Comfort Challenges

I'm writing from Macau, where the weather is getting worse by the minute. It's now heavy rain outside. No photo today.

Comfort Challenges is a termed used (coined?) by Tim Ferriss for challenges that get you outside your comfort zone. One of the ones he suggests is to lie on the floor in a public space and if someone ask if anything is wrong, just answer you need to lie down.

The purpose of them is to breakout of your self imposed limits. Most of us have dreams but they tend to be outside our comfort zone and therefore we need to do things that we find uncomfortable to get them.

Some of mine 'comfort zone' issues include calling myself a photographer (in a serious sense), a travel writer, contacting editors and selling myself (I mean my skills). When I talk to an editor about an article I tend to be a bit defensive and unconfident. I want to change this and I've decided to do a number of 'comfort challenges' to celebrate my 40th birthday.

I'm please to say that I did my biggest comfort challenge yesterday. I was very nervous as you'll see in the video, when I put it up. I did it in Macau to give you a clue but I won't reveal just yet what I did.

Completed Comfort Challenges

Celebrating with everyone in a Sake Bar my 40th. I said that 'I'm 40'. I bought everyone a beer to celebrate with me.
Watching Avatar from 1:30 - 4:30 in the morning and working the next day.
What I did yesterday.

Ones coming up

Getting my hair shaved off - Tuesday

Arranging a video shoot (taking the lead) - theme 'Easy English --- Easy Chinese'. - by the end of Feb

Arranging a photo shoot with some friends (also taking the lead)- the idea is to have fun with photography and to get some model shots for microstock use that my friends would be comfortable with.

Chinese week - I'll go out onto the streets with a dictaphone or video camera. I'll record the written Chinese in my area that I see everyday and more important start conversations with strangers. After the end of Chinese New Year.

Contact 10 editors by the end of February

Those are my 'comfort challenges'. I've done well so far and I feel they are all achievable. I want this to lead on to a 'Can Do Attitude.' That's what I was saying yesterday after I completed yesterday's mystery task.