Five Lessons To Borrow From Intimacy to Thrive In Life and Work

We as human beings can find ourselves striving to live compartmentalized lives. As such, we can sometimes forget that we are holistic individuals. All aspects of our lives are connected in one way or another. Therefore, a lot can be learned from wearing multiple figurative hats throughout our lives. So don’t let it go to waste. Use every lesson you learn to thrive in life and work.

We’re talking about leveraging the lessons from one area of your life by applying them to another area of your life. As an example, managing a house full of kids can teach you how to effectively manage a team in the office. Just the same, you can use the resilience you learned from dealing with a bully in school to navigate a toxic boss. Today, we’re borrowing five lessons from intimacy to thrive in life and work. 

Why Borrow Lessons in Intimacy To Thrive in Life and Work

While it might seem like an odd comparison, intimacy represents our natural and primitive way of approaching life. It’s an experience that unites us as human beings and produces a similar effect for all—deep connection and satisfaction. As such, deep connection and satisfaction can be achieved when one thrives in matters of importance. In essence, your desire to attain intimacy is one area of your life—as is for most individuals—that compels you into action freely, while overriding your brain’s attempts to rationalize your actions. 

If you’re curious to learn more about intimacy, click here to explore as many as 12 different types of intimacy—including beyond just the obvious. All forms of intimacy have a few takeaways in common that inform an effective approach to thrive in life and work. So let’s dig in! Here are five lessons to borrow from intimacy to take action and begin to thrive in every area of your life.

Five Intimacy Lessons To Thrive in Life and Work

Take Risks

Playing it safe might offer a certain level of predictability, but where’s the fun in that? To be clear, I’m not advocating for you to take risks haphazardly. Undoubtedly, it would be in your best interest to do some homework and engage in strategic preparation, if you want to gain the most benefit from your risk-taking.

That being said, engaging in risk-taking opens you up to otherwise unforeseeable opportunities. While many individuals associate negative feelings with risk-taking, it’s important to reframe risk as an opportunity to succeed. 

Benefits of Risk-Taking

• Showing confidence
• Standing out from the pack
• Presenting yourself as a leader
• Opportunities for internal growth
• Lessons that lead you down a new path
• Taking a necessary step that precedes success
• Overpowering your fear of failure

When you fully embrace risk-taking, you begin to overpower your fear of failure. Taking risks is an incredibly powerful lesson because failure is not the end of one’s journey to success, but the beginning. When so many individuals identify fear of failure as their major roadblock to success, engaging in strategic risk-taking is a critical first step you can take to break the chains put around you.

Want to learn more about risk-taking? Check-out this Wharton Online article about risk-taking as a key to entrepreneurial spirit. Also, you can read this blog article by Clarity Clinic to begin exploring how you can take risks wisely. 

Get Out of Your Comfort Zone 

Closely related to risk-taking is getting out of your comfort zone. It’s generally known and accepted that the magic of life happens outside of your comfort zone. While it’s tempting to stay in the cozy cocoon of all things known and predictable, breaking free from your comfort zone opens a world of opportunities for you. You can’t expect to get different results if you’re doing the same thing over and over again. To thrive in life and work, you’ve got to be willing to step out of your comfort zone. Otherwise, you’ll settle in mediocrity.

Benefits of Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone

• Increase your productivity as a result of pushing your boundaries, understanding your true potential, and gaining confidence as you deliver better results.
• Improve your ability to adapt to change as a result of becoming more adept at the unfamiliar and staying composed and focused when a new challenge arises—this can improve your decision-making ability.
• Promote personal and professional growth because regardless of the outcome, you expand your knowledge, skills, and experiences.

If you need to work your way up to taking more risks—like we discussed above—there are low-stakes ways you can begin to get out of your comfort zone. With time, you’ll even be able to expand your comfort zone. The more you work that figurative muscle by taking small steps, the easier it will become to step into uncharted waters.

Ideas To Get Out of Your Comfort Zone That Don’t Require Risk Beyond Your Willingness To Be Disappointed

• Be spontaneous and do something unplanned.
• Experiment with doing something you enjoy in a different way (e.g., use a different technique to make a dish you love). 
• Try new and different things, such as a longstanding interest from your childhood or youth that you have yet to pursue (e.g., play laser tag, taste cuisine from another part of the world, take a guitar lesson).

Craving deeper work in this area? Learn how to leave your comfort zone and enter your growth zone, with this article.

Aim To Knock It Out the Park

“I want to perform at a mediocre level,” said no one ever! While you are responsible for meeting or exceeding your own expectations, you should also strive to exceed the expectations of others. This could be a client, boss, friend, colleague or other stakeholder. One tried and true technique to accomplish this is to under-promise and over-deliver. So how do you do that?

Increase Your Value Through Expectations

• Identify expectations through open communication and asking questions.
• Manage expectations by maintaining open two-way communication.
• Exceed expectations by going above and beyond and making the other person’s goals your own.

When you consistently deliver above-average expectations, you get more responsibility. When you consistently do well with additional responsibilities, your value increases and you’ll find that you can thrive in life and work. You’ll develop a reputation based on trust, hard work and excellence.

Be Vulnerable

Vulnerability is a super power. As such, practicing vulnerability has numerous benefits. Don’t believe me? Learn all about the power of vulnerability and being yourself here with Lois Melkonian on the BetterUp blog.

When you practice vulnerability, you show up as your purest most authentic self. Through vulnerability you build empathy, work through your emotions more quickly, foster genuine connections with others, and build better relationships. While vulnerability is a driving force to success and, thus, to thrive in life and work, it is not the same as oversharing [I think it bears repeating that vulnerability is NOT oversharing). That’s not something you want to get wrong.

Benefits of Vulnerability

• Improve chances of your needs and/or expectations being met
• Build trust and stronger empathy
• Invest in healthy relationships
• Increase self-love by knowing your worthiness and value
• Humanize yourself and accept imperfections
• Increase intimacy
• Facilitate creativity, growth and change
• Navigate negative emotions

To begin practicing vulnerability, you must first learn to be honest with yourself. For tips on how to start that journey, you can learn more here.

Be Present and Enjoy the Moment

It’s important to enjoy your life and have a good time. When you learn how to live this way, you’ll lead a fuller and more enriched life. Further, you’ll be able to appreciate the beauty of life. To thrive in life and work, learn to let go and surrender to the moment. 

How To Be Present

• Focus on the now.
• Pay attention to the little things.
• Practice gratitude [here are some ideas for you].
• Set your worries down. Otherwise they’ll rob you and prevent you from enjoying the moment.
• Practice mindfulness.

Here’s an additional resource you might find helpful to learn how to live in the moment.

In Summary

There are lessons to be learned from every aspect of our lives that can be powerful game changers when applied to other areas of our lives. Intimacy reinforces the value in and benefits of taking risks, getting out of you comfort zone, exceeding expectations, being vulnerable, and living in the moment. When you apply the above lessons of intimacy to other areas of your life, you’ll position yourself to lead a happier and fuller life all around. In other words, you’ll be able to thrive in life and work.

CHECK-IN

1. What is one valuable lesson you learned from one area of your life and applied to another area of your life that brought you success?

2. Which of the intimacy lessons do you find most challenging and what steps can you take to explore how to improve? 

3. Which of the lessons shared has brought you success in your life?