The Comfort Zone

My wife and I spent last weekend visiting my daughter and family in North Wales for her 40th birthday celebration. I was delighted that she had also invited my little 60's tribute trio to play for the evening, I guess most daughters would be embarrassed to have their old man perform music from years ago, but not mine.

That's me on the drums

After setting up and sound checking at the party venue before the birthday girl arrived, arranging balloons, Happy Birthday banners, great lighting supplied by my son from his event company and of course the food, all was ready.

I was much more nervous than usual before other gigs, not only was I playing and singing in front of friends and family, it was a theme party and I had to dress up in 70's gear which was the decade my daughter was born, I hate dressing up so I was completely out of my comfort zone. My two band buddies and I even learned a few songs from that decade including T Rex, Roxy Music and Stealers Wheel songs as well as our usual repertoire of Beatles, Rolling Stones and Elvis covers.

Without wishing to bore you with all the party antics, to my great relief the music we played was a success and the dance floor was busy all night, by their reaction, my daughter, her friends and our family obviously enjoyed the evening's entertainment (many encores at the end of the night). The social media video's, photo's and comments coming in are all very positive and so now I'm feeling very pleased and relieved for a job well done.

Many people will shy away from doing things which are outside of their comfort zone, me included for many things, the risk of messing up in front of family and friends was enormous, my fear of long lasting embarrassing consequences. On the other hand the reward of doing well, getting it right and even securing great feedback far outweighs (in my opinion) the risk.

As with most of us, taking the plunge into a programme such as WA is taking a risk, especially if you are on a limited fixed income however, when not if, we get it right the potential of financial freedom is worth it, so all we have got to do is stick at it, learn with the training resources and just do it!