Stretching muscles to loosen tension in your body is a healthful routine. It assists you to become more flexible and better able to move and enhance your bodily condition. It helps prevent injuries, lesson aches, and pains and builds up strength.
That isn’t the only stretching that helps enhance your condition. Attempting new things is likewise a means of advancing yourself. That stretches you beyond your current zone of familiarity. When stretched, your skill develops. It has no choice! It is like blowing up a balloon. The more pressure on the balloon, the greater the capacity for more air to penetrate.
There are many ways and areas in which to expand your life and capabilities. Increase sometimes occurs through circumstances, but it mostly happens because you are intentional when extending yourself. It is akin to training for a contest. It requires effort to improve toward a target or goal at which you discern you will be best prepared to make the most of the occasion, competitive or not. Actors, singers, dancers, athletes, students, managers, technicians, pregnant moms and dads, and parents work to be better at what they are doing so to carry out something they want.
Those who will not allow themselves to stretch are like a stone. Stones are hard and not expandable. They are at capacity and the only thing that can happen is that they get eroded over time or broken into lesser size pieces. If you perceive that you are hardened and inflexible like stone, perhaps you are not intentional about your growth. There could be a variety of reasons for that, including believing you are ill-equipped. Sometimes the ideal provisions are absent, and you must make the most of what you have. You can still make progress. You need to trust you have the potential to succeed.
Not being in the perfect environment with the best tools at your disposal requires that you expect to do what you want. It may sound childlike but having an “I think I can” mindset expands your possibilities. If thinking capacity is important, how then can you increase that ability? Try stop viewing objectives as more work and contemplating instead what will work. When pondering what works ask these questions:
What am I required to do?
What will give me the most reward?
What will give me the biggest return?
Then, swap “can I?” thoughts for “how can I?” thoughts. And then consider instead of only one way to carry out something, that multiple options exist. That approach will get you to a place of considering how you may expand your capacity to get things done. You can do that when you:
Stop doing only the things you have done and do things you could and should do (step out of your comfort zone)
Stop doing the expected and do more (go above average)
Change from doing important things occasionally to doing important things daily (prioritizing)
Your leadership strength, whether or not you have a title, is your ability to influence others. If you stretch your capacity, you will expand your influence and you will increase your impact. If you do things you could and should versus what you have always done, you will also make a bigger difference. When you go above and beyond the average, you will make a positive impression and those around you will know you care. When you prioritize your action, what you do will have a greater effect. Remember, top priorities should come first, not the familiar, comfortable or easy to complete. If your puppy messes in your house and it stinks, it may not be a fun job, but important, so clean it up and you will be glad you did.
Procrastination, fear, and doubt are stretch killers. If you put things off or delay starting something, it may never get accomplished. I have written a good amount this year but haven’t finished my leadership book. The material is available in abundance but the focused effort to plug it into the chapters of the manuscript is lacking. That is plain and simple procrastination. I am not afraid that it won’t go well, and I don’t think I won’t be able to get it completed. I just haven’t gotten it done! My stretch is being clobbered by my procrastination.
The irony of my “laziness” is that when I get going with this book again, it will be a time of considerable growth for me. Not only that, I will enjoy it. It’s like getting through the first few chapters of a good novel. Sometimes it is hard to become engrossed but when you do you struggle to put the story down. I contend that the most difficult part of stretching yourself is getting started. With positive momentum and thinking the journey is easier, provides a greater return, and is more enjoyable. The bumps in the road seem smoother and the unknowns are more expected and easier to manage. That is when doing something different and being stretched pays you big dividends.