Have you learned lessons for your business while on vacation? Here’s a vacation lesson that I learned recently.

In August, my husband and I visited Boulder, Colorado for the first time. We stayed with his brother and sister-in-law.

They arranged several hikes for us, one of which was around a lake at 10,200 ft. altitude. We waited until we had been at 6,000 feet for a week before we undertook this hike. The brother warned us of the symptoms of altitude sickness and on the one hand, I had lived in Colorado at 6K alt. before and had no problem with higher altitudes, but that was about 40 years ago, so on the other hand, I was a bit leary.

However, we went, and all I felt was a little out of breath at times.  It was such a wonderful experience—breathing in the delicious clear air, seeing snow-covered mountains, and feeling exhilarated.  I thought it was just another example of “feeling the fear and doing it anyway.”

You’ve probably heard that phrase before. And that’s what we solopreneurs have to do in our business. We have to stretch ourselves, doing something uncomfortable, even scary, in order to grow our businesses.

Even if you’re pretty sure everything will work out (like I thought), it can still be nerve-racking. One of my colleagues recently gave a TED talk and rehearsed his speech with me. And although he was a seasoned speaker for several decades, he still was nervous about his talk. (And it went fine.)

It could be writing a guest blog post or online magazine, speaking as a guest on a podcast, or going to a networking meeting. Whatever it is, when you get out of your comfort zone, growth can occur.

What have you done recently to stretch yourself in your business? Put it in the comments below to inspire the other readers.