill and know what I can learn, what I can do. Hence I also expect I can learn so many skill as much as I can and allowed | If I get a chance to do more thing at work, I honestly will take it. As I mentioned before I expect to able to learn a lot of things. I love to learn but I don’t want to teach junior. When I have more skills/knowledge more than any other colleagues, of course I will get recognition to get improving salary. but never expected to get promotion. Like I said I don’t want to teach junior and have to responsible to other people job. | When people give me a feedback, will surely appreciated. Its mean they take times to see my works, but need to see who they are. If the feedback is negative, than I will make sure if what they mentioned is really bad or just jealousy. I will try to check by myself and I will ask a feedback to other colleague too. If the comments is positive, I have to make sure that it was really compliment/ acknowledgement or just someone who have different motives. | I will happy if one my colleague got promotion. It is means I have a friend who have a high position and I am proud of it. Like I mentioned before I don’t really expected to get promotion since I am not a leader type. If the promotion not include responsible for other and only more work and salary, I will gladly accept but not about control people. I am not good at it, and don’t want to. |
| Ian | I am very grateful for God who has entrusted it to me, it will not end there, maybe in the next 5 years I must have a position that is more than now by exploring the potential that exists within me to reach the level where God has entrusted it to me. | What I do is if given more opportunities I will realize my ideas in the development of the company and I will bring that success to my homeland so that they can judge me will not go home without success. | When I get advice from a work relative where there are 2 things, namely positive/negative responses, 1 thing I have to think about is all positive because there are people’s responses that don’t please us even though we still have to be able to accept it positively, that’s the advantage I have to use so that can stimulate enthusiasm so that they can create ideas to contribute to work. | In the world of work there must be a team, a solid team must have personal challenges, each one makes a strong, firm person and confident. Competition in the world of work is definitely there but remember you are not alone in achieving it all, you have a faithful god who accompanies you every step of the way, do good, focus on work, make your good coworkers to be better than him and always rely on God in every achievement of your career |
| Agastya | Don’t have any specific goal at work, but the main thinks just do your best and giving all of our experience to finished your job as quickly as possible. Of course we keep to socialise and solid as teamwork. | Thats a big chance to test your skills right, new things at work sometimes giving us a new experience and new problem solving as a solo or a team. So do not avoid it and face it without a doubt to push your limit. | As a graphic designer sometimes myself and other team member got a compliment or if we had a bad day some customer will complaint about our work. The problems sometimes are classic, we missunderstood about the brief or the design tastes between our team and customer are different. So we need to do apologise, telling what the problems, and giving the extra time to fix these problem by communicate deeply with customers. | I could say I’m a person who doesn’t really pursue positions, as long as my skills are in the right place I’m quite satisfied. |
Eighty percent of the answers showed they’re having growth mindset. “In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work —brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment.” (Dweck, 2015)
These people have goals, and a vision about the career they’re going to lead. Once they have a goal, they will find a way to make it come true. This is different to people who don’t have a clear vision about their future; they only find excuses. People with a growth mindset are open for a chance to learn new things. Information and knowledge is now easy to get in the modern age. There are plenty of videos and articles on the internet that we can learn from, as long as we are willing to put in the work.
Growth oriented people can handle criticism, and will try harder for self-improvements. They aren’t overly proud when they’re praised, and they aren’t too down when they’re criticized.
Getting criticism is not easy to handle. We need to have a self-control. It’s okay to be sad when someone criticize you, but take it as an opportunity to grow! One day, you will thankful for the criticism you recieved. As Michelle said above, “criticism is more expensive than compliments”.
A growth mindset is crucial as a driving force to get you out of your comfort zone. Achieving your goals is a process and not a destination. Rather than thinking about what we have accomplished, we should think what to do next. Getting out of our comfort zone leads us to success, creativity, a wider network or contacts, and a greater self-awareness.
I’ll leave you with this: Remember that our time on this planet is limited. Live your life as if you will die tomorrow. Don’t be disappointed with what you have, and instead live for fulfillment in the present. Your future depends on what you do today. Either you will thank yourself in five year, or being disappointed… “I wish I had started this five years ago”.
