How to get out of your comfort zone with a smile, cher francophone :)

HOW TO GET OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE WITH A SMILE

So, can you speak naturally without translating your words from English?

If this is what you’re asking yourself, you’re not alone.

I received this question from Joseph, in the J’Ouellette Facebook group:

“How can one think in French and speak naturally without translating words from English?”

This is a question that comes to me very frequently, in different forms – even yesterday, from Inna. Generally, everybody wants to be ‘thinking in French’.

This problem comes from the myth that first we have to stop thinking in English and everything else will easily follow.

If we’re thinking in French, we’ll be able to find our words easier, the sentences will flow naturally and we’ll become fluent. That’s what people think.

Want to feel more confident speaking French BEFORE you start thinking in French?

Read the article below for my 3-step bullet-proof technique to help you get out of your comfort zone, and watch the video for some French worth thinking about.

(This week: the verb SORTIR – to exit)

This is the second part of a post I share from one of my masters and one of the people I admire most, Leo Babauta.

Read the first part, if you missed it, here.

Mastering Discomfort

The way to master discomfort is to do it comfortably. That might sound contradictory, but it’s not. If you are afraid of discomfort, and you try to beat discomfort with a really gruelling activity, you will probably give up and fail, and go back to comfort.

So do it in small doses.

1.
Pick something that’s not hard. Take meditation as an example. It’s not really that hard — you just sit down and pay attention to your body and breath, in the present moment. You don’t have to empty your mind (just notice your thoughts), you don’t have to chant anything weird, you just sit and pay attention. If you don’t like meditation, try a new healthy food, like kale or raw almonds or quinoa. Or a fairly easy exercise if you’re sedentary, like walking or jogging.

2.
Just do a little. You don’t have to start by doing 30 minutes of something you’re not used to doing. Just do a few minutes. Just start.

3.
Push out of your comfort zone, a little. My friend and Zen priest Susan O’Connell has a favorite meditation instruction that you can use for any activity actually: when you’re meditating and you feel like getting up, don’t; then when you feel the urge to get up a second time, don’t; and when you feel the urge to get up a third time, then get up. So you sit through the urge, the discomfort, twice before finally giving in the third time. This is a nice balance, so that you’re pushing your comfort zone a little. You can do this in exercise and many other activities — push a little.

4.
Watch the discomfort. Watch yourself as you get a bit uncomfortable — are you starting to complain (internally)? Are you looking for ways to avoid it? Where do you turn to? What happens if you stay with it, and don’t do anything?

5.
Smile. This is not trivial advice. If you can smile while being uncomfortable, you can learn to be happy with discomfort, with practice. When I did the Goruck Challenge in 2011, it was 13 hours of discomfort — raw and bloody knees, sand in my shoes as a hiked and ran with 60+ pounds on my back, carrying teammates and logs, doing pushups and crabwalks and other exercises, needing the bathroom and being tired and hungry and cold. And yet, I practiced something simple: I tried to mantain a smile through all this discomfort. It’s an important practice.

Repeat this practice daily.
It will be strange, perhaps difficult, at first, but soon your comfort zone will expand. If you practice it enough, with different activities, your comfort zone will expand to include discomfort. And then you can master the universe.

NOW IT IS YOUR TURN!
Tell us in the comments below: what is the one step from Leo’s list that speaks to you most and you will start with?

Let me guess.

Do you constantly have the feeling that you can’t hear what the French say and you don’t know how to read all the French words because they are written so much differently than they sound?

Learn 3 secrets that will help you be self sufficient in the way you pronounce French words – even if you don’t know what they mean – so that you can read that sophisticated menu in your favorite French restaurant.