Concept
One risk a day
One risk a day is Jeffers's method for expanding the comfort zone: one thing, small, slightly outside the current edge, chosen in the morning and done before bed, recorded so the evidence accumulates. The zone's edge moves in the direction you push it a little every day and shrinks in the direction you do not.
Jeffers pictures the comfort zone as a circle whose edge is not fixed: push it daily and within a month things that were outside are inside; leave it alone and it contracts, so that the person who has avoided phone calls for a year finds them harder than someone who never avoided them. The prescription is a step, not a leap, and size matters. A risk too large is not taken and produces shame; one too small does not move the edge. The right one produces a flutter and gets done: the question in the meeting, the message to the person you admire, the no you usually swallow. Harris would add that the flutter is the point, since a risk without fear is not practice in acting with it. The record is the other half: a dated list of risks taken is what moves both the edge and, eventually, the feeling.
A real-life example
An engineer sets a risk a day for two weeks: a question in stand-up, a message to a conference speaker, ordering in Turkish at a Georgian restaurant, telling his manager he wants the March presentation. Each flutters; each gets done and recorded.
How to use it
- 1Choose tomorrow's risk tonight: small enough to be certain, large enough to flutter.
- 2Do it before bed and write it down with the date.
- 3When the edge moves, choose from just outside the new edge.