Introverts, you’ve seen them and you’ve heard them. Those supposedly inspirational sayings about getting out of your Comfort Zone.
“You can’t be successful unless you go outside your Comfort Zone.” “Life begins on the other side of your Comfort Zone.” And on and on.
There’s nothing more shaming and discouraging to an introverted business owner, especially a solopreneur who’s already feeling a lot of anxiety because she realizes that the success of her business depends entirely on her.
If you’re a sensitive introvert, you need to operate from your Comfort Zone.
It’s a brain and nervous system thing. You operate optimally when you’re in “rest & digest” parasympathetic nervous system mode. This is your home state: the place where you do your best thinking and communicating. In this state, you can be your authentic, fully expressed self.
That’s why I maintain that the smartest way for you to move forward in your business is by strategizing ways that are comfortable for you to do. You do your best work when you operate from this state: i.e., inside your Comfort Zone.
The outer world of sights and sounds is an extrovert’s Comfort Zone. Their brain needs the stimulation of dopamine-creating adrenaline for their optimal functioning, which is from the action-oriented sympathetic nervous system.
Your introvert brain is sensitive to adrenaline. Instead of causing the excitement extroverts experience, it can cause anxiety for you. When you “feel the fear and do it anyway,” you’re operating from the extrovert’s home base, the fright, flight, or fight sympathetic nervous system.
Sure, you’ll survive, but did you come across to others as authentic and confident? Are you looking forward to doing such anxiety-provoking things over and over?
When you see an extrovert poised to bungee jump off a cliff, and she says, “I’m scared to death!” what she’s really saying is, “I’m super excited!”
When an introvert says it, she’s really saying, “I’m feeling paralyzing anxiety!”
I say we need to get radical (inside ourselves). For example: Give yourself permission to never go to another anxiety-producing, soul-draining networking event again, unless you want to. Instead, identify the people, places, activities, and situations that trigger only mild excitement and allow you to stay in rest & digest mode.
Operating from inside your Comfort Zone is the secret to satisfying and successful business building for sensitive introverts.
How does the idea of honoring your Comfort Zone needs make you feel?
Originally published at successforintrovertedwomen.com