6 Tips to Get Out of Your Comfort zone

Why do we get stuck in our Comfort Zone

Sometimes we may decide we can’t have something because we don’t know how to get out of our comfort zone and we’re feeling stuck.

Our comfort zone is a safe place where we know what to expect even if we don’t like it there.

Are you feeling stuck like a caged animal sometimes?

Imagine a bird or an animal that has lived in it’s cage most of its life. One day the cage door is opened and it is free to go but it stays in the same spot. The boundaries of the cage are imprinted on its mind.

We can be like that caged animal, when the beliefs of our subconscious mind define the edges of our cage. The prospect of stepping outside of our comfort zone, the limiting thoughts of what might go wrong, “how will I cope?”, “I don’t deserve anymore than my lot now”, can keep us feeling stuck, a lack of motivation, unfulfilled and for some a sense of hopelessness.

Belief System Boundaries

Our belief system is learnt early on in life through our families and peers, we learn the rules that others teach us. In effect our environment creates the boundaries of our cage and influences how we live our lives.

For some of us as we grow we don’t question what we have learnt and our belief system is entrenched, although we might be free and living away from our early environment, we carry the limitations in our heads.

The fear of the unknown

It can be difficult to get out of your comfort zone because you don’t know what else is out there in the real world. When new, different or unknown things invoke fear, your subconscious mind triggers your internal alarm system to become anxious and warn you of potential danger.

So what do many people do? They either run away, hide from it, fight it or judge it. The fear that you are holding onto creates assumptions and judgements to keep you away from the thing you want.

Have you ever thought that you wanted something or would like to try something, then the fear of actually getting it prevented you from taking action to get it. You unknowingly had started to make judgements about it and convinced yourself that it wasn’t for you and you continue in your comfort zone, which is becoming less than comfortable and perhaps feeling stuck.

What to do when Feeling Stuck

“Coming out of your comfort zone is tough in the beginning, chaotic in the middle, and awesome in the end…because in the end, it shows you a whole new world !! Manoj Arora

How we get stuck with ourselves and keep ourselves from changing

Through conditioning and entrenched beliefs, we’ve trained the body to live in a predictable future based on our known past experiences, missing out in the moment of living now.

Just because something didn’t work out previously it doesn’t mean to say it will get the same result next time. However if we repeat behaviours producing a less than desired result, our comfort zone becomes uncomfortable very quickly and we feel stuck.

When we make a conscious choice to focus on a new desired experience, something we really want, we can condition the body by subconsciously retraining the brain to be in the present, not some predictable future.

6 Tips to begin retraining your brain

1. Follow your intuition

Have you ever had a hunch about something but not followed through because your mind wouldn’t let you. Your intuition can guide you to expand your comfort zone. Start to recognise when you stop yourself from doing something.

What if you just did it and thought about it later?

2. Stop asking for opinions

Give yourself time to think about what YOU want. So who really cares if it didn’t work out, at least you will have experienced something different and learnt something from the experience. Take responsibility for YOUR decisions. Your peers are probably of the same mind set as you and their advice is as limiting as your fear and your current life.

Is that how you want the rest of your life to be? The choice is yours.

3. The worst-case scenario

So what is the worst thing that can happen? When you consider doing something new, consider what the worst case scenario is and the probability of it happening. When you acknowledge this you may realise that your biggest fear is perhaps not as terrible as you imagined and you already have the resources to manage if it didn’t work out well.

Continuing to anticipate some future experience or obsess about a worst case scenario, based on a memory from our past, we are still programming the body to experience a future event before it occurs. Now the body is no longer in the moment or the past, it is in the future based on a construct of the past. When this occurs the body doesn’t know the difference between the actual event in reality and what is going on mentally, because we are already priming for whatever we think might be coming. The body begins to get ready and we start feeling the physical symptoms of anxiety.

By being conscious of your fears they lose their power and stronghold they have over you.

4. What excites you?

Write a list of the things that excite or inspire you, don’t hold back write down all those things that you would love to do, but not in your wildest dreams think you ever will.
Read this list every day, how does it make you feel? excited at the prospect that you could achieve some things from the list and give the rest a damn good go. So what are you waiting for?

It is time to start! or does staying in your uncomfortable comfort zone inspire you more?

5. Make an agreement with self

Make an agreement with yourself to support yourself no matter what happens. Life throws challenges at us and often we tend to abandon ourselves, or we give up too easily because we’re afraid we won’t be able to handle it if the “something” comes to fruition. But if you stand by yourself, support yourself by your side, then you have a better chance of succeeding and getting what you want.

6. Pick something that you always wanted to do

What is something you would like to learn or do? It doesn’t have to be magnificent or life changing just something you’ve never done before.
It may be learning a language, joining a woodwork class and making a chair, singing in a choir, study to change a career, for example.

Let’s start with something very simple. From today start using your opposite hand to clean your teeth! And yes I can hear you thinking “oh I can’t do that I’m going to get toothpaste all over the place etc etc”. And yes you might the first time but with practice it will become second nature.

This simple task will start to stimulate other areas of your brain and begin to retrain your brain and build new neural pathways.

Now

Pick something that challenges you in some way. Now take a moment to imagine yourself just doing it without fear? How does that make you feel? perhaps excited and happy. How do you look? perhaps you can see yourself calmly focussed in the moment. Fantastic, that was easy.

The more you practice something new, the more you train your brain that it’s OK to get out of your comfort zone.

Once you’ve tried one new thing, try something different and soon you will be utilising different areas of your brain and challenging your beliefs, what was once the truth now becomes a truth.