from insider to outsider to insider, again

I was living in The Netherlands when I took the leap to leave the corporate world and start my own business. It wasn’t so much that I had always dreamed of running my own business someday. It was more a case of life giving me the shove I needed to start walking my path.

Back then I was working in a stressful environment filled with constant deadlines and, quite honestly, a lot of bullying. It was taking a toll on my mental, emotional, energetic, and physical health. However, like we all do, I chose to stick it out so I could live a good life which I could comfortably pay for.

That was until I fell physically ill… very ill. I had pushed through the mental and emotional anguish and pain. However, I wasn’t able to push through the physical pain which, on more than one occasion, landed me in hospital and then out of work for months at a time.

It was after a couple of years of constant physical illness that I knew it was time to call quits on the corporate world, the deadlines, and the bullying. It really was a choice of leaving a job that paid my bills yet was destroying me on so many levels, or staying and accepting a constant and, probably, irreversible decline in my health to the extent that I’d eventually be forced to leave anyway. I decided it was better to leave that world sooner, while I could still recover my health, than later when it could be too late.

And so I left.

In saying that, it wasn’t as quick and easy as it sounds. However, because the Universe had been chipping away at me for years to leave, when I eventually listened, it felt like the most natural thing to do.

And whilst taking that leap was a huge step out of my comfort zone, it wasn’t actually the most difficult step I’ve ever taken.

Staying outside my comfort zone, however, in this new and unknown environment I found myself in… that was a different story. Leaving the corporate world behind, a world I had been in for many years, I felt I had left my identity behind – it was all I had known in my adult life.

Suddenly I found myself in a world completely new, unknown and alien to me. I’d never run my own business before. I’d never been taught how to. And to top things off, I had been told, since I as a young child, that I was useless with money… not a great combination to elicit success.

What I did have on my side, initially, was enthusiasm and determination. As part of my new-found enthusiasm, I embraced the concept of networking.

Where starting my business hadn’t actually felt like such a huge leap outside my comfort zone because, even though I hadn’t realised it, the Universe had been chipping away at me, preparing me for that leap, embracing the idea of networking and actually going to networking events… well, that pushed me so far out of the safe harbour of my comfort zone that I felt completely lost at sea.

I remember heading to my very first networking event. It was for women, like me, who had started their own business. With a mix of excitement and dread I sat on the train to den Haag and then navigated the tram system in the city to where the event was being held.

When I arrived, I stood outside for a few minutes giving myself a pep talk, encouraging myself to go inside instead of hopping on the next tram back to the station.

When I entered the venue, I was greeted by a couple of friendly ladies also joining the event. And inside the meeting room I met more new faces, all very eager to welcome me and ask all about me.

The first few minutes were, surprisingly, quite easy and comfortable. However, after the initial enthusiasm and welcomes I received, it was then left up to me to mix and mingle with others, something that doesn’t come naturally to me.

I felt awkward. I felt sick. I felt out of place. I felt totally out of my comfort zone.

However, I stuck it out (well… I left a little early).

The following month I attended the same networking meeting again. This time I recognised a few faces, a few people who had been so welcoming to me. And I made a beeline towards them. They had become my safety net, my new comfort zone in this environment that didn’t feel natural to me. And I made every attempt to stick to them like glue, scared to be left on my own in this place that still felt new and uncomfortable to me.

Of course, you can’t cling on to one or even two people all evening… that would be a creepy, right? So, gradually I forced myself to move to another circle of women who were talking together when I recognised another face from the previous week.

Even though I moved and ‘mingled’ with different circles of women, I hovered more in the background, listening to what they shared with each other and not taking part (unless I was asked a question).

It took many months of joining this monthly networking event before I felt semi-comfortable, before I began to get to know other women there, before I felt part of the network. Even then, I still would often find myself awkwardly clinging to the outer parts of the room like a wallflower, often scared to intrude in a group talking, often fearful that I would attempt to join in and be rejected. And all too often, I found myself clinging to the few regular women that I recognised from previous meetings, women I was beginning to feel a bit more safe around.

Jump ahead a year or so and I was attending networking events for women with their own business at least twice if not three times a week, in a variety of locations throughout the Netherlands. Indeed, I had even started my own little group of women who were part of a larger general (not business) network and had their own businesses, so we could support each other.

From the outside, I suspect it looked like I was a prolific networker; many a time I would walk into a networking event for the first time, someone would instantly recognise me, and they'd introduce me to others as if I was some 'old hat' well-known celeb on the networking arena. My personal network was huge. Whenever I met someone who needed something, anything, I always had someone in my network whom I knew could help them and, so, I would eagerly recommend them.

Then in 2015, my husband was made redundant and cast the net out to find a new job. And the new job he found was in Switzerland… a bit too much of a commute from The Netherlands. So, we moved. And I left the network I had built up over the years behind me.

It was only when we moved to Switzerland that I discovered just how exhausted I was.

By then, for a few years, I had been running my business by day and traveling to networking events 2-3 evenings a week.

If you’re an introvert like me and have tried attending networking events, you’ll understand how challenging they are, as well as how exhausting they are.

Whilst I met amazing women through these events, many of who became friends, I had ignored and swept under the carpet the toll that joining such events was taking on me, emotionally, mentally, energetically.

I had been surviving (not thriving) on networking adrenalin and it had wiped me out.

It was only when I stopped networking, because as a new person in Switzerland I didn’t yet have a network, that I realised how exhausted I was. And that was when I jumped from being Viv the networker to Viv the loner.

We lived in Switzerland for 5 years and whilst I loved my life there, for very different reasons, and Switzerland will always have a big piece of my heart, I left knowing less than a handful of people.

Networking in The Netherlands had been so against my natural characteristics and, therefore, so far out of my comfort zone, that it left me completely and utterly exhausted and burned out. It’s not to say that my comfort zone didn’t expand. It did. And by a huge amount. It was just that forcing my comfort zone to expand too much, too often, too quickly.

Had I stayed with the first network, attended the monthly meetings, and let my comfort zone naturally grow and expand until attending those meetings was well and truly inside my newly expanded comfort zone before joining another network, and so on, I believe I would have picked up the pieces and started again, new, in Switzerland.

However, I had been pushing myself outside my comfort zone so much and so quickly, that I simply burned myself out.

And so, for the 5 years I lived in Switzerland, the last thing I wanted was to attend any network event. Indeed, the last thing I wanted was to even get to know new people. I wanted me-time and alone-time. And only my family were welcome to join me.

A few years after moving on to a new life in Austria, after the world pandemic had come to an end and people could socialise again, I felt the urge to leave my cave and meet new people, I felt the need to expand the social element of my comfort zone.

And, so, tentatively I joined a new local group. Again, a group of women. However, this time it had nothing to do with business (though a few of us have our own businesses) and everything to do with meeting and making friends, socialising with women in the same boat as me – international women who had left their home country to live in a ‘foreign’ country for whatever reason.

Choosing to ‘network’ from a non-business point of view has gently eased me back into being social again, into being willing to meet other human beings again, into opening myself up to friendships again. It’s taken the pressure off and lightened the load that business networking so often comes with.

However, it didn’t mean it was an easy first step. Even though I felt ready to re-engage and socialise, I had spent more than 7 years living outside the social environment, a social hermit; a place where an introvert can easily and quickly find comfort, familiarity, and stability. I also had the memory ingrained in me from my experience in The Netherlands of over-doing networking and burning myself out from being unnaturally social (for me).

So, whilst I was interested in meeting new people, I was also scared of what that might mean. Thankfully my desire to crawl out of my cave and re-join society again was stronger than my fear of repeating the mistakes from my past.

Again, I can remember the first time I attended the coffee morning.

I had googled the venue and cycled by it out earlier the week before so I knew how to get in, therefore reducing some of the anxiety and first-time nerves. I then showed up bang on time because I didn’t know how strict the starting time was and I wanted to make a good first impression.

Just like in The Netherlands, I was greeted with smiles and questions about who I was and where I was from, and so on. It was all very welcoming and warm.

As more people arrived, however (there weren’t too many), I began to feel more and more left out and awkward. Clearly some of the ladies had been attending for some time and already knew each other, knew about each others’ lives, had already forged friendships. Their familiarity with each other left me feeling like a stranger in a strange land. And, being forced far outside of my comfort zone, socially, for the first time in years, I felt incredibly uncomfortable.

Whilst I had enjoyed parts of the morning, I left wondering if I should join again, if I wouldn’t be better living the life of a social recluse that I had created for myself for quite a few years now.

However, again, my desire to ‘network’ and become social outweighed my desire to remain in my comfort zone, continue with a life as a social recluse, a life that was now starting to feel restrictive and suffocating.

And so, I joined the coffee morning the following week, and the week after that, and the week after that, each time focusing on the moments when I felt comfortable in the group and not putting too much focus on the other moments when I felt like an awkward, I-don’t-know-what-to-say introvert experiencing the horrible uncomfortableness of being outside her comfort zone.

As a result, I have built and created, in a relatively short time, some truly special friendships with women who are in a similar boat to me, who understand the ups and downs that this kind of life attracts, and who support me and each other through that mutual understanding and experience; women whom I shall dearly miss when I or they, inevitably, move on, one by one.

Whilst stepping outside my comfort zone in The Netherlands and attending regular business-related networking events left me feeling exhausted and burned out, I learned a lot from that experience. When I realised that choosing a more socially-reclusive life was moving too far in the other extreme and I could feel my comfort zone becoming restrictive and suffocating with the lack of social contact, I used the lessons I learned to enjoy a form of ‘networking’ that gives me energy, that helps me grow, and that fulfils me.

Yes, there still are times when introverted-me still struggles during the coffee mornings. There are times when I sit in an awkward silence not knowing what to say to those around me. However, there are more times when I leave the meetings feeling uplifted, energised, fulfilled, and happy.

The thing about our comfort zone is it’s like an elastic band. When you step outside and stay there for a while, it stretches out and safely encompasses you. If you stop doing whatever it may be that is stretching you and your comfort zone (perhaps because it just isn’t quite in alignment with you or is stretching you in the wrong direction), your comfort zone will spring back in size just like an elastic band, drawing you back to a smaller enclosure. In saying that, though, returning to a reduced enclosure will always be bigger, even just a little bit, than the comfort zone you first started out in because of the experiences and lessons you will have gained by stepping out and stretching it.

So, when you feel the urge, again, to step outside, you’ll take onboard those experiences and lessons and stretch your comfort zone in a different manner, in a different angle, to a different degree, so much so that whilst you’ll still experience the initial pressure and resistance of your comfort zone trying to pull you back to where you were, gradually that pressure and resistance shall lessen, until the strength of the elastic pull begins to ease and your comfort zone grows to encapsulate the new, more developed, transformed version that you have become.

When we step out of our comfort zone, we don’t always get it right first time. And that’s okay. The experiences and lessons we learn through stepping out will lead to our comfort zone increasing in size, even if ever so slightly. When we then choose to step out of our comfort zone again, we can take those lessons and learnings on board, making choices and decisions which are in better alignment with who we are and which will enable us to grow and expand our comfort zone on a more permanent basis.

are you ready to step out of your comfort zone with confidence?

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