An Interview With Maria Angelova
Aim for progress, not perfection. I call myself a reformed perfectionist so I speak from experience when I say that chasing perfection in life is exhausting. Counterintuitive to what we might think, aiming for perfection keeps us right in the middle of our comfort zone.
It feels most comfortable to stick with what we are familiar with. But anyone who has achieved great success will tell you that true growth comes from pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. What are some ways that influential people have pushed themselves out of their comfort zone to grow both personally and professionally? As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Heather Sweeney.
Heather Sweeney is a Mental Fitness Coach empowering individuals to reach their fullest potential by teaching them proactive techniques to move away from chaos and directly into more calm in their day to day experience. She is a reformed perfectionist who believes in failing forward, progress over perfection, and is also a lover of all things adventure and outdoors!
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we start, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?
Growing up and into my early adult years, I was a massive perfectionist and people pleaser. I grew up the youngest of four kids in a small town in Massachusetts. My family was very traditional with my Dad working and my Mom staying home to raise us. I was an A student, a member of National Honor Society, played three different sports at the Varsity level, loved the outdoors, was well liked, stayed out of trouble… I was praised for doing well, like so many of us are, but never really pushed to go beyond my comfort zone or take big risks and so, I played it safe most of the time. Looking back, I was absolutely afraid to fail and so most often I took the path of least resistance and only went after things that felt easy to me, things that involved little risk that I knew I could achieve or do. I was a really happy kid in a great family, but I existed in my zone of comfort.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“I have never tried that before, so I think I should definitely be able to do that.” — Pippi Longstocking
I love this quote so much because it speaks to the power of a positive attitude and positive thoughts, the importance of believing in yourself, and how important it is to trust that you do in fact have everything you need right there inside of you to achieve or do anything you set your mind to. I believe wholeheartedly in the power of the mind and our ability to go beyond the limits we have created in our mind. This quote, this confidence that Pippi displays, I strive to keep that in mind when I am stepping out of my comfort zone into a new opportunity or facing a challenge and remind myself “I can do this” whatever “this” is.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
Untamed by Glennon Doyle. From the moment I opened that book, I was all in!
This book is all about listening to your intuition and finding happiness by following your own path instead of trying to please others and meet their expectations. For over 30 years of my life I chased perfection, made decisions largely based on what I “thought” I was supposed to do or what I felt would make others happy, took the path of least resistance, and ignored my intuition. I felt like to the the outside world I appeared to have it all together, but inside I felt like I couldn’t breathe at times. I was not being true to myself . I was not living an aligned life. I was not being authentic. That felt hard, it was exhausting, and I made a decision that it was not how I wanted to live my life anymore and so, I made some hard decisions and I made some difficult life changes. I began to move myself in a better direction, shift my mindset, and create the life that I wanted to live. I began to align, listen to my intuition, and make decisions based on what I wanted or needed. THAT felt so much better, so right, and so good. So when I pick up Untamed, every time I turn a page I think to myself, “YESSSS!!! THIS!!!!!”.
Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. Let’s start with a basic definition so that all of us are on the same page. What does “getting outside of your comfort zone” mean?
To me, getting outside of your comfort zone means intentionally exposing yourself to new situations, new things, new challenges, new experiences, big and small. It is all about taking steps forward with courage despite the fear that inevitably will show up.
Can you help articulate a few reasons why it is important to get out of your comfort zone?
Stepping out of our comfort zones helps to increase resilience, increase confidence, increase our belief in ourself and our capabilities, and allows us to expand and redefine our limits. The only limits that exist are the ones we create in our mind and so when we surpass those false limitations we obtain tangible evidence and begin to know that we are in fact capable of more than we realize. We begin to learn that failure isn’t a bad thing. It is quite the opposite in fact. Perhaps even one of the things that pushes you to move forward, to do better the next time. It is an opportunity to get back up, re-assess things, use what you have learned, and take another step.
Is it possible to grow without leaving your comfort zone? Can you explain what you mean?
“In this world you’re either growing or you’re dying so get in motion and grow.” — Lou Holtz
Eventually, a baby must leave the comfort zone of its mothers womb and enter the outside world to continue to grow and learn and experience life. Eventually, a seed that is planted must make its way through the soil and sprout above ground so that it can grow and blossom. I believe it is possible to grow without leaving your comfort zone, but your growth will be limited and you likely won’t ever realize your fullest potential.
Last year, I got to accompany my daughter and her Girl Scout troop for a sleepover at a local Aquarium where we learned about the ancient Nautilus, a mollusk that has been roaming in the depths of the ocean for over 450 million years. What fascinated me is that the nautilus is born with a hard exterior shell that has 4 chambers. Over the years as the nautilus grows, additional chambers are formed. As the nautilus outgrows one chamber, it moves to the next biggest chamber and builds a seal to close off access to the last. However, the past chambers are not wasted. They fill them with gas which provides buoancy in the water helping them as they move via jet propulsion. Nautliuses are known to build and outgrow upwards of 30 chambers in their adult life, forming a beautiful, spiral shell.
Each time we step outside of our comfort zone, we learn and we grow and we expand and like the nautilus moving into its newest chamber, our perspectives and views change. Similar to the nautilus that does not waste its old chambers but instead fills them with gas for buoancy, we get to take all of the knowledge and experience we gain from stepping out of our comfort zones and use it to propel us forward to yet another period of growth, change, and expansion, and the cycle continues.
Can you share some anecdotes from your personal experience? Can you share a story about a time when you stepped out of your comfort zone and how it helped you grow? How does it feel to take those first difficult steps?
Taking the first steps into anything new or different feels challenging. We don’t have the muscle memory built yet. We aren’t sure what is coming next. It requires a certain level of faith or trust in yourself. However, the further we step, the more we practice, things begin to feel a bit easier and more natural and before you know it, there you are doing that thing feeling proud that you moved yourself forward depsite the fear.
In 2019, I committed to summit Mount Kilimanjaro with a team through the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Climb2Cure Program. The entire journey was me stepping well out of my comfort zone…climbing by far the highest peak I have ever climbed, traveling to a continent and country I had never visited, and going solo, knowing nobody else that was part of this trip until meeting them in Tanzania. So in February of 2021, as I exited my tent at over 15,000 feet high in the sky on summit night, I felt nervous, I felt anxious, I felt a bit disoriented by the altitude, the weather conditions, the wind and snow. I had never been to this place before. I did not know what to expect as we began to climb. Everything was brand new and yes, umcomfortable, but I knew that this is what I had come for. Summit night! The moment I had been waiting for. So I reminded myself to take one small step at a time, and then another, and one more, all the way up that mountain. I leaned into trusting myself and my guides. I leaned into my nerves and anxiety and channeled that energy into excitement and fuel. I dug deep to maintain mental and physical strength as we climbed higher and higher. It was the most challenging experience of my life to date and absolutely worth every ounce of blood, sweat, and tears. The only word I have found to describe what it feels like to be on top of Kilimanjaro is heaven.
From immersing myself in the Tanzanian culture to exploring various landscapes and areas to learning new perspectives on work and life and finally summiting Mount Kilimanjaro, the entire journey was life changing for me. I returned to the US with a wider view of the world, a clearer understanding of what truly matters in this life, clarity on the direction I needed to move in, and so much knowledge that I now get to share with others to help inspire and motivate them to explore and get curious about getting out of their own comfort zone to grow.
Here is the central question of our discussion. What are your “five ways to push past your comfort zone, to grow both personally and professionally”?
1) Take small steps. When I felt the pull to become a Coach, my first step was to Coach three people at no charge. I had never Coached in this capacity before. I thought I knew that I wanted to do this work, but how could I know if I had never actually done it? So, I found three individuals that were interested, got a chance to dip my toe in before fulling shifting gears in my career and learned by doing that I did in fact LOVE this work. Was I nervous going into that first coaching session? Yep! Did my stomach feel full of knots? Yep! Was I uncomfortable? You betcha! But I also knew I felt excited and so despite the discomfort and despite the fear, I moved forward. You have to be willing to take that first step forward. That’s where change and forward progress begins.
2) Trust yourself. When I committed to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, I did not even know where in Africa I was going. I had no idea the mountain was located in Tanzania at the time. What I did know was that when I closed my eyes, I could see myself standing on the summit clear as day. That was all I needed to know. My intuition was telling me GO! DO THIS! I had a choice to listen and trust myself or to shut it down based on fear. I chose to trust myself and experience something way out of my comfort zone that ultimately changed the trajectory of my life going forward.
3) See failure as opportunity. Many years ago in my first career in financial services, I was given the opportunity to visit a client and deliver a presentation. Let’s just say anything that could have gone wrong that day did. I got lost on the way there, my papers fell out of my bag onto the conference room table, the cord for the projector wouldn’t work, I wasn’t able to answer several questions and so much more. I remember standing in the room with the client mortified thinking I was going to get fired when I got back to the office. Thankfully, I had an hour drive back and I used that time to decompress and to learn from every single mistake I had made that day. The day after when my boss called me in, we had an honest and uncomfortable conversation, but thankfully he was willing to give me one more chance. I took what I had learned that day from “failing” and used it as fuel to prepare myself for the next client presentation. I printed out two copies of the driving directions and gave myself a 30 minute buffer. I checked the projector and the cord before leaving the office. I studied the details of their plan and prepared for any question I could imagine. I ended up visiting hundreds of clients in the coming years and excelling in the role.
When we fall down, when we fail, when we make a mistake, we get to make a choice. We can choose to give up because we didn’t get it exactly right the very first time OR we can choose to pull ourselves back up, learn from that experience asking ourselves what we can do better or different the next time, and then take another step forward and give it another go.
4) Aim for progress, not perfection. I call myself a reformed perfectionist so I speak from experience when I say that chasing perfection in life is exhausting. Counterintuitive to what we might think, aiming for perfection keeps us right in the middle of our comfort zone.
This year, I began recording and sharing guided meditations. While I practice meditation regularly, recording them and sharing them with the world is new to me. The very first meditation I recorded, I found myself picking it apart when I listened back and beginning to criticize myself, my voice, volume, all the little nuances of it. The old me would have sat on that process of listening back, editing, re-recording, trying to perfect that guided meditation before launching it and you know what the result probably would have been had I done that? I probably never would have launched it. It never would have been perfect. In that way, aiming for perfection would have ultimately kept me right in my safe space instead of launching me into a place of vulnerability and learning and growth. I now like to lean into “good enough” and release my meditations into the world. Every time I record a new meditation, I learn something new and make progress.
5) Stay rooted in your why. Being OK with taking a risk and stepping out of your comfort zone is just part of the equation. You also need to make sure that you’re stepping into something with a purpose, with a why behind it. Ask yourself, “What is my reason for wanting to take this risk? What is my driving force?” When we have a strong why we are much more likely to go all the way, to commit, and to persistent when things begin to feel really uncomfortable.
My “why” when climbing Mount Kilimanjaro was not just personal growth and experience, but also awareness for Leukemia & Lymphoma Society around blood cancers. I had lost a friend to leukemia and had another battling leukemia at that time and so I was committed to raising funds for this cause I believed in. I carried with me a “Flag of Honor” signed by hundreds of donors in memory of loved ones that had been affected by cancer. I was determined to reach that summit in large part because my underlying why was so strong.
From your experience or perspective, what are some of the common barriers that keep someone from pushing out of their comfort zone?
I think the most common reason is fear. Fear of failure, fear of embarrassment, fear of not finishing, fear of looking ridiculous, fear of being vulnerable, fear of (fill in the blank). Fear can be healthy when it comes to pure survival and true threats to our safety, but so often I see fear stopping people from living, from experiencing new and exciting things, from truly growing.
There is a well-known quote attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt that says, “Do something that scares you every day”. What exactly does this mean to you? Is there inherent value in doing something that pushes you out of your comfort zone, even if it does not relate to personal or professional growth? For example, if one is uncomfortable about walking alone at night should they purposely push themselves to do it often for the sake of going beyond their comfort zone? Can you please explain what you mean?
I would definitely not suggest pushing yourself directly into a zone of discomfort that provides no direct benefit to you and/or may trigger a traumatic response based on your personal experiences. I think what this quote is getting at is the idea of not allowing fear to be the thing that stops you from trying new things, having new experiences in life, or pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone in a positive, progressive, growth oriented way.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?
I would hand out prescriptions for mental fitness training and insurance would cover it.
The World Health Organization shared that according to the International Classification of Diseases burn-out is “a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed…” Let’s extend this definition to include personal stress for a moment. What this definition tells me is that if more individuals knew HOW to manage stress levels, if they had a tool belt filled with tools they could use to reduce stress, if they could move themselves proactively from from feeling chaotic to experiencing more calm in their day to day, then this issue of burn-out would in large part be solved. Mental fitness training is proactive training. We are teaching tools and techniques that help reduce stress and provide so many more benefits to individuals and I want that accessible to everyone. I want to empower as many people as I can around the globe.
Is there a person in the world whom you would love to have lunch with, and why? Maybe we can tag them and see what happens!
Mel Robbins. I love her vulnerability. I love the work she is doing around mental health and awareness. I love her messages to the world. I love that she is so real! I just love her!
How can our readers follow you online?
They can find me on YouTube where I share free guided meditations as well as quick tips to shift your mindset each week, on Instagram, or by visiting my website.
Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!
About The Interviewer: Maria Angelova, MBA is a disruptor, author, motivational speaker, body-mind expert, Pilates teacher and founder and CEO of Rebellious Intl. As a disruptor, Maria is on a mission to change the face of the wellness industry by shifting the self-care mindset for consumers and providers alike. As a mind-body coach, Maria’s superpower is alignment which helps clients create a strong body and a calm mind so they can live a life of freedom, happiness and fulfillment. Prior to founding Rebellious Intl, Maria was a Finance Director and a professional with 17+ years of progressive corporate experience in the Telecommunications, Finance, and Insurance industries. Born in Bulgaria, Maria moved to the United States in 1992. She graduated summa cum laude from both Georgia State University (MBA, Finance) and the University of Georgia (BBA, Finance). Maria’s favorite job is being a mom. Maria enjoys learning, coaching, creating authentic connections, working out, Latin dancing, traveling, and spending time with her tribe. To contact Maria, email her at angelova@rebellious-intl.com. To schedule a free consultation, click here.
Heather Sweeney On How to Go Beyond Your Comfort Zone to Grow Both Personally and Professionally was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.