Step out of your comfort zone

There should be a way out of the ongoing socio-economic crisis of unemployment, retrenchment, downsizing, unpaid salaries, wage reductions and labour agitations that are devastating people, especially the urban and city dwellers.
Is it farming and trading?
President Muhammadu Buhari advised people to go back to the farm or learn a trade as a feasible alternative to navigating the existing predicament in order to survive the hard times.
He put forward this proposition as he acknowledged the difficulties Nigerians face while speaking in the Emir’s palace during his two-day official visit to Katsina State earlier this week.
Obviously, farming or learning a trade is a metaphor for self-reliance, self-empowerment and self-employment which are the building blocks of becoming an entrepreneur.
Becoming an entrepreneur is the first step to an individual’s economic well-being. This is evident in the numbers of thriving micro, small and medium-sized enterprises as big businesses struggle to survive.
Moment of truth
Why is the statistics of unemployment, lay-offs, downsizing, and labour unrest on the high side? Why does a legion of able-bodied youths roam the streets without any means of livelihood?
Why are brilliant people trapped in poorly paid employment? Why do marriages fail and couples blame employment-induced distant relationships and domestic abuse?
Peter loved and wanted to become an entrepreneur. He had always been fascinated by the heroic stories of people who started from nothing but went on to build conglomerates. He dreamt of working for himself. He wanted to become his own boss.
With a good job, nice car, beautiful wife and jolly good friends with whom he played golf every Saturday, the prospect of quitting his job to start up a company became dreadful.
The toughest task
The hardest part of becoming an entrepreneur is taking the decision to step out of the comfort zone. Coincidentally, no person is guaranteed a purposeful life who does not venture out of the comfort zone into the frontiers. The frontier is where the magic happens. There, fortune smiles on the courageous. It is the place where innovation, breakthrough, success and greatness live.
The comfort zone is a behavioural and psychological conditioning when one feels safe, secure or at ease with one’s environment where everything is familiar, predictable, unchallenged, unperturbed, under control and most importantly routine.
Generally, life begins in the horizon but settles down in the comfort zone. Most people who go through life end up unsung in the comfort zone. Greatness in life requires that the person leaps out of the comfort zone and pushes the frontiers into greatness and success. Life in the comfort zone is a mirage.
Dare to be adventurous
The stories of heroism and greatness that thrill average readers are no more than the courageous adventures of frontier people who chose to leap out of their comfort zone into the place of magic where impossibilities melt like cheese into possibilities.
Empire builders like Christopher Columbus challenged the status quo in 1492. The Pilgrim Fathers crossed the Atlantic in Mayflower ships from Europe in the seventeenth century to build the United States of America. Oduduwa arrived in Ile Ife and changed the history of a people, giving them an identity and a kingdom.
Brave men, fighters and soldiers leapt out the collapse of the old Oyo Empire in the 19th century and mobilised themselves into formidable army under the enterprising leadership of Lagelu and Sodeke to found new thriving city-states of Ibadan and Abeokuta respectively.
Their adventures and fortunes excite readers today but the truth is that these men were not super humans but frontier people who got out of their comfort zones.
People who love ease and prefer to enjoy the goodies of the comfort zone seldom make significant impact in life. Lazy and fearful people and lovers of pleasure cannot become entrepreneurs. Those who procrastinate or over-analyse scenarios may never become entrepreneurs.
There is more to life
Co-founder and deputy managing director of First Ally Capital Limited, Obeahon Ohiwerei, said that entrepreneurs are the masters of their fate. He said that the greatest multinationals in the world started as some people’s dreams and in each case, someone came up with the idea.
“Aspiring entrepreneurs should dare to dream, believe in and follow through their dreams. They should realise that the greatest restriction to entrepreneurial dream could only be the dreamers themselves. They should not allow the fear of the unknown to stop them. They should set goals and determine the vehicle that will transport them from their take-off point to their destination,” he said.
He counselled entrepreneurs facing setbacks in their business to always look at the positive side of life, patiently learn vital lessons from their failure and move on thereafter. This may require mental resilience and doggedness but people who stick to their big picture and endure the pains of building their business often experience breakthrough and achieve success.
Norman Vincent Peale said, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” There is always more beyond. There lies a frontier beyond the zone where life is comfortable and that is the threshold that every person should aspire to.