Challenge words

Every week Lisa has a spelling test at school. She gets a list with 8 mandatory words and 2 challenge words. Those challenge words a little bit more difficult, but she has a choice whether or not to write them down during the test.

In my life there are a lot of challenge words. The past weekend my challenge word was: presentation. In my NLP training I needed to interview 3 people and together with several other people who choose the same topic (personal growth) we had to present to the rest of the group what we had learned. I knew this was coming and I had been dreading this moment from the beginning. I also had a choice. I could’ve chosen not to do the presentation and stay nice and safe in my comfort zone. But where would that get me? So, the only option was doing the presentation. The closer it came, the more I dreaded it.

It was challenging for our group to agree upon certain things and one person came up with a brilliant idea: a news show. A news show has different segments, so everyone could tell in their segment what they thought needed to be said. It worked perfectly (except some technical difficulties that challenged our flexibility 🙂 ).
Finally the moment had come. When I drove over there that morning, I was a bit nervous, but at the same time I felt very calm, I was going to nail this, no doubt about it. When we were up, I was still nervous, my hands were shaking a little bit, but the funniest thing happened… I actually enjoyed it! That was the weirdest thing. The moment I had been dreading for so long turned out to be really fun?! Something I would’ve missed out on had I chosen to stay in my comfort zone.

So, if you have some challenge words yourself coming up, take them on. Know that it’s perfectly ok to be nervous or maybe even dread it, but take a deep breath and get out of your comfort zone. No matter the outcome, you have been successful just by doing it. And who knows, it just might turn out to be fun.