Ah yes, getting out of the ol’ comfort zone.

It is something everyone deals with and struggles to overcome.

But unless we get out of our comfort zone, the reality is that we won’t make breakthroughs in our lives, our fitness, or our fat loss.

You simply can’t coast through life if you want to get better.

And yes, this goes for me as well.

As you can see I’ve posted 5 photos to go along with this blog post. They are a series of photos that chronicle the destruction and burial of my dad’s barn and silo. It happened just the other week, and the end results is quite shocking (at least to someone like me, who has spent the last 35 years expecting them to be there).

These photos also serve a powerful purpose…they’re going to help introduce one of my “comfort zones” to you, and the truth about what I need to do to break FREE from my comfort zone, AND how this applies to helping YOU lose fat by getting YOU out of your comfort zone. Trust me, it will all make sense in a minute…

Photo 1 (above) - Here we go. Okay, so you have your giant backhoe, the remains of my father’s old barn, an 80-foot silo, and the house where I grew up in the background.

Photo 2 - Timberrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

I wish I would have been there, but I was traveling that weekend…I still remember as an 8 year old kid, my old man climbing up ladder on the outside of that silo, no safety gear on, all 80 feet of the way to the top, and then turning to look down and wave to me. He sure was crazy.

Photo 3 – Every boy’s dream. Operating a big wrecking ball and absolutely destroying something. That guy has a pretty cool job.

The entire process lasted about 8 hours. And when they were done, it was almost as if they had performed a magic trick.

“Watch me make this silo disappear right before your very eyes!”

Photo 4 - Crush, crush, crush. Bury, bury, bury.

Photo 5 (left) - And then there was nothing.

Makes you think for a second…the very things you have spent your entire life building can be blasted to smithereens in seconds, minutes, hours.

And the world rolls on without you.

Pretty crazy, huh?

Okay, enough of the metaphysical stuff. Let’s move on to the point…the truth about getting out of your comfort zone,  attacking new challenges, and achieving incredible results.

And the fact is, EVERYONE has their comfort zones.

Mine is my parent’s house. I still go there a lot to retreat from the big city and all the travel. I sleep in the giant bed as I did when I was 12. I get my mom to make my meals and even do my laundry while I play with my dog, goof off, workout, and ride around town on my bike. Just like I did 18 years ago.

These habits are all just a part of my BIGGER comfort zone of refusing to grow up.

But I have some big goals that call for a “bigger me”.

My goal for the next 10 years is to help ONE MILLION people – just like YOU – to transform their bodies and their lives.

And I’m not going to get that done by “being a kid” and shirking massive responsibility.

And yes, it’s true, we’re doing awesome right now. We get 100-150 people in each of the 3 TT Transformation contests I run every year, but I want to do more and help more people.

So I need to build a team. I need to create systems. I need to convince large corporations and insurance companies that my fat loss system can help their employees while saving the company money.

But that’s not going to happen if I don’t change.

So what’s stopping me from changing? And more importantly, what’s stopping YOU from changing?

The saying goes of course, that “people fear change”.

But that’s not completely accurate. After all, if I gave you $1,000,000 dollars, you wouldn’t be scared of that life change, right? Of course not. In fact, we embrace positive change.

What we really fear is NEGATIVE change.

I know my goal requires getting out of my “teenage kid comfort zone”. It requires meetings with my team (see the awesome TT Team in the photo below). It requires serious conversations with adults (one thing I’ve tried to avoid my entire life). And it requires “cold-selling” my system to executives who have never heard about me. These aren’t my favorite things in the world, but the BOTTOM LINE is that if I want to reach my goal then I MUST change.

For you and your fat loss journey, giving up some of your favorite TV shows and foods to do your TT workouts and stick to your Simple Nutrition fat loss plan will require changes that feel negative at first (until you start noticing more energy and looser pants  within a few days).

You need to look at what you might think are negative changes, and reframe them as positive changes to your lifestyle.

You have to focus on the dramatic increases in energy you’ll have from exercising just a few minutes each day. You’ll need to have gratitude for the new friends you make in your fitness social support groups, both online and offline. And you’ll need to appreciate how energetic you feel after lunch thanks to your new nutrition plan.

Trust me, there will still be a time and a place in your life to slip back into your comfort zone to enjoy your favorite foods and relax with your favorite TV show or a movie. Just like I will always be able to find some comfort zone time each month to do “kid stuff” and avoid responsibility for a bit.

But if we want to make those big changes in our lives, then we need to break free from our comfort zones. We need to challenge ourselves. And we need increase the organization, planning, preparation, and action-taking in our lives.

If we do this consistently, we will develop new, stronger habits that will allow us to reach our goals. Yours of transformation, and mine of helping people just like you to transform.

We’re in this together.

We’ll start by…

1) Setting deadlines for our new behaviors. You have the 9th TT Transformation Contest dates, and I have a deadline for my Turbulence Training Personal Trainer Certification (that’s part of the One Million Transformations plan…to get other TT Trainers out there helping hundreds and thousands of clients in their cities).

2) Making small changes every day. For you, that means eating more fruits and vegetables and doing more exercise today than yesterday. And for me, that means spending 30 minutes, 60 minutes, and eventually more and more time creating the certification and videos. We’ll both keep going till we have “Mission Accomplished”!

3) We will prepare for those days when we feel like doing the opposite of what we should be doing. You’ll be ready with healthy snacks for days when you feel like going to Dunkin’ Donuts, and I’ll be prepared with a checklist of tasks to  complete when I feel like skipping work and going to the lake with ol’ Bally the Dog.

You can do it. You can break free from your comfort zone.

If you believe in yourself as much as I believe in you, you will succeed beyond your wildest dreams.

It may not be easy, but you can AND will do it. I’ll be right there with you every step of the way.

Let us do this,

Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
Creator, Turbulence Training Transformation Contest