EFFECTIVE WAYS TO OUTSMART YOUR COMFORT ZONE

EFFECTIVE WAYS TO OUTSMART YOUR COMFORT ZONE

It might hold you back from living the life of your dream, but your comfort zone is not evil. It might lessen your quality of life, but your comfort zone is one of your greatest allies. However, unless you know how to override its parameters it will lock you into an unrewarding and repetitive life.

Knowing how to overcome your comfort zone will unlock the vast richness that life presents us in every moment. Yet to outsmart it, it’s not enough to identify the comfort zones of others or your own in mere hindsight.

To beat your comfort zone you must learn to identify it in the very moment it tries to put you into its shackles so that you can say, “No, thank you!” and “Hell yes” to living outside of the box.

Transcending yourself begins with an awareness of how you limit yourself The moment you are ready to step outside of yourself and make this your default pattern, you will begin to exceed yourself in your sleep.

I call this getting drunk on your own edge. Because to step into yourself is to step beyond yourself. And mastering this can allow you to live life with more creative success and flow with very little effort at all.

1. The feeling that drives you

Most people fail to beat their comfort zone because they can’t identify it. It will usually seem like the most plausible thing to give in to it. This happens because they look for it in their mind, when the power our comfort zone has over us is emotional.

By being mindful of how you feel whenever you do something outside of your comfort zone, you can learn to identify the feeling with which it hypnotizes you into obedience. A sensation not unlike anxiety or fear, just that it has no object other than itself.

Whenever your reach the boundary of your comfort zone, your body releases a signal that alerts you as if to say: “Hey, we have not been here before. Watch out!”

This sudden addition of energy is often mistaken for fear, provoking us to scan our surroundings for threats. And if we look hard, we find it even if it’s not really there. The cool thing is that one you become aware of that feeling, you will notice that it is always the same.

The solution to this is to get yourself into small risk situations outside of your comfort zone. Pay close attention to the sensations in your body and how they eventually transform into avoidance and comfort seeking.

Do this: Get yourself into uncomfortable situations and really observe yourself and how the comfort zone tries to persuade you with sensations, emotions, thoughts. Learn to identify that feeling by doing this a few times. If you do this it will lose its hold over you and you will have the choice to take its stop signs as invitations to grow and liberate yourself

2. The Will to Comfort vs The Will to Power

When we find ourselves at challenging points in our life, we are usually confronted with these two tendencies.

Whenever we give in to the will to comfort we operate from a scarcity mindset trying to protect something or keep up appearances. We return to our cocoon of habits and find comfort in their familiarity. The funny paradox is that all comfort springs from discomfort, but as adults we forget that.

The will to power stands for our drive to increase our capacities and develop as human beings, not in quantity but in quality. When we learn a new skill, when we make a bold move or take an emotional risk, we act on our will to power.

Gaining awareness of that distinction inoculates you against the bribes your comfort zone tricks you with.

The more you give in to comfort, the less comfort you will have because you comfort zone will shrink.

The more you give in to the will to power, the more comfort you will experience. Simply because you perpetually develop yourself and increase the resilience and size of your comfort zone.

Ask yourself: Is this increasing your power and capacity or fluffing your pillows?

3. Look deeper

Our comfort zone is there to protect us. It is based on previous generalizations we made and as much as it holds us back it also provides us with a buffer of comfort.

When you give in to your comfort zone you won’t know that you are doing it. In fact, you will think that you are doing anything but it. Your mind will come up with a plethora of arguments to convince you of it.

Rather than to look for the short term gains and losses, you can begin to look deeper and ask yourself what the refusal to move outside of your zone of comfort is trying to protect.

In most cases you will find that the thing you are trying protect is not even real, but merely the fear of losing a comfortable thought. Not a real thing, a thought!

Ask yourself: What fiction are you trying to protect by putting your life on pause?