On the topic of kids and comfort zones

It was while reading a tweet by Janice Kobelsky regarding comfort zones that something all of a sudden dawned on me.

A big part of the role, I have been playing as a parent during later years has basically been the role of what we could call a "comfort zone manager". From the moment, your first child is born, you will constantly have to work with comfort zones.
First of all, in the moment the kid is born, you take a giant leap out of your own comfort zone - a leap, for which you have only nine meager months to mentally prepare for. But from that point in time, work starts on challenging the comfort zone of the child - to give the child the possibilities to move to the very edge of its competences, but never further than where you have an almost certain assumption that the child will be able to handle the situations. At the same time, you also constantly work on your own comfort zone - because there are limits to what you dare expose the poor kid towards. In the beginning, it is actually just as much a question of holding back a kid who is convinced that it is able to do anything - later on, it also turns into a question of persuading or convincing the kid or the young adult to understand that there will be no problems handling the situations that you try to help it handle.
But it all has one thing in common: if you are too happy staying in your own comfort zone, then you will try to stay clear of any borders of the things that you dare expose your kid to. And then you will eventually turn into a helicopter parent, overly shielding the child in order to challenge your own comfort zone. But if you are of the opinion that comfort zones are there to be challenged in order to be extended - then it is time to leave the aircraft and challenge your kids to take responsibility for more and more of the things they do in their daily lives.
(Translated from Noget om børn og komfortzoner, originally published February 8th, 2018)

When towers lean a little

In a fascinating way, the people we meet can naturally be divided into circles: I may have a couple of hundreds of followers on Twitter, a part of whom engage in my tweets, some come so close that they actually go beyond Twitter and start reading here, and a few go so far as to actively react on what I have written.
Thus I was inspired to write this post by Bojosi Gamontle, who had come to the innermost of these circles, and after reading the post about the tower that did not lean at Osborg asked whether there is room in our daily lives though to say, "maybe the tower can lean a little today"?
Such a question is a bit too complex to respond to via Twitter - even after we have been given twice as many characters per tweet - but on the other hand it's too good a question not to be answered. And therefore it ended up as a post here instead.
Funny enough, it's a question that I have also debated (in a slightly different disguise, though) with a close colleague: should we be afraid to fail as a result of trying to do things in a new way? My good colleague thinks we should be afraid. If the things we create are released to the customers and malfunction, people could get physically hurt. Period. I am however of the opinion that there is a time to fail and a time to be careful: the things that are released to the customers must of course be okay - but on the way towards the finished, tested and functioning result we should allow ourselves to be as innovative as possible and fail as quickly as possible, otherwise we will never become smarter and better.
The same applies to the master builder of Osborg. I have no doubt that he had been in situations along his way, where the things he tried to build had crumbled to pieces in spectacular ways - that is what it takes to eventually be able to stand tall as a master builder. And in the same way, we must also allow ourselves to be imperfect, embrace our failures, admit to our vulnerability and be able to assess where it is necessary that we deliver our best. We, too, need to try things that fail in order to learn what works and what doesn't - and in the end we may in certain ways be like the builder who stood impassive when he was accused of having made mistakes, while we know very well that we have many other things to polish when we return to our studies. So yes, there are plenty of times when the tower may lean a little. We may even say that there are times when the tower by all means should lean - because otherwise, we have not challenged ourselves and have not escaped far enough from our comfort zone to build even higher towers of the future without fear of having them crash to the ground.
(Translated from Når tårne hælder en smule)

A welcome challenge

If I look back upon my life, I have to admit that I have not always been the most adventurous person - to be honest, especially in my younger years I used to be very happy to stay well rooted within my comfort zone.
But even if I had still been like that, even if I had not discovered that there is more to be found outside the comfort zone than within it, I still think that I would have been attracted to the challenge that I am now venturing into.
The only person I challenge happens to be myself: I have visited Twitter and found inspiration with Philip Clark, who has introduced November as a "30-day challenge on learning and sharing from TED talk videos".
So it is my plan every day in November to follow the inspiration from Philip Clark to connect through knowledge, network, learn to learn and solidify knowledge by reserving time to see a video from TED.com every day of the month. And if anyone wants to join - well, then all you have to do is to go to Twitter and behold the fun with #30dayTEDchallenge.
(Translated from En velkommen udfordring)

On the topic of big dreams

In relation to the death of Muhammad Ali a couple of weeks ago, I ran into a quote which might (or might not) be a Muhammad Ali-quote. I have seen it attributed to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia, as well; she said it in a speech to the graduating class from Harvard in 2011. Deep down, however, it is of less importance who originally said that:

If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.

- I am certain that it is true. Because if our dreams become so small and unambitious that they are mostly there for cosiness, then we have dragged them so far into the comfort zone that we should have been living them long ago, while starting to dream more ambitiously. Otherwise we have just arrived in a situation, where we do not dream. We have simply fallen asleep. (Translated from Noget om store drømme)

Beyond the borders of the comfort zone

I have taken on a new fancy, so to speak; I have recently seen a lot of excellent examples of what is known as "sketchnoting" - that is, to note stuff in the form of sketches just as much as in the form of notes. There's supposed to be many positive traits to it:
It should be possible to better remember stuff, if the brain is put to work by drawing rather than just noting - and if one draws rather than just notes, it should engage both hemispheres.
I often sit around doodling on paper while listening, and why not doodle something productive?
And finally, I feel excellent to challenge myself to a point, where I am painfully aware of my own limitations - I do not, to say the least, draw very well. But I would be extremely happy to become better at it, and I have recently made the point that we should move outside our comfort zones to become better at doing things.
So all in all - there is no reason to think twice. Well, maybe one should think twice before announcing anything, but on the other side it is probably also very good to start off immortalising the state at rock bottom.
So be it - here it is; currently only in Danish. Whether there will ever be more? Well, time will tell.
(Translated from Hinsides kanten af komfortzonen)

Going beyond the comfort zone for expertise

I recently read an interesting point on expertise - the point being that if you are interested in becoming an expert in a field, it is not enough simply to repeat the same routines over and over again until you become an expert. A golfer does not become a champion by standing in the same place and repeating the same stroke to perfection. A car driver does not become a good driver just by going back and forth to work every day, and an artist does not become a good one just by painting the same type of image again and again.
If I want to be an expert, I should of course allocate plenty of time for the disciplines I want to become an expert in. But most notably, I will have to leave my comfort zone. I have to try something new; hit some more challenging balls from different angles; artistically experiment with more challenging subjects or with choice of colour; drive my car in a closed circuit to get out of the comfort zone without putting other people's lives and livelihoods at risk.
And I must accept occasional failure - and find an acceptable level of failure to avoid killing the motivation, without excellent results every time, as that would only indicate lack of challenge - and thereby lack of proper improvement.
(Translated from Udenfor komfortzonen efter ekspertisen)