Life is not what we think. We all want to progress in life without crossing any hurdles but that isn’t the reality. We might think, why should we overcome challenges? The truth lies in the question because each life lesson teaches us the level of complexity and trains your mind and body to adapt to the respective situation.In future, if there is any unanticipated event that occurs we will be naturally trained to overcome it with ease.

I am a big fan of “TEDx Talks” since all the speech(s) helps me to understand reality better as well as it is always appropriate to the current scenario. I was going through an amazing and self-motivative speech by Bill Eckstrom. In short, he was saying that life can be experienced when we step out of our comfort zone. As I was enjoying the speech, I realized that this idea can be associated with organizational behaviour.

He stated, ” The event that creates discomfort tends to ruin life but departing from ordered life changes for the better,” this phrase fascinated me to know how changing comfort zone will create effective change. However, in an organization, there are diverse people from different backgrounds and cultures. He came up with his new theory – the science of discomfort and growth as ‘ Growth Rings ‘. These rings can be categorized in 4 ways: Chaos, Complexity, Order, Stagnation. ‘Stagnation’ and ‘Order’ level people are within their comfort zone but stagnation has relatively negative impacts. The former level people have low-performing and low-growth environment that often needs various permissions, commands and need forced creativity. The latter is a desirable environment nearly predictable and when followed will increase growth in performance. But it will not cause any improvement in overall growth. Chaos has the same environment as stagnation that occurs between business mergers which can be external or internal. When we feel discomfort then we enter into ‘Complexity’ – Changed Order. This is the only environment where sustained and exponential growth can occur hence, we need to embrace it.

These 3 ways can create a complexity environment: Forced upon, someone getting you in or trigger it yourself. Complexity can be triggered anytime, anywhere and by anyone, even in robust and in stagnated environment. This change of the comfort zone is based on individual response, acceptance of risk for the better. Teachers and parents are the main drivers for an effective change. This critical development decision helps individuals and organizations to come up with an extraordinary decision that helps them to carve growth out of discomfort. We will realize that this journey into the wilderness we accepted and sought the truth ensures permanent qualitative and quantitative growth in the later stages of life.

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