This blog is for you, if you find yourself stuck in a particular area of your life. You’ll learn how your comfort zone came about and how to move forward with greater clarity, peace and wisdom.
The Comfort Zone
We all have a comfort zone, a place where we feel at home and safe. It consists of all our values, beliefs borne out of our environment and experience and the experience of people around us.
When you think about it, it has to be the case. Apart form some inbuilt fears of falling down and the fear of loud noises everything else has to be learnt. We learn from our family, our cultural environment, our genetics, our geographical and our historical environment and so on…. We are a unique blend of all these elements. That blend defines how we interact and how we succeed in life.
As we grow and gain new experiences we change and adapt. It is all part of the ebb and flow of our ability to adapt. That is what has made us so successful as a species.
A poignant example of our comfort zone is the story of a baby elephant
If you think about an adult elephant; it can easily uproot huge trees with its trunk. When an elephant living in captivity is still a baby, it is tied to a tree with a strong rope or a chain every night. Because it is the nature of elephants to roam free, the baby elephant instinctively tries with all its might to break the rope. But it isn’t yet strong enough to do so. Realising its efforts are of no use, it finally gives up and stops struggling. Having tried and failed many times, it will never try again for the rest of its life.
Later, when the elephant is fully grown, it can be tied to a small tree with a thin rope. It could easily free itself by uprooting the tree or breaking the rope. But because its mind has been conditioned by its prior experiences, it doesn’t make the slightest attempt to break free. The powerful elephant has limited its present abilities by the limitations of the past.
Human beings are exactly like the elephant except for one thing—We can CHOOSE not to accept the false boundaries and limitations created by the past…
What keeps us stuck?
Thinking about the elephant story you would think that the adult elephant would soon realise that it is stronger than the small rope that is tying it to the tree and break free, and yet it doesn’t.
The same is true of humans. We just have to think about our unwanted thoughts, feelings and habits and try and change them and soon discover it can be difficult to change.
Having tried through will power and failed, emotions, and thoughts such as the following often plague us:
- I’m useless
- I can’t do it
- What’s the point?!
- I’ll never do it
- Everyone is better than me.
- I’m scared. What will people think.
- Imposter syndrome
What stops us moving forward are the invisible barriers that exist in our minds. Those barriers are due to direct experience or through learned experience from others. Those barriers are limiting beliefs, feelings about situations in life and our behaviours. They are loaded with the emotional responses of anxiety, depression and anger. Deep down they have a positive intention to keep us safe. However there comes a time when we want something more, that’s when they become a problem, and we need to expand our comfort zone.
How we try to change
Typically we try to expand the comfort zone using the survival mind responses of fighting (or fleeing) those limiting thoughts, feelings and behaviours. You know what I mean! We want to get rid of anxiety, we want to stop those negative thoughts or other peoples behaviours towards us… etc. Unfortunately what you resist persists. Even putting in more effort doesn’t work, so we give up with exhaustion and get demoralised. We rest and then try the same old efforting strategy again and again and guess what? Nothing changes, except for our belief in our ability to change diminishes – just like that elephant.
The problem is not that we aren’t putting in enough effort, or not wanting to change enough, the problem is that we are using the wrong approach, we are trying to get away from something we don’t want rather than move towards something we do want. There are two reasons for our stuck state:
- The mind doesn’t process the “Don’t” word. So if we say “I don’t want to get anxious”, the mind only hears “I want to get anxious” and produces the very thing we say we don’t want. Try it by saying to yourself “I don’t want to think of a pink elephant” what happens?
- The old thoughts, feelings and behaviours have a positive intent at their heart, i.e. typically to keep us safe. Change won’t happen without maintaining that positive intention.
How to lower the walls of the comfort zone – so it’s easier to step over
To move forward we need to focus on what we want and to ensure any changes support the positive intention of the old thoughts, feelings and behaviours. The primary intentions is “safety, security” it is helpful to think that any changes should be centred around putting us back in control of our responses to life. With that as a prime directive we take back control of our responses rather than being controlled by life’s circumstances.
Here’s a simple formular:
- Firstly become aware of the comfort zone boundaries. Notice where you feel stuck, blocked, fearful. It can be in your career, relationships, health, goal etc. See the wheel of life download to help that process by scoring different areas of your life. Wheel of Life download. Notice what stops you going forward – thoughts, feelings, behaviours.
- Accept that you are where you are and any stuck-ness or reaction is simply due to unconscious strategies from the past that need upgrading. The upgrades need to maintain the original positive intention but in a way that moves you forward rather than by keeping you stuck.
- Since the natural flow of events is that things start with a THOUGHT which translates to a FEELING and then a BEHAVIOUR follows, it makes sense that the boundaries of our comfort zone comprise of these three elements.
Going Forward
In the coming three blogs you will learn ways to change those Thoughts, Feelings, Behaviours in a way that reduces the boundary surrounding the comfort zone so that you can step over and expand your comfort zone. The blogs will show you how to take back control and choose what’s beyond the comfort zone boundary rather reacting automatically based on past experience.
THOUGHTS – Is what you are saying to yourself true? What else can the situation mean? What learning can be taken from the past event?
FEELINGS – What would be more useful to feel? Gratitude ? Acceptance? Motivation? Playfulness?
BEHAVIOURS – What actions do you want more of and what actions would you like less of? What needs to happen for you to move forward?
For more resources and discussion about how to make change happen, why not join our Facebook Group – a community of like-minded individuals sharing tips and ideas
Contact me at ACT-Hypnotherapy to find out more about Hypnotherapy can help you step out of your comfort zone more more easily.
