The Comfort Zone
Sometimes starting something new requires an uncomfortable journey outside of one's comfort zone. I went on such a journey and it has changed my life.
6 Years Ago
It was 6 years ago this month that I started something new. A friend talked me into playing ice hockey for the first time in my life. The game had always intrigued me but I had never had an opportunity to give it a try earlier in life.
Most adults who play hockey started playing about the time they learned how to walk. May of the guys I've met at rinks in Colorado grew up in Minnesota, Michigan, North Dakota, etc.
Let's Play Hockey
The idea to start playing hockey didn't fully cross my mind until I was in my 40s. On September 17, 2010, nine months after starting to play hockey for the first time and 75 games into my new armature hockey career, I ended up in an ambulance where it took the skills of a paramedic to get my my lifeless heart restarted.
They Brought Me Back!
After the skills of the paramedic and the skills of a cardiologist in the emergency room saved my life, the cardiologist suggested that the heart attack I had should have killed me. When he found out that I was in the shape I was in as a result of deciding to start playing hockey 9 months earlier, he quickly became a hockey fan. He suggested that my fitness likely saved my life. The fitness mostly came from hockey.
I Left My Comfort Zone
When I stepped outside of my comfort zone, I took on an activity that started out with humiliation because I didn't know what I was doing and pain because I had to get in shape to play hockey. The first three months were challenging, difficult, discouraging and downright painful.
The decision I once made to leave my comfort zone has resulted in a second chance at life, fitness, confidence, relationships with teammates and a weekly anticipation for more time on the ice that never comes soon enough!
What's Sitting Outside Your Comfort Zone?
How do you need to stretch? How do you need to step outside your comfort zone?
