Getting Out of Your (Un)comfort Zone
It’s hard to notice how comfortable we are with the habit of ourselves until we notice how excruciatingly uncomfortable it is when we are forced to step outside of our comfort zone. It’s so easy to be the ourselves we believe ourselves to be when we are in the habit of our daily lives, and it’s not until an unexpected twist or turn derails us into unknown territory that we notice how we had taken the routine of ourselves for granted. We all know that life is full of inevitable losses, yet we move through our daily lives in denial of this fact, and rightly so, as it is in the best interest of our health and survival to keep moving forward with acts of assigned meaning, rather then contemplating the losses inherently built into life itself. Plainly stated, we move through life with the delusion that tragedy is what happens to others. It is only when there is a crack in the illusion of safety in our own lives that we feel a panic which we desperately try to avoid. Perhaps it is the loss of a job, the end of a relationship, the death of a pet or parent, that shifts our perspective tectonically. We will do almost anything to avoid being uncomfortable by defaulting to taking the actions we’ve always taken, as we hope to claw our way back to some semblance of the self we thought we knew. When it becomes clear that we must move forward and through, it’s seductive to think that we can think our way to change, based on some big thought which we could label an epiphany, or an aha-moment of insight and clarity, or a realization. But what about action? Thought without action is philosophy, and although philosophy might lead us to understanding, will it lead us into a actionable state of knowing? It is only from a place of knowing that the inspiration and invitation for transformation can take hold. The tricky part comes after the moment of knowingness passes and we are left with a fading belief in the authenticity of our experience. It is in the contemplation of doubt when the brain automatically fires the old patterns of neural connections which want to re-establish the feelings that we label our identity. This is the moment of choice: do we take stock of the experience which granted us the ability to witness the reality of our own habitual making, and therefore make a conscious choice to take action towards retraining our behaviors based on the new information we’ve gleaned? Our habits are just our automatic reactions and repetitions from the first time we repeated an initial choice that made us feel safe. We’ve repeated the action blindly ever since, as if our very survival depended upon it. The comfort it brings gives us a sense of being who we are; the safety we feel by not taking risks which seem to threaten the survival of our self-proclaimed, familiar identity which is physiologically reinforced by a decreased cortisol level and an increase in endorphins, helping us feel as if we’ve avoided death itself. Let’s face it: change is big and scary and hard. In Dr. Maxwell Maltz’s 1960 book Psycho-cybertetics, he writes that “Our self-image and our habits tend to go together. Change one and you will automatically change the other.”
When was the last time you asked yourself if the choices you make are still relevant and appropriate to who you are now? It used to be said that it takes 21 days to form a new habit, but the European Journal of Social Psychology has recently published findings that it actually takes sixty-six days to form a new habit. There’s also the 21/90 rules that says you should commit to a new habit for 21 days and then, once established, continue to do it for another 90 days until it is the new automatic behavior. It is now well-known that the brain is capable of neuroplasticity so as to adapt and evolve. So, the two questions that may arise are:
- How can I experience knowingness?
and…
- How do I go about creating new habits?
It is in the moments of stillness where knowingness resides. Being in nature can provide an environment in which our natural rhythm can breathe itself into being. It is easier to experience knowing than it is to take action based on moments of seeing behind the veil once we return to the habitual environments of our lives. Our job is to carry within us that which we’ve been gifted while outside-of-time, where the moment of now constantly resides.
