Four years ago, I had never dated before. I’d met my boyfriends at Uni and while travelling, no effort required. So when I moved off superyachts to try and live a “real life”, I freaked out. I wanted to meet a sexy partner in crime, but the idea of Tinder dating or going to bars and hanging around being coy scared the bejaysus out of me.

Everything you want is probably outside your comfort zone. Otherwise you’d already have it.

I heard this quote while studying coaching and realised that a finding a bloody good chap was definitely outside my comfort zone, and the only way to find one would be to start learning to step out of what felt comfortable.

So me and Tinder became mates and I had to practice a shit load of stress reduction techniques to calm myself down while tramming all over Melbourne to have drinks with random men to see if I wanted to hold hands with them eventually. And whether they might ever want to hold hands with me. And stuff.

With repetition, the dates became less scary and confronting, and more boring. My stress response slowed down as my body habituated to going to dates. I met some nice guys but none who really lit me up. But at least I knew I was putting myself out there to try and get what I wanted.

Today is Bloody Good Chap and my 2 year Tinderversary.

2 years and 5 days since I said to myself “Ok, one more Tinder date, if this one isn’t a goer, it’s all over rover.” 2 years since I went for a drink on the river with a spikey haired chap and thought, hmm, this shy guy is pretty cool.

2 years of fun and travel and love and awesomeness.

If you want a bloody good chap, or a dream job, or to find your sense of self, get unstuck, start your own business, etc, you’re going to have to step outside your comfort zone.

We can very easily go through life like a bug in a rug (being snug), spending all our time in a sensible career that we don’t really love, striving to do just enough to stay on top of things, living within our limits, not daring to stick our neck out too far, daring a little but not a lot.

But is there really any point to that?

Will you get to 90 and look back and think, I’m glad I didn’t try too many things. I’m glad I never failed and never took any risks. I’m glad my life looked like everyone else’s. I’m glad I didn’t travel too much. I’m glad I worked my whole life in a job I didn’t love so that people would think I was sensible and smart.

Life is about experiencing life.

You can live, or you can live a bloody good life.

You can have average sex or phenomenal sex, you can have an ok career or an amazing career, you can have reasonable health or vibrant health.

The difference between them all is growth and mastery. To master new things you have to step out of your comfort zone, try new things, balls them up and then do them again until you’re a master.

That’s how kids learn and grow.

We weren’t born knowing everything,

we tried things and failed and then tried them again. We weren’t afraid of failing, so we kept trying and learning and growing and mastering. Until somewhere along the line someone came along and made us feel like failure was the worst thing in the world. We started to feel like everyone else always knew what they were doing so we started to pretend we knew what we were doing too.

Let me assure you -not many people know what they’re doing.

Most people are just following other people because other people seem to know what they’re doing.

But do they really?

So if you secretly don’t know what you’re doing in life, just do lots of things. Do things until you find things you love doing, do them even when you’re shit at them, keep doing them until you’re a pro. Do things that scare you until they don’t scare you anymore.

And then find some new things to do, and by the end of your life, you will have done so many cool things, and you will have lived a life worth living.

Step outside your comfort zone over and over, until finally your comfort zone is huge and your life is full of awesome stuff.

Then step out some more.

Happiness comes from growth and change and learning. It’s our nature to want to better ourselves constantly – it’s just that we’ve all got sidetracked with the career/ money side of things, and forgotten that we should still be growing in all other areas.

Take a little stocktake – which areas of your life can learn more about?

Which areas have you not really experimented with for a while?

Sex? Job? Relationships? Friendships? Health? Nutrition? Mind health?

This is what Project Self is about. Looking at all the bits that make up our lives and working out how we can make them more epic and less “fine”.

It’s about mastering the art of living a bloody good life.

If you’re done with muddling on alone and feeling like life is passing you by unmastered, check this out.