This past weekend I traveled to Utah for a conference, and I want to take a minute to explain two of the most important things I learned (or was reminded of). First, I want to put a few things into context. In every industry there’s always several annual events, conferences, meetings, etc. that you can attend. What I’ve found is that (and we’re all guilty of this) we find ourselves attending the same ones over and over for years on end. I think this happens because we get familiar and comfortable with the crowd we see every year, and we seem to learn something and have a good time, so why change it?
I get it, and there’s still value in that. I’m not going to tell you to stop going to your event every year. I do want to tell you about what I experienced going to a new event by myself and the value I received in doing so.
This event had 3 parts to it. Side note: this event wasn’t necessarily specific to my industry (fitness) either. There were all types of industry people in attendance from pipeline workers to high end car rental owners. There was a social event on Friday, the conference on Saturday, and a VIP meet up Saturday night at the host’s house after the event. I decided I was going to go to all three by myself without knowing a single person in attendance. Remember, this was a brand-new event with speakers I had never seen, and people I had no connection to.
As a natural introvert, going up to random people and striking up a conversation is not the most comfortable thing for me. Prior to this event I decided that I wanted to get the most out of it, and I knew that to do that I was going to have to meet as many people as possible. This is something that made me uncomfortable, but I forced myself to do it anyways. What I learned was that it wasn’t as scary as I thought, and I ended up having some great conversations and meeting some brilliant people who I am now connected with.
Before the conference began on Saturday, I struck up a random conversation with the person sitting next to me. As it turns out, we had a lot in common and discovered we can work together and help each other on some projects we’re working on. This would have never happened had I not struck up the initial conversation, and that was before the event even started.
I have a TON of takeaways from this past weekend that I’ll share with you at some point, but there are two of them I wanted to share with you today.
The first one is the power of relationships. I feel like we need relationships and in-person contact now more than ever. In our post shutdown world, more of us are working from home and have very little interaction with people in person. The fact is, people need people for many different reasons, and the only way to do that is to get out and actually cultivate relationships.
The second takeaway I wanted to chat about is the FACT that everything good happens when you’re uncomfortable.
I’ll revisit this topic in future posts and go more in depth with it, but for now I want to keep it simple and straightforward.
If you want to keep doing the same thing over and over again, that’s fine. I won’t judge you, and at the end of the day you can do what you want. What I do want to point out is how good it feels after you’ve done or tried something that made you uncomfortable, as well as the potential benefits of doing so.
When you do these uncomfortable things, it helps you understand that you’re capable of so much more than you think, which ultimately helps you become more confident. When you start building more confidence, every single area in your life improves. Your health, your fitness, your relationships, your level of happiness- all these things improve because you were willing to do something uncomfortable.
So, like I said, you can continue to keep doing what you’re doing. I’ll never judge you for that. The downside there is that you’re guaranteed to stay exactly where you’re at. You will 100% be sitting in the same place at this time next year.
I’m here to present the other option, which is to take a risk, try something that makes you a little uncomfortable and see how it impacts you in all areas of your life. If you start doing this, you’ll be shocked how different your life can be a year from now.
