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If you keep saying 'no', you'll never start living your life.
By Unwritten — Written on Mar 14, 2020
By Larissa Martin
As a writer, I love jumping at new opportunities that offer me new challenges. Getting my work out there is extremely important to me, so I take all the chances I can.
After all, any publicity is good publicity, right? However, when I first started my writing career, that was not the case.
At the very beginning, I was solely comfortable writing for a specific publication — The Mighty. It was the first online magazine that had published my work and I was comfortable with them.
I knew their guidelines and requirements and that made me feel safe. So I wrote for them and only them for a while, because I didn’t want to mess things up. I mean, why risk getting out of my comfort zone?
Over time, I realized that my writing style is meant to make people uncomfortable. It’s also meant to make people see things from a different perspective.
So, when I actually started to take new opportunities, my writing career benefited from that greatly.
So, you might wonder, why is it usually so much easier to say no to new opportunities?
Well, personally, I believe that it’s because we are way too comfortable with where we are now.
It’s as if we have a safety net where we are established and successful and we don’t want to shake things up. We think it’s perfectly fine.
So, we choose to pass on many new opportunities, whatever they might be — personal or professional. When we pass on these chances given to us, we are passing up on learning and growing.
By not taking those necessary risks, you’re selling yourself short on what’s possible for you and your life. Unknowingly, you have given that chance to someone else who was ready to go out and do something you weren’t.
You might have lost a wonderful opportunity, all because you are scared to get uncomfortable in your life. I think we live in a society where we have normalized staying comfortable.
By doing that, we become too scared when new opportunities arise, because we don’t know how to handle that feeling of uncertainty and the possibility of failure.
Personally, I believe that, in order to stop normalizing comfortability, we need to start getting uncomfortable with ourselves and our lives. You need to start looking at these new opportunities as what they really are — gifts that promote growth in your life.
Yes, those gifts won’t always be pretty and easy, and you might not want them at first, but they’re here, right now, in front of you. Such an opportunity may be a one-time thing that you will never be able to have again.
You would probably be upset with yourself if you chose to pass on such a great thing. I think more people should look at new things in their lives as a way to improve, to grow.
These changes give you a new perspective on life and allow you to try things you’ve always been too scared to.
So, am I saying it’s going to be easy? Absolutely not. But if you don’t start getting uncomfortable in your life, you’ll end up like so many people in today’s society.
You’re so much more than that, though! So, do something unexpected; move, travel, take that dream job, start a business — the sky’s the limit! Only when you choose to get uncomfortable with your comfortable life, will your dreams come true.
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Larissa Martin is a writer who focuses on self-care, self-love, and health and wellness. For more of her self-care content, visit her author profile on Unwritten.
This article was originally published at Unwritten. Reprinted with permission from the author.