Sumthin' 2x

Disrupting My Comfort Zone

by Brian Grazer

I was 45 years old when I decided to learn how to surf.

Picture this scene: The north shore of Oahu -- the toughest,
most competitive surfing spot on the planet. Fourteen-foot
swells. Twenty tattooed locals. And me, 5-foot-8-inches of
abject terror. What will get me first, I wondered, the next
big wave or the guy to my right with the tattoo on his chest
that reads "RIP"?

They say that life is tough enough. But I guess I like to
make things difficult on myself, because I do that all the
time. Every day and on purpose. That's because I believe in
disrupting my comfort zone.

When I first started out in the entertainment business, I
made a list of people I thought it would be good to meet.
Not people who could give me a job or a deal, but people
who could shake me up, teach me something, challenge my
ideas about myself and the world. So I started calling up
experts in all kinds of fields: trial lawyers, neurosurgeons,
CIA agents, embryologists, firewalkers, police chiefs,
hypnotists, forensic anthropologists and even presidents.

Some of them -- like Carlos Castaneda, Jonas Salk and Fidel
Castro -- were world-famous. Of course, I didn't know any
of these people and none of them knew me. So when I called
these people up to ask for a meeting, the response wasn't
always friendly. And even when they agreed to give me some
of their time, the results weren't always what one might
describe as pleasant.

Take, for example, Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen
bomb. You've heard of him? However, he'd never heard of me.
It took me a year of begging, cajoling and more begging to
get to him to agree to meet with me. And then what happened?
He ridiculed me and insulted me. But that was okay. I was
hoping to learn something from him -- and I did, even if
it was only that I'm not that interesting to a physicist
with no taste for our pop culture.

Over the last 30 years, I've produced more than 50 movies
and 20 television series. I'm successful and, in my business,
pretty well known. I'm a guy who could retire to the golf
course tomorrow where the worst that could happen is that
my Bloody Mary is watered-down.

So why do I continue to subject myself to this sort of
thing? The answer is simple: Disrupting my comfort zone,
bombarding myself with challenging people and situations --
this is the best way I know to keep growing. And to
paraphrase a biologist I once met, if you're not growing,
you're dying.

So maybe I'm not the best surfer on the north shore, but
that's okay. The discomfort, the uncertainty, the physical
and mental challenge that I get from this -- all the things
that too many of us spend our time and energy trying to
avoid -- they are precisely the things that keep me in
the game.

NPR (National Public Radio)
This I believeより　（2006年6月27日）

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