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Getting out of our comfort zones

We all have hopes and dreams. For some people, those dreams stay off in the future and may be called permanent potential.

Others achieve their dreams and go way beyond. There is something that separates those two categories. Some people do possess physical characteristics and innate talents that make them suitable for particular endeavors. Some have families that encourage and nurture a particular skill.

Others have a stroke of luck that catapults them to achievement with seemingly little effort, but there is much more to it than any of these things.

We often hear the stories of Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and other amazing athletes. They can offer inspiring lessons, but it is not about sports or being world-class.

One of the basic facts of life is that everyone cannot do everything. Whatever we do is a tradeoff. Every individual has only 24 hours in a day. What you do with those hours is your choice. Tiger Woods spent thousands of hours of his childhood practicing and playing golf. That isn’t good or bad. It is a choice he made, but those thousands of hours were traded for all of the other things that a child could do with that time. Nobody else is Tiger Woods, though, and everyone has choices to make regarding their own advantages and obstacles.

We usually think of cost in terms of money, but every tradeoff involves a real cost, the loss of the opportunity to do anything else with that time or resource.

It is an opportunity cost. Time is one of the most scarce commodities for every individual, and many realize too late that they have squandered most of their lives doing things that didn’t really make a difference, to them or to anyone else. They do the things that are easy, rather than the things that will get them closer to their dreams and goals.

If you take an hour to prepare a wonderful meal, that is an accomplishment that may be appreciated by your family, but that is one hour during which you were not practicing on a putting green, in front of a client closing a deal, or helping patients recover from an injury or illness. The other side is that one extra hour at the office or partying with friends is another hour that you have not spent nurturing your family, training your dog, or learning a new, valuable skill.

Recognizing the opportunity costs, most people don’t have a dream of becoming a world-class performer, and that is a good thing.

Most people want to live balanced, happy lives. They recognize that the sacrifice would be too great and that many top performers are not very balanced and happy. They are, however, still in control of their choices and can set out to achieve the things that will make them a better person, that will bring them more prosperity, or that will get them closer to the goals that they do have.

Many people have not spent much time thinking about what they really want to accomplish or how to get there. They can’t imagine what is on the other side of the mountain so they have no incentive or ambition to climb it.

They settle for what is comfortable, spending time watching others achieve their dreams on television. While there is nothing inherently bad with being comfortable, the opportunity cost for comfort is tremendous. Progress requires change and effort. It requires giving up some level of comfort to stretch, to be ready for luck when it strikes, and to move to a different place.

Do you want different results? What are you willing to give up?

Daniel McLaughlin is a Randolph resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com or visit daniel-mclaughlin.com for more commentary, for links to other resources, or to leave a message.

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