The discomfort zone

When an elementary school father-daughter dance made Jacob Adams’ nerves skyrocket, he pushed them aside. While all but one other dad acted like a group of middle school wallflowers, Adams decided to break away from the crowd and joined his daughter on the dance floor as the DJ played Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off.”

Being out of your comfort zone is a familiar situation for Adams, a turf and tree team leader at Oasis Turf & Tree in Loveland, Ohio. In fact, he tries his hardest to put himself there.

“I have learned what’s uncomfortable for most people is comfortable to me,” he says. “Most of me is like, ‘Yeah let’s do this. I’ll figure it out and jump in feet first.’”

Adams spent five years in the military, enlisting in the Army in 2005 as part of the 101st Airborne Division out of Fort Campbell on the Kentucky-Tennessee border.

“(The military) gave me discipline, integrity, pride,” he says. “To really take pride in what you do and do a good job and to put your name on it.”

“He goes above and beyond what is expected from (him),” says Angie Bradley, director of operations for Oasis. “If there’s something else that needs to be done, he’ll jump in and do it. … You don’t find that too often in many people. You don’t find that character.”

For the full story in the June issue, click here.