Authority Magazine Interview: Comfort Zone

It feels most comfortable to stick with what we are familiar with. But anyone who has achieved great success will tell you that true growth comes from pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. What are some ways that influential people have pushed themselves out of their comfort zone to grow both personally and professionally? As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Tracy McHugh.

Tracy was born and raised in North Jersey, which she didn’t venture far from until college. Tracy only made it to Poughkeepsie, NY for her undergrad but fell in love with travel during part of her Junior spent in England. Since then, Tracy has been to 28 countries and 46 states which she started writing about in her travel blog during the 2020 shutdown.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we start, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?

I grew up in a tiny town in New Jersey, 20 miles outside of NYC. It was a great experience having a sleepy town up brining, with the most diverse city in the country at your fingertips. One weekend we would be hiking in the mountains or playing soccer, and the next heading into the city to see a Broadway show.

With that said, I didn’t have a childhood that changed much. I was the youngest child in my family, we lived in the same house from the time I was 2 years old, most of my friends remained in our town from the age of 0 until at least 18 years old. So needless to say, I didn’t experience change often nor did I handle it well when it did arise. By the time I went away to college (only an hour from my hometown), it was like my world was crumbling.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

‘The measure of intelligence is the ability to change’ — Albert Einstein

What this quote means to me is that life is every changing and many times it is out of your control. You can fight it and complain about it or you can accept it and pivot.

After college I enrolled in a 3-month acting course in Dublin, Ireland. Dublin isn’t necessarily known for studying acting like London, New York, or LA are, but I wanted to spend an extended amount of time in Europe, I always wanted to see Dublin, and I found a 3-month course through an acting school I had previously attended. A few weeks before the course was set to start, and after I had purchased my non-refundable flights, the class was cancelled due to low participation.

While disappointing, this moment taught me that not everything always goes accordingly to plan and learned that at times you need to roll with things. Instead of taking the course, I traveled around Europe for 2-months by myself. This scenario also taught me how to be self-reliant, independent, resourceful, street smart, organized, as well as helped me work on my social skills. If you are a social being but spending 2-months traveling alone, you either acclimate and start engaging with strangers or you remain silent for 2-months. You also need to assess each situation to figure out if the stranger is friend or foe. In addition to all these life lesson I learned from the trip, I also just had an amazing time, got to spend 2- months in amazing places, and meet some amazing people.

To catch additional insight from Tracy’s first conversation with Authority Magazine, check out the rest of the interview.