Wedding Business Solutions

What are you doing to get outside your comfort zone?

• Alan Berg, CSP, FPSA, Global Speaking Fellow

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How often do you hold yourself back because you’re waiting until you can do something perfectly? What have you learned or accomplished when you finally tried something new, even if it felt uncomfortable or you failed at first? In this episode, I share stories—from learning languages to playing piano live, to earning martial arts belts later in life—about how the best growth happens when we allow ourselves to be imperfect and take that first, shaky step beyond what’s familiar.

Listen to this new 8-minute episode for inspiration to step outside your comfort zone, embrace the discomfort of learning, and discover how failing forward can lead to your best results.

If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or visit my website Podcast.AlanBerg.com 

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View the full transcript on Alan’s site: https://alanberg.com/blog/


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I'm Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you'd like to suggest other topics for "The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast" please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks. 

Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site: 

©2025 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com 

What are you doing to get outside your comfort zone? Listen to this episode for some ideas.

Hey, it's Alan Berg. Welcome to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. Um, I wrote this note down about, uh, this for a future episode. What are you doing to get outside your comfort zone? Because I, I'm sure all of us love being comfortable. Like, it's human nature, right? We like being comfortable, whether it's a comfortable chair, a comfortable bed, a comfortable blanket. But it's also— we get comfortable just doing the things that we do, and it's easy, right? It's easy to do that. But the good stuff happens outside our comfort zone.

And if you really look back, I mean, really, really look back, all the way back to childhood maybe, and you think about what you've been able to accomplish by trying something new, even if, or especially if, it was uncomfortable, that's where the good stuff very often happens, right? I'm talking about crazy things, but that's where the good stuff can happen, is trying something. Now, the interesting thing is we— it's our perception of these things, right? Like, I, I went skydiving. That was for my 50th birthday. It was something— I went skydiving, and I, I was never nervous about it. I was never nervous about it because I was so excited about trying it. I did it. And yet other people would do that, be like, eh. As a matter of fact, I went with a couple of friends and one of them was just that way.

And she asked her tandem buddy, you know, has anybody ever just gone back down with the plane and never not jumped? And he said, you'll get down faster if you jump than if you go with the plane. But, you know, you come this far. And that's really the key is it's just your perception of it.

When I do my language lessons on Duolingo, and I talk about this a lot, I don't talk about it because I'm trying to brag on how long I've been doing it. I'm trying to do it as an incentive, right? I remember when I started doing Spanish lessons when I was using Rosetta Stone, my goal was to finish the lessons. But my goal now with Duolingo with French is not to finish the lessons, it's to achieve a level of fluency. And my favorite days are when it's hard. My favorite days are when it's kicking my butt, because what that means is I don't know it yet.

And that's the way I approach certain things in life.

I've talked about purposeful practice before, right? Are you just doing something, or are you doing it with the purposeful intent of getting better? And I post my videos— some of you might have seen me playing my baby grand piano— and I post the videos, and sometimes I'll post up and say, you know, here I'm again, I'm trying to get outside my comfort zone, and I try playing songs that I've never ever played before. And some of them I'm able to sit down just by knowing them, by hearing them and play them, and other ones I pull up the chords. If you've ever seen me playing, I'm never looking at sheet music. I can't sight read the music. I do know the notes, I can read music. I come way back, but if I hear it, I can play it, but sometimes I just need the chord changes 'cause I can't quite get them right. But I put them up there again as, you know, a little bit of an incentive for you, but also it's getting me outside my comfort zone saying, here, watch this.

I've never played this song before and I'm going to do it now and I'm going to do it in front of you, like all of you. And I could do it here in private and you would never know, right? And I'm sure there's a few times where I've tried and I just couldn't get the song right, so I just never put the recording up. But most of the time it's like, here, and you know what? It's not perfect. It's not perfect. And a younger me would never, ever have put that video up with it not being perfect. Right now, I'm like, yeah, it's not perfect. And a lot of you don't know because you're— maybe you're not musicians. Some of you are musicians and hear it.

And I hope you can appreciate the fact that I leave those in because that's what live performing is like.

So where are you stuck? That you won't get started because you don't think you can do it well. Again, that was a younger me. I'm gonna raise my hand, that was me. I wouldn't even start trying if I didn't think I could master something. And now it's the trying that's fun. It's the, I'm gonna give this a shot and I'm gonna fail and I'm gonna fail until I get it right.

And that's where I am with my Duolingo every day is, The satisfaction is getting it wrong, getting it wrong, getting it wrong, and then getting it right.

Because when I get it right, it's like, oh wow, I understand that concept now. I understand future, or I understand this. It's one thing I'm working on now that's kind of throwing me off is being able to say I used to do this. Not I did, but I used to. And it's the slightly different spelling, right? And that different accents and things like that. So, you know, if I say I bought something, okay, but if I say I used to buy, it's not the same writing, right? And we hear it in English, it's different, but it's different in French and that, man, it's throwing me off and it frustrates me. Believe me, it does. And it's gonna frustrate you to not get that thing right, right away.

And that's okay. It's what you do about it that makes the difference. It's not whether it frustrates you. It's not whether you can get it right, right away or every time, right?

I've told this story before, maybe not for a while. When I did taekwondo, I started when I was 39. Right? Not when I was 9, when I was 39. And, um, I got my first-degree black belt at 42, my second at 44, uh, 6 months from a third degree at 46 when I hurt my back, and that's when I stopped.

But I remember asking the taekwondo master, I said, you know, are we trying to do the perfect kick or punch or form? And he said no, very emphatically no, because you can't improve on perfection.

So it changed my mindset, not just with martial arts, but with everything in life.

I've said this before, I don't want to ever give the best speech I can ever give, but every time I speak, I want to give the best speech I've ever given. I want every one to be the best I've ever done, but not the best I can ever do, because I want to be able to grow.

And that's with my language lessons or playing the piano or playing a sport or speaking or whatever.

That's just the way I've started to approach life is I want to be better than I was the last time every time. At whatever it is.

Can I be a better husband, father? Can I be a better grandfather, right? And that usually for me means buying more stuff for my grandchildren because that's the fun part, right?

But can you be better? The answer is yes if you're intentional about it.

So this ties in with a lot of things I've spoken about with, you know, that purposeful practice, right? But the comfort zone is where you're like, I'm okay just being like this, and that's fine.

But if you want to grow, you have to get uncomfortable. You have to take that first step. You have to do the things that you're not doing now, and that can be uncomfortable.

And that can be okay. That should be okay. And I hope it's okay for you.

And I want you to find something that you can do. Just take that first step, that first uncomfortable step, like a, like a baby walking, right? They don't get it right the first time, but man, they try and they get up again.

They get up again and they do it.

And once they do it, you can't stop them, right?

So let's get you to that point too. Try it again until we can't stop you.

Thanks.


I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or you can  text, use the short form on this page, or call +1.732.422.6362, international 001 732 422 6362. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:

©2026 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com


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Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

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