Chapter 5
5
THAT FIRST SCARY STEP
How to do hard things that take you outside your comfort zone
Meet a guy we know named Tyler. Tyler thought about graduating from high school early, but he wasn’t sure if he could do it. So he didn’t. After high school he had several ideas for business start-ups, but he didn’t want to risk losing the little money he had if they went under. So he decided to wait. He considered going to college to study environmental engineering, but he was afraid he might change his mind partway through. So he stayed home.
Now Tyler is twenty-one years old, and he hasn’t failed at anything. In fact, he hasn’t really done anything. He’s missed opportunity after opportunity to grow, explore, discover, and get stronger.
Life is full of scary things. You start your first day of high school. You deliver your first speech. You get married. Certain events mark important passages in our lives. Before the event you were one person. Afterward you are another. But Tyler has spent his life avoiding such firsts. The result? He’s basically the same person he’s always been.
This chapter is about doing hard things that take you from “before” to “after.” We look especially at the step that makes important firsts possible—the one that takes you from the relative safety of your comfort zone to the scary territory outside it. Just thinking about taking a step like this makes many of us fret, fight, and freeze. We imagine that monsters of terror, shame, and pain will eat us alive. But if we do it anyway, we feel like celebrating.
We took that step just over two years ago—into “the new,” leaving the old routines behind. Now, because of those experiences, we’re different people; we’ve been transformed in ways that, sadly, Tyler has never experienced.
Doing hard things outside your comfort zone comes first in our list of five hard things that can start a rebelution in your life because—silly as it sounds—taking that first step outside your comfort zone is often the most terrifying “hard thing” of all. We also put it first because that first scary step is always necessary if we’re going to attempt any of the other hard things we’ll talk about later.
In our family, we like to reminisce (and laugh) about a huge step forward Brett took a little over ten years ago. He bravely fought, he flailed, he nearly drowned. But we should let Brett tell the story.
I still remember my first shower. It was a horrible experience. I was eight years old…
I didn’t ask to be promoted from Junior Bath Taker to First-Class Shower Taker, but one day my parents realized, “He’s eight years old. He’s still taking baths!” But baths were all I had ever known. Baths were neat and tidy undertakings where the water flowed in safely below my head and—provided I didn’t splash too much—stayed below my head and out of my eyes.
It didn’t help that Alex loved showers.
Before I could object that day, I found myself wearing nothing but my birthday suit and staring up at that dreadful showerhead. It pointed down at me like an executioner’s gun. Then Dad pulled the trigger, the shower began to rumble and hiss, and I was screaming before the first drop of water hit.
As scalding droplets stung my skin and water flooded my eyes, nose, and ears, I became convinced that my parents hated me. They couldn’t possibly love me! What’s more, I wasn’t sure I loved them anymore either.
It’s a good thing we lived out in the country. Otherwise the screams coming from the upstairs bathroom of the Harris home would have given neighbors reason to call 911. By the time Dad let me get out, I was a furious, miserable eight-year-old kid with soggy lungs.
But that was ten years ago. The funny thing is that this morning I took a shower and didn’t think twice about it. The hot water felt good on my face. I didn’t worry about drowning. I didn’t hate anybody.
Isn’t it incredible that what seemed so impossible when I was eight is now a vital, enjoyable part of my everyday routine?
WE’VE ALL HAD “FIRST SHOWER” EXPERIENCES
The shower story is true. It’s silly, but it illustrates a key point. Can you remember something in your own life that at the time seemed entirely beyond you? Maybe it was as simple as tying your shoes or riding a bike without training wheels. Maybe it was learning to read in kindergarten or solving basic math problems in second grade. At the time, each of these things was a major step outside your comfort zone. Today, of course, the same activities barely generate a yawn.
As silly as they may seem, each of those achievements proves something very important: If we take a step despite feeling uncomfortable, afraid, or inadequate, our comfort zones expand. We grow in strength and skill. What we consider normal for us changes, sometimes radically.
Take Jared for example. He took the step to fill in while his youth group’s worship leader was away on a mission trip—even though he’d only been playing guitar for a few months. A year later he’s leading worship for the entire church, and his band is looking to put out their first album. “That small step changed my entire direction,” says Jared. “It opened the doors for me to do what I never thought possible.”
The strange thing is that even when teens repeatedly experience the benefits of stepping outside our comfort zones, we tend to respond in exactly the same way to the next new task that comes along. We resist, delay, fight, and scream—all to keep from leaving our cozy little routines. But there’s a high cost for choosing comfort; without even realizing it, we build an invisible fence around ourselves. Nothing challenging is allowed to enter—even if it has the potential to set us free. Inside the fence are all the things we feel comfortable attempting, things we’ve already done successfully. Outside the fence? Yikes!
Whenever we ask teens to list things outside their comfort zones, common fears come up: public speaking, attempting something new (especially if other people are watching or depending on you), traveling to new places, or meeting new people. These kinds of things seem hard because they’re unfamiliar or even scary, but—have you noticed?—they usually end up generating our favorite stories and being some of our greatest memories.
In November 2007 we were invited to speak at two events in Japan, including a Christian teen conference in Tokyo. This was an incredible opportunity to minister to our generation in an entirely different part of the world. Even so, we were pretty nervous. Not only had we never really traveled outside the country before (we’ve been told that Canada doesn’t count), we were also going to be speaking eight times—more than we’d ever done before. As if that wasn’t far enough outside our comfort zones, we were going to be working with interpreters, which would be a completely new experience.
Almost everything about the trip was new and unknown—from the “strange” language to the “strange” toilets, to eating raw whale and squid. But in the end, though it definitely wasn’t easy, it was nowhere near as difficult as we had imagined. Most important, the ministering that took place was amazing, and we formed incredible friendships with many people. Now we want to go back as soon as we can!
Looking back, the funny thing is that the hardest part of the trip was just deciding to go. Once we got into it we had a blast. But why is it that we can have such a hard time stepping outside of our comfort zones?
We’ve noticed that the fence that keeps us from breaking out of our comfort zones is nearly always built of fear—fear of weakness, discomfort, failure, humiliation. We’ve noticed something else too: you can’t live by fear and live by faith at the same time. As Paul wrote in 2 Timothy 1:7, “God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline” (NIV). And when we read about the Bible heroes who accomplished big, hard things for God, we discover the main job requirement: “Without faith it is impossible to please God” (Hebrews 11:6, NIV).
Fortunately, fears are usually just well-concealed lies. In the next section we’ll take a look at three powerful truths that can help you break through the fears that are holding you back from accomplishing hard things for God.
BREAKING OUT OF YOUR OLD ZONE
Think of each of the following three statements in this section as “zone breakers.” Put these huge truths to work in your choices, and you’ll understand why a comfort zone is actually a miserable place—and how you can escape yours.
1. God Works Through Our Weaknesses to Accomplish His Big Plans
Everyone likes to feel strong and smart. That means as soon as we start to feel stretched or pushed past our limits, we hit the brakes, slam into reverse, and scoot back to our comfort zones. Who wants to risk feeling weak and stupid?
Alyssa Chua, a seventeen-year-old rebelutionary from the Philippines, explained her pattern this way: “My comfort zone was the place where everything was just the way I wanted it to be; a situation where I never had to make extra effort or do something difficult; a place where I could sit back, relax, and enjoy myself.”
The problem, she told us, was that when she stayed inside her comfort zone, she was essentially refusing to surrender her life fully to God; she was avoiding the hard things He was calling her to do.
Alyssa now realizes that stepping out of her comfort zone made all the difference. “Outside my comfort zone, I learned to lean on God for strength instead of leaning on the small pleasures of this world for comfort. Outside my comfort zone, I found that I could serve God more fully and use all of my talents unreservedly for Him.”
We don’t know about you, but we constantly find ourselves building that invisible fence (the one that keeps threats outside and us inside). We build it higher every time we say or think things like: “I’m just not a math person,” “I’m just not organized—my brain doesn’t work that way,” or, “I’m just not a people person.”
What we’re really saying is that we don’t want to do things that don’t come easily or naturally. We don’t want to break through our fears. And by our actions, we’re also saying that God isn’t good and powerful enough to help us do what we can’t comfortably do on our own.
And that’s a lie the Enemy loves! (He’s read Hebrews 11:6 too.)
Smith Wigglesworth didn’t learn to read until he was an adult, and he was unable to speak publicly for most of his life due to a terrible stammer. Against all odds he overcame this impediment and turned out to be one of England’s greatest evangelists during his later years, leading thousands to Christ.
We could look at this story and say, “What a shame. If only speaking had come easily and early to him, think of how much more fruitful he could have been.” But Wigglesworth recognized that the difficulties he overcame were vital to the effectiveness of his ministry. He liked to say, “Great faith is the product of great fights. Great testimonies are the outcome of great tests. Great triumphs can only come out of great trials.”
So what are our reasons for sitting on our duffs and doing nothing?
1. We’re not as good at something as someone else we know.
2. We don’t have all the resources we think we need.
3. We figure that the chances of failing and looking like losers are too high.
But do you see the misconceptions hiding in all these reasons? We’re really saying:
1. God only uses the best and brightest.
2. He only uses us when every last thing is in place.
3. He only brings glory to Himself when we…bring glory to ourselves too. (Ouch.)
Twelve-year-old Karen Kovaka wasn’t a people person. She was the four-year-old who hid behind her mother at the mall, the seven-year-old who refused to come out from underneath her bed to meet dinner guests, and the twelve-year-old who burst into tears when she shook a stranger’s hand.
Now her parents had registered her for a Communicators for Christ conference to help her overcome her fear of people. If Karen had known what attending this conference would actually require, she would’ve been terrified. As it turns out, she had no idea what she was getting into.
At that conference Karen began taking small steps outside her comfort zone and stumbled upon a revelation. “I not only learned how to give a speech,” Karen tells us. “I also learned that shyness is a form of selfishness and that I had to overcome my fear of people if I actually wanted to live in the world and demonstrate compassion for others.”
This first step into the realm of public speaking laid the foundation for a completely different future. From there her parents enrolled her in a national speech and debate league where she competed for four years. Her journey still included many tears, failures, and uncomfortable experiences, but she had learned that God’s strength was greater than her weakness. She chose to compete in the most stretching categories, and by her fourth year she had earned nine national rankings.
But competitive success was not Karen’s dream.
At the age of seventeen her dream came true when she was accepted to tour with Communicators for Christ, the same organization that had inspired her to leap beyond her limits five years earlier. Now eighteen, Karen is a personal assistant to the organization’s executive director and helps train hundreds of young people to overcome their fear of public speaking and become communicators for Christ.
“It’s amazing what youth can accomplish when they are awakened to what they can be, and have, at a young age,” Karen says. “I think young people need to know that it’s possible—that pursuing their dreams and goals isn’t hopeless.”
Karen feels that she is a living testimony to God’s ability to cover our inadequacy with His sufficiency. “Young people want to do something significant, but they need to really believe that with God’s help, they can.”
It turns out that God loves to take stammering boys and shy girls and use them to change lives for eternity. And it’s not about feeling strong; it’s about obeying God.
Even when you’re afraid.
2. Courage Is Not the Absence of Fear
Fear is the fence that keeps us stuck in our comfort zones. To be fair, we usually feel fear for a reason: often something is outside that should make us afraid. The problem is when we just sit there.
We wait.
And we wait.
Why? Well, we’re waiting to stop feeling afraid before we attempt anything. And—just to be fair—we’re often afraid to try something new because of painful past experiences. We tried stepping out before, and it blew up in our faces. We poured everything we had into something we cared about, and our efforts fell short. We don’t want to embarrass ourselves again.
The truth, though, is that it’s going to be a long wait. If we’re waiting until the fear and feelings of inadequacy go away, we’ll never venture outside our comfort zones. Until we take a step in spite of our fears, none of us will ever truly be able to do hard things. If we want to continue to grow and learn for the rest of our lives, we must beat these fears—not by making them go away, but by recognizing that there is something worse than discomfort, worse than the unknown, worse than failure. The worst thing is to never try at all.
Contrast the stories of Betsy and Grace:
“She’s pregnant.”
“I’ve never seen her before. Is she new?”
“I think so. I heard from my friend that she’s pregnant. They’re in the same class.”
Betsy listened to her friends gossiping about the pregnant girl. She looked across the cafeteria. There she was, sitting all by herself. Alone. No one to talk to. To laugh with. To cry with.
I wonder what she’s feeling right now, Betsy thought. I wonder if she has a friend. That’s when Betsy felt it. The nudge.
Why now, God? Betsy thought. Can’t You find someone else to reach out to her? What will everyone think of me? I’m afraid!
Go to her. The voice whispered again—loud and clear. Only Betsy didn’t listen to the voice. Even though it told her the same thing for three days in a row.
After that the girl was gone.
“I’ll always regret the way I ignored God’s call to do what He told me to do,” Betsy shared with us later. “I’ll always wonder what she was like, how she ended up the way she was, and what could’ve happened if I’d talked with her.”
Though Betsy knows that God has forgiven her, she is left asking, “What if?” What if she had chosen to obey God—despite her fear? How could her life—and the life of that girl—have been radically different?
One day last summer, nineteen-year-old Grace Mally promised God that she would witness to whomever she found at the park near her house—without turning back. But instead of a mom with a stroller, she found four burly construction workers repainting the merry-go-round.
What? Something must be wrong here. Surely God doesn’t want me to witness to them! That would be so scary! Grace quickly turned around and started walking home. Wait, no, I can’t go home. I promised God that I was going to do this. She slowly—very slowly—turned around and walked back to the park.
“I knew that I couldn’t allow fear to take over,” Grace recalls. “The Bible tells us so many times not to fear.” Once she got started, her fear melted away entirely. The workers were surprisingly friendly, and she was able to be double good news—first by sharing the gospel and second by bringing them ice-cold lemonade.
“I don’t know what the Lord was doing in the lives of the park maintenance crew,” Grace says, “but I learned once again that if I allow fear to keep me from doing hard things, I’ll miss out on the most exciting adventure life offers: obeying God.”
Betsy and Grace: two girls and two different responses to God’s calling.
Our father often tells us, “True courage is not the absence of fear. It is refusing to allow fear to control your actions.” Grace’s courage showed up in the fact that she committed to obeying God—regardless of how she felt. Betsy was held captive by her fear and chained down by feelings of inadequacy.
But not the next time.
“I now know that God wasn’t asking me to do it on my own,” Betsy says. “He was simply calling me to follow His direction and see what would happen. He wanted me to draw my confidence from Him.”
Of course, we’re not encouraging you to go jump into an aquarium with a bunch of sharks—some fears are healthy! Instead we’re talking about things you know you should do but aren’t doing because you’re afraid you might fail, afraid you’ll feel awkward or foolish, or just afraid of the new and unknown.
Overcoming our fears doesn’t require that we stop caring about what happens. It just requires that we act in spite of our fear. Slavery to fear is much worse than the bruises and scars of a few falls. Letting fear control your actions is a statement of distrust in the goodness of God. If we allow fear to paralyze us, we’ll look back at our life with remorse for all the times we could have and should have—but did not.
The good news is that all it takes to overcome many of our fears is to face them—with God’s help—by taking the first step. The first step is always the hardest.
3. You Can’t Get to Success Without Risking Failure
We all like to win. It sure beats losing. But a very promising competitive streak can also breed a very limiting dread of failure. If I do this and fail, we tell ourselves, disaster will follow and everyone will know I’m a loser.
Do you see the all-or-nothing fallacy in that line of thinking? The choice is win…or disaster. But the truth in this area is so liberating. Unless we’re being intentionally foolish, a failure is never total. We aren’t called to be successful all the time. We’re called to be faithful, to take those first difficult steps—and to leave the results up to God.
Fourteen-year-old Caleb had wanted to record a CD for years. He’d finally saved up enough money to buy the equipment he needed and had transformed his bedroom into a studio. Now he just needed to learn how the equipment worked.
He decided to learn by doing.
It took Caleb three weeks to record two songs and three more weeks of spinning dials and punching buttons to finish editing. This wasn’t six weeks off and on; this was six weeks of every spare minute. He made dozens (and dozens) of mistakes trying to learn the equipment and once had to start over completely after he thought he was finished. For all this work, he sold three CDs. Not counting grandparents, he sold one.
At times like these we need to remember that anything worth doing is worth doing poorly—at first. Anything worth doing is worth failing at and trying again. The Bible says that the righteous man falls seven times and gets back up again (Proverbs 24:16).
Interestingly enough, the other time the Bible references doing something seven times (forgiving others), Jesus clarifies that seven times might as well mean seventy times seven. Have any of us ever failed and then tried again at something 490 times? For that matter, have any of us ever tried even seven times?
Caleb’s failure could have discouraged him from ever trying again. It was the kind of fiasco that seemed to say, “You have a brighter future sticking with PlayStation.” But Caleb didn’t see it that way. He was excited he had learned to use the equipment!
Since that first attempt Caleb has completed several larger projects—all in a fraction of the time. Having mastered the technical side of recording and mixing, he’s able to focus on improving his guitar playing and songwriting. Plus, now that Caleb’s friends are aware he has an in-house studio and knows how to use it, they’re bringing their instruments over and jamming with him.
“It’s a lot better than when I was trying to play every instrument myself.” Caleb laughs. “I’m pretty sure we’re going to start a band this summer. I’m pretty stoked.”
What Caleb learned is that it’s okay to fail at hard things, because all effort—even failed effort—produces growth.
For example, we were once with a large group of guys when someone had the brilliant idea of holding a push-up contest. The goal was a hundred push-ups. Most of the guys wouldn’t even attempt it—either because they were afraid they might fail or because they knew they would. In the end two or three guys who knew they could reach a hundred, and Brett and Alex, who knew we couldn’t reach a hundred, actually embarked on this extremely masculine endeavor.
The outcome was no surprise. We lost—badly. In the end we were lying there on the floor, unable to get up, thinking, That was such a stupid idea. What were we thinking? Will we ever be able to get up again?
Here’s where a “do hard things” mentality comes in: we probably got a better workout than the other guys did. Think about it. They exerted themselves—until they won. Then they stopped. We exerted ourselves too. But we stretched. We pushed ourselves to our limits and beyond. We got stronger even though we failed to hit the goal.
So many of us allow little failures to keep us from gaining important skills, from maintaining vital relationships, or even from accomplishing great things in our lives. A “do hard things” perspective reminds us that all effort—even failed effort—builds muscle. It tells us that the reason we can’t do a hundred push-ups is because we haven’t built up the strength with consistent exercise. It turns failure on its head, making it work for us rather than against us. It makes failure a way to grow stronger, not a reason to give up.
A STEP INTO THE UNKNOWN
Brothers Seth and Ian Willard were eighteen and sixteen respectively. Neither of them had done any political campaigning before. However, they’d just attended a conference where one of the speakers challenged students to make a difference in the political process. And guess what? It was an election year.
“At that point we had a decision to make,” Ian recalls. “We could either sit back and watch, or we could hop in and risk making fools of ourselves.”
Back home in Minnesota they decided to take a simple step of faith and call one of the candidates they supported to offer their services. “We were really nervous before we made the call,” admits Seth, “but he was very happy to hear from us, and it turned out he could use plenty of help.” The next Saturday the brothers were out working on his state senate campaign.
Less than a week later Seth and Ian heard that one of their family’s old church friends was running for county sheriff. Once again they offered their services, and once again they were invited to attend his first campaign meeting. Before they knew what was happening, they were members of his campaign board. And Ian wasn’t even old enough to vote!
Seth and Ian recruited many of their friends to work alongside them, and word about their team spread. They started getting calls from other campaigns asking for help. Eventually they found themselves traveling across the state to work on a national election for the U.S. Congress. A few weeks later they watched with satisfaction as the results came in. All of the campaigns they’d worked on were successful.
With these victories under their belts, it was hard to believe that just a few months earlier they’d never done this before and weren’t sure where to start.
“At first I was tempted to swell up with pride because I had saved America,” says Ian, laughing. “But then I realized that it has nothing to do with me. I was merely a tool in God’s hands. It’s humbling that He used me to accomplish what He wanted to do.”
We love Seth and Ian’s story because it so clearly demonstrates the three “zone breakers” we’ve looked at in this chapter:
1. We see God working through them, despite their inexperience, to accomplish big things.
2. We see them acting in spite of their fear. They took the first step of making a phone call, and God opened a floodgate of opportunities.
3. We see them risk failing and looking foolish, and as a result, they find success and vision for the future.
Since this experience, both Seth and Ian have felt called to encourage the rest of their generation to get involved. Stepping outside of their comfort zones once again, they’ve started a local club that brings elected officials to speak to students and leads groups to the state capitol to meet with their representatives and watch the senate in session.
“Our story started with a simple step into the unknown,” says Seth, “but by God’s grace our story has only just begun. We can’t wait to see what comes next.”
UNKNOWN FUTURE, KNOWN GOD
An interesting map is on display in the British Museum in London. It’s an old mariner’s chart, drawn in 1525, outlining the North American coastline and adjacent waters. The cartographer made some intriguing notations on areas of the map that represented regions not yet explored. He wrote, “Here be giants,” “Here be fiery scorpions,” and “Here be dragons.” Fortunately, explorers ignored his warnings—and discovered whole new continents as a result!
In this chapter we’ve seen that it’s not the giants, fiery scorpions, and dragons that keep us behind our fences. It’s the fear of them. Once we take that first scary step with God’s help—and keep going forward—we’ll actually experience the bigger, more fulfilling life God has in mind for us.
Not only that, but we have seen that God is ready to work through us, even with our limitations, and bless our failures. Instead of worrying about future fears, we can, as Corrie ten Boom wrote, “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”
It’s been nearly a decade since Brett’s first shower, one of the great challenges of his childhood. Since then he’s tackled a lot of new tasks—some almost as fearsome as getting water in his eyes and ears. “When I find myself thinking that these new challenges are going to kill me,” he says, “I just remember that I thought the same thing about my first shower. Then I smile and keep on pushing.”
What if the same could be said about the enormous challenges you face today? Take a moment to ponder the following questions:
• What could your life look like if your trust in God overcame your fears?
• How could your life be different if you chose to do hard things by stepping outside your comfort zone?
The stories we’ve shared in this chapter are just examples of a reality that has been proven true in thousands of lives. What if a kid who suffers from severe anxiety attacks could go on to be a fifteen-year-old who has spoken to over half a million people at live events, appeared on national television numerous times, and even delivered speeches at the White House? Not possible?
His name is Zach. And anything is possible with God.
Throughout the rest of this book we’ll introduce you to dozens more young people, including Zach, whose lives have been transformed by surrendering themselves to God and following wherever He leads—even when it takes them way outside their comfort zones.
To hear them tell it, that’s where the very best things happen.