Guest Post: Stepping Outside My Comfort Zone, by Dianne Wenz, VLC, HHC, AADP

In college I studied art and design, and I worked for quite a long time as a graphic designer. Over the years I found myself becoming more and more disenchanted with office culture, and I reached a point where I realized it was time for a career change. I discovered The Institute for Integrative Nutrition in 2008 and immediately enrolled, deciding I wanted a new career as a health counselor. After the first day of class, however, I felt panicky and anxious at the idea of health counseling. My instructors were talking about finding clients by teaching workshops and classes, which sounded like my worst nightmare. I’ve always been painfully shy and have suffered from terrible anxiety, so I didn’t think there would ever be a way that I could hold a workshop or a class, let alone counsel individual people on their diets and lifestyles. Having very low self-confidence, I didn’t want that kind of attention. What was I thinking when  enrolled?

When Victoria Moran spoke on my second day of class at IIN, she talked about finding your free-square – a Bingo reference from her book Creating a Charmed Life – and I spent some time trying figure out what mine might be. My friend Jessica said that it was the fact that I could talk to anyone had friends everywhere I went. I told her that she was completely nuts and kept pondering. If she said that to me now, I might agree with her, but to be honest, I don’t think it’s something that was “free” for me. It’s actually something I’ve had to work hard at.

I reached a point where I realized that shyness and low self-confidence were no longer serving me. They must have developed for some purpose early in life, but they were no longer necessary, and they were keeping me from doing the things I wanted to do. I’ve had to completely force myself to step outside my comfort zone in order to do the things I’ve wanted to do. One of the most important things I’ve learned over the past three years is if you don’t have the confidence, fake it. People will believe it’s there and you eventually might believe it too!

Since attending IIN, one of my goals has been to establish myself as an expert in all things vegan. I increased my web presence, but I realized that I really needed to get out into my New Jersey community and let people know who I am, an idea that really scared me. I wanted to start a vegan MeetUp group, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I spent months thinking about it and coming up with excuses to keep me from doing it. When someone else started a group doing exactly what I had wanted to do – right down to the name Montclair Vegans, which is what I wanted to call it – I kicked myself for not acting when I first had the idea. So when the original organizer stepped down from the group a year or so later, I immediately jumped in and started it back up again, and my eagerness caused me to forget about the things that had held me back in the first place.

For the first year with me at the helm, Montclair Vegans ran mainly as a group that hosted potlucks and raised money for animal rescue organizations via bake sales. But then Farm Sanctuary posted on Facebook that founder Gene Baur was doing a tour of the US to celebrate their 20^th anniversary and there was a link to invite him to speak. I knew if I didn’t do it, I would be kicking myself for years to come, so I submitted a request. Farm Sanctuary immediately responded with a yes. Yikes! I was now going to be hosting a vegan celebrity in my home town! This caused quite a lot of anxiety and nervousness, not to mention a migraine that lasted several days before the event. But 160 people showed up and Gene said that it was one of his most successful events on his whole tour. He even emailed me the next day and asked if I could set up another speaking event for him! In the following days, I met three people who were new to Montclair Vegans and had been at the talk and, and all three told me that they had decided to go vegan while listening to Gene speak. And two of those three signed up as health counseling clients! Amazing!

This led me to realize that what I was doing with Montclair Vegans was really needed in my community, and the need was much greater than any anxieties that were holding me back. I asked other notables in the NYC area if they would come speak in Montclair and to my surprise, they all said yes! (Another valuable lesson learned – if you want something, just ask for it!) I’ve hosted Jasmin and Mariann from Our Hen House, cookbook authors Nava Atlas, Terry Hope Romero and Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, Kathy Stevens from Catskill Animal Sanctuary and even Victoria Moran! (In fact, Colleen Patrick-Goudreau said that she’s never spoken in NJ, even though it’s where she’s originally from. She’s always wanted to come back for a talk but never knew who to talk to about organizing it.) If you had told me a few years ago that I would be hosting events with any of these people, I would have told you that you were completely out of your mind. But yet, that’s what I’m doing.

Recently I’ve been attending vegan events such as the NYC Vegan Food Festival and The Seed, and taking vegan-themed class like Victoria’s Main Street Vegan Academy. In the past I would slink around these types of events, hoping to go unnoticed, but these days I make sure I have a stack of business cards at the ready and I go around introducing myself to people, even asking some of them if they’d like to come out to NewJersey to speak. This is something I would have never have done a few years ago. Never! I’ve been faking it for so long that it’s starting to become second nature now. Recently at The Seed, I was waiting in line for the ladies’ room, and the person behind me said, “You run Montclair Vegans, don’t you?” (Why yes, yes, I do!) She said that she was thinking of moving to NJ and had come to one of my events last year to see what the local vegan community was like. How cool is that?

Being a health counselor and running Montclair Vegans has forced me to face my fears and push them aside, as I’ve been hosting events for a while now and, just as suggested on the first day of my health counseling training, I’ve been teaching my own workshops and classes. I won’t lie – I stilI get extremely nervous before most events, but I make myself do these things anyway, because I know they are necessary for my business, my vegan community and the vegan movement in general. I’m happy to say that my feet are now firmly planted outside my comfort zone, and I’m quite okay with it!

Dianne Wenz is a Holistic Health Counselor, Vegan Lifestyle Coach and has a certificate in Plant-Based Diet Nutrition. She’s an avid cook and baker and has taken classes at The Natural Gourmet Institute. She can be found at VeggieGirl.com. When she’s not blogging or taking pictures of her food, she can probably be found hosting a potluck or planning a guest lecture for Montclair Vegans.