Or looking at the limiting nature of ‘comfort zones’ and why it is necessary to step out of them in order to live to our utmost potential.
Getting out of a comfort zone might seem scary, sometimes undesirable, sometimes plain ‘torturing’ but it is only so based on how we have defined our relationship to that which we have defined as ‘our comfort zone’. Meaning, we all know what is genuinely not supportive for ourselves yet we easily get accustomed to tolerate it, to ‘live with it’ and stopping genuinely questioning what is it that I am in fact accepting and allowing of myself – and others – if continuing existing this same way day in and day out?
However the point in defining this bundle of limitations, stagnations, fears and limitations as ‘comfort zones’ or ‘safe zones’ is definitely unacceptable, which leads us to rather look at who we are in our minds and how in defining limitations, fears, judgments, beliefs that limit our potential as a ‘safe zone’ is indicating the ‘default’ nature of ourselves in our minds, which is definitely not that of support, not that of assisting ourselves to grow and expand, not that of getting out of our predefined and ‘default settings’ so to speak that we are born with as a mind and being in a physical body that carries all the info from our parents plus our environmental influence.
So here I’m deciding to from now on remind myself to investigate and challenge that which I am perceiving as comfort-zone in my life, what seems ‘easy’ for me to do already because even if it is a constant point of support, if it becomes a ‘halt’ in my personal development because I don’t push any further to other aspects or directions, then that’s the moment where I start embracing limitation and stagnation as ‘who I am’ and believe it’s just how things are or how our lives are ‘meant to be’ which are usually accepted as ‘perfectly normal’ reasons as to why we are supposed to remain in one single spot that is comfortable to us in our lives.
It takes courage, sometimes evident ‘shit hitting the fan’ type of consequences to step out of a comfort zone in our lives and I can see it for myself how it may seem like a scary thing to do at first, but eventually one goes realizing that self-honesty cannot exist in a comfort-zone mindset, because self-honesty is about questioning anything that we have defined as a ‘good experience’ in our lives and ultimately with time, one begins to only ‘question’ it but if we don’t make directive decisions to actually challenge the status-quo and step out of our comfort zone out of fear losing the seemingly ‘safe’ or ‘good enough’, we’ll remain looping around the awareness at the same time of there being ‘something more’ to ourselves, a better version of ourselves, a better potential.
Yet, if we at the same time keep a hold of ourselves in a comfort zone in whichever way we have defined it in our lives to be, we are closing the doors to give those first steps into creating a potential, because comfort zone is mostly about remaining in ‘one spot’ and one ‘same zone’ that we believe is good enough or comfortable enough to even try and alter it, change it – because if we investigate further, we fear ‘losing’ something or fear ‘changing’ something but we forget that if our starting point is that of self-honest process of change, then how can we go into fearing that it will be ‘for the worse’ if we apply common sense and self-honesty? And that’s how we can debunk our illusions and limitations.
If there’s a thing that by default – by preprogramming – we fear in our lives is change, fearing the unknown, fearing that which we haven’t even created yet and is existing as this ‘formless future’ that we get scared to face… but, here I question this again, why would we be scared of the unknown when one can instead start becoming more directive in creating our reality – on a day to day basis – once that we let go of the fear to step out of the comfort zone. Meaning we won’t be directed by an experience as a fear or prejudice about ourselves or others, but we will be then making sound decisions that we can test out and live out as points of support for ourselves and see what opens up in doing that.
We don’t usually like or prefer to question our comfort zones, because questioning it and starting to see the reality of ‘who we are’ in them will invariably shake our status-quo, will invariably prompt us to look within ourselves, in self-honesty, and decide if this comfort zone is in fact a place of growth, expansion, letting go of fears and limitations – or if it has become a normalcy point of ‘stability’ but not genuinely taking the steps to get to create and so be our utmost potential.
Once that I establish this for myself in what I just wrote, and deciding to root myself in self-honesty, I see that I cannot fool myself any longer and that I can in fact know which aspects of myself have been stagnant, which aspects I could expand even more and I may not know the ‘ways’ to do this yet, because that is precisely yet to be created, but I can see a direction, a purpose that I will go fine tuning as I go living this decision to step out of the comfort zone, which is actually a cool thing in spite of what may come up in my mind as fears or reasons ‘not to do this’, but how else will we get past our fears, preferences, our judgments, beliefs and limitations other than facing them in our lives and work through transcending them? In this case I also rather have to be thankful for consequences, because how else would I notice these points to change within me and in my life?
Now that doesn’t mean ‘we always have to put ourselves through that which we resist doing in order to face something’ – no, otherwise someone might come up with the idea upon reading this of ‘fearing heights’ and so going to the top of the steepest mountain and test their fear there without considering the actual danger there could be to it if improperly prepared – this is not about that.
This is about those things in our daily lives that we know firsthand we are still living as a ‘repetitive machine’ that lives in memories/limitations of the past, always reacting with the same fears, the same judgments and that’s precisely where stepping out of a comfort zone is letting go of that memory and experience of ourselves as ‘all that we’ve known ourselves to be’ in that moment, and instead, step out of the box and into self-creation, living out the words that we see would be most supportive in that moment – which will be easy to spot at times because it’s usually things we have in fact been wanting to do for a long time or that we’ve learned/seen others do, but feared doing it by ourselves – and then live out that decision to cross the threshold, step into the ‘unknown’ and realize that… we are still here, we remain! After all of that fear, anticipation or resistance to change, one can actually make it through and look back to see the comfort zone as the actual self limitation-zone, the fear-zone, the judgment-zone, the least-potential zone it has always been.
If this is not sounding liberating to you, not sure what will! But to me this is a refreshing way of looking at things, especially when we perceive we are losing something as our comfort zone – and this point was said to me recently as well to not only look at what is ‘lost’ but rather as what is gained as well, since we cannot really ‘lose’ something supportive of ourselves while being in a comfort zone – understanding ‘comfort zone’ now as all the definitions and aspects of it I shared above – we can only lose the fears, the limitations, the beliefs, the dependencies, the judgments, the habits that are not supportive for our lives and instead decide to give to ourselves an opportunity, a new path, a chance to recreate ourselves in a way that we would be willing to live with in self-honesty and that means, ensuring we are not settling for anything less than what we are able to do and live by, because that is represented by default by the movement to ‘stepping out of the comfort zone’ – not just changing to choose a ‘least worst’ either.
Last point here, if we don’t do this for ourselves, who else will? Sometimes life pushes us to redefine ourselves, to change and step out of a comfort zone through consequence and that’s mostly not a nice or pretty situation, but mostly a necessary one if we are on this path to live to our utmost potential.
Sometimes we have to stand as or create that point of ‘out of the comfort zone’ for another to step out of their own limitations and break illusions that were preventing us from facing our ourselves or getting to create ourselves to that best version of that is there as a potential in all of us. This might seem scary to do at first when facing such situations, but if we push through in self-honesty and make a decision to not deceive ourselves any further – as in creating comfort in limitation – then we can find the necessary clarity and realize that as difficult or hurtful as it might temporarily be, ‘growing pains’ is a certainty in this process, yet it is a momentary phase too, it too shall pass and it’s entirely up to us then to decide who we are and what we decide to create once that we decide and live our moving out of our comfort zones.
Words to live in this process: courage, determination and consistency in stepping out of the comfort zones.
Thanks for reading.
Very Supportive material at Eqafe.com to review on this topic:
Fear of Change – Fears & Phobias
Waiting for Change – Reptilians – Part 316
MarlenLife's Blog 