Sam followed his passion right out of his comfort zone.

The benefit – getting into the NIDA Actors Studio, a 12-month professional acting program – was worth it. But first there was an audition!

“I’ve never auditioned for anything before. So, that was really out of my comfort zone. The whole row of people waiting to be auditioned in a small studio by two professional industry people, one director and one actress. I had to do two monologues.

“I felt really nervous. I thought ‘What am I doing?’ Like, what the hell am I doing? I don’t belong here. I should get out of here. I want to run out the doors. But I think what stops me from doing that is the fact that I did the preparation. And I’m sure in my head of what I’m going to do when they call my name. I think that’s the key. I think if you want to do something that’s outside your comfort zone, you don’t just go and do it. You actually have to prepare for it, you prepare for it and you prepare well. So when you come to do it, you can execute with precision and with all of the preparation that you have done whilst also being prepared to respond in the moment.”

Sam steps out of his comfort zone regularly in order to follow his passions. He is doing more public speaking. He did a play in December, completed a voiceover for a short documentary about loneliness and recently finished shooting a short film, soon to be playing at film festivals throughout Australia. Acting he particularly enjoys as a way of learning about human behaviour “You learn new things about yourself. And you learn new things about other people as well. From an acting perspective, you learn a lot about human behaviour. Because when you’re getting into a role you begin to learn about that character, what the character will do and think, how he responds to different situations, what’s at stake if he doesn’t get what he wants, and you just want to portray that character truthfully within the given circumstances of the text. So when you do that, you have to do a lot of research into human behaviour types, and all kinds of other things. And that just helps you understand not only yourself, but other people.”

Sam also found another benefit of stepping out of his comfort zone – he found himself with a different group of people and made lifelong friends, people he would not have met if he had not taken that step.

Sam had this advice for people thinking about stepping out of their comfort zone “Familiarity breeds confidence. So if there’s something you want to do, just get into it, start reading about it, start arming yourself with knowledge, become familiar with the process and how it works. And I think the more you do that, the more it reinforces your drive to do it. And that’s a virtuous circle, I think you might call it. And I think that’s the key you don’t just go into something blind. When you see great performances on the stage or on the screen, or when you see great talks at meetups, when you see great meetings, planning days and stuff executed, people don’t just rock up and do it. There’s a tonne of preparation that goes into these things. So it’s all about familiarising yourself with what needs to be done and having fun and discovering new things in the process.”

“And also I think having an understanding that even if you fail, whatever that definition is for you. well, actually, you’ve learned something right? And you keep iterating and you go in again and you do it, you go in again, you do it.”

And Sam’s final words were a pretty awesome summary of his approach to stepping outside of your comfort zone: “Get a parachute. Make sure you know how to use it. And then jump.”