Mindfulness Demystified: Beyond Your Comfort Zone
5 Mindful Ways to Step Outside of Your Comfort Zone
Everyone has settled into a comfort zone at one point or another, and there is this primarily held misconception that staying strictly within a relatively tight space (aka comfort zone) provides us with a protective shield that leaves us feeling safe, secure, and protected against some of life’s most yielding uncertainties.
Only what starts as a seemingly harmless shift to linger more in the familiar can quickly spiral into allowing the fear of the unknown to limit us from embarking on new things.
Suddenly decision after decision is wrought with more of the same to avoid an increasing fear of the unknown. Hence, the more likely you are to change, the greater your chances of habitually rehashing the same narrative. If this resonates in the least bit, you are not alone. This post will delve into five mindful practices that support you in going beyond your comfort zone.
The Comfort Zone
At its best, a comfort zone provides you with a safe, comforting, reassuring space of the familiar that leaves you feeling like you have everything under control. From the infinitesimally small little things to the seemingly grand unpredictabilities of the unknown, keeping things within a preset routine promises to keep you safe and protected from all that can potentially arise, threatening to derail any sense of normalcy.
On the one hand, routine habits confer a sense of familiarity that allows one to repeat specific tasks, actions, and responses at will, with little to no conscious effort or stress, leaving you with the ability to practically do certain things that enable you to predict others responses with a degree of accuracy, and reliability. This way of thinking has become so commonplace that it has affectionately evolved into an old saying, “the devil you know is better than the one that you don’t,” or one of my faves, “out of the frying pan and into the fire.”
This way of thinking often regulates people to stay in situations, circumstances, relationships, and jobs, out of sheer reliability of knowing what to expect. However, it doesn’t consider whether or not it no longer serves your highest and best good. This commonly happens when one has been at a job for too long or stayed in a relationship far past its expiration date.
Many have experienced the inner still, small voice that begins as a whisper, incrementally increasing until it becomes crystal clear that it’s time to evolve (i.e., changing jobs). Perhaps everything within you has grown weary of doing the same things daily and longs for a complete change. Only making a change would force you to completely release all that feels familiar, leaving you to journey into the unknown and begin again, all over again, or maybe it’s calling you to shift and release some of the friendships you once held so close at hand.
On the one hand, you can take the unpredictable leap into the unknown and soar; on the other, you can seemingly fail, making it all the more difficult to return to the job or relationship you have since longed to escape. So many what if and potentialities to choose from. While these two possibilities can both co-exist at the same time, one calls for you to endure an undue amount of suffering to remain in a safe space. Whereas entering the unfamiliar threatens to disrupt and upend all you’ve invested into establishing a safe distance.
The Effects of Self-Imposed Limitations
Anytime we subject ourselves to undue suffering to remain within what feels like a safe space, we limit ourselves from evolving into the highest expression of ourselves. Whenever we experience fear and apprehension about doing something new, the unknown can feel as if every possible negative outcome is sure to follow. This is often why our awareness immediately gravitates to the worst-case scenario when presented with something new.
You won’t honestly know what is on the other side of your comfort zone, so don’t get stuck in the discomfort of the unknown, as there’s no space for growth within the restrictive space of the familiar. Perhaps you may have trained extensively for years to be qualified to do the work that has become so routine and now have absolutely no clue as to how you will do the very things you feel called to do—the discomfort of not knowing how and what will happen next will at times feel unbearable. The discomfort may feel so immense that you and everyone else may believe that you have lost your mind. Whatever the initial glimpses into the vision may be, hold it close at hand and share it with no one. Permit yourself to be open and receptive to all that’s seeking to express through you.
Stop rationalizing and trying to fight what all that is seeking to express through you. Release all force and surrender to what you’re called to do. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Say yes to the journey that will stretch you into more capacities than ever. The Divine will provide the path for whatever you are called to do. The journey to you will come with its unique pathway. It may resemble others’ paths. However, it is solely unique to your talents and gifts. You don’t have to know the how, so lean into your intuition and allow yourself to be guided and supported. The journey is not a destination that you must arrive at a particular place; it’s a journey to become more of your authentic self. As a collective, we’re so used to relying on a GPS to tell inexplicably reveal any roadblocks, missteps, and everything that could lie ahead that it becomes that much more difficult to rely on what cannot be seen with the naked eye, our intuition.
Five Ways to Use Mindfulness to Go Beyond Your Comfort Zone
1. Increase Awareness
Anytime we venture beyond our comfort zone, there will be a degree of fear and uncertainty that leaves us questioning everything. Our higher selves are ever present, guiding and directing us, by way of our intuition, to continue to grow, evolve, and unfold into our greatest yet-to-be. Our intuition communicates with us in many ways. Be it an intuitive sense of knowing or a small inner voice that pushes us to make significant changes. Often we distrust our inner guidance and brush it off, despite everything within us telling us to do otherwise. Increase your awareness of what is arising within and tap into deep listening.
2. Release Judgement
When things arise that we’d rather ignore, it’s a commonplace to overly judge and critiques them. When journeying to go beyond your comfort zone, notice what’s arising, release any judgment, and accept it as is.
3. Acceptance
This common misnomer regarding acceptance infers that acceptance equates to an agreement. Whenever we desire to do something entirely out of the norm, there will be feelings of fear and discomfort that we’d rather discount and ignore. Acceptance doesn’t confer agreement. Just because you don’t like how something feels doesn’t mean you have to reject it and subject yourself to undue suffering to remain in the comforts of the familiar. Accept what is as it arises, and feel what you feel led to do.
4. Lean into Fear
We all instinctively tend to recoil in the presence of fear, often taking it as a sign to avoid the very things we feel led to do. Interestingly there’s this widely held notion that the presence of fear means that you should avoid it at all costs. Anytime we set out to go beyond the familiarity of a predictable routine, there will be a degree of fear. The presence of fear doesn’t mean that whatever we feel led to do is not in the cards, its means that it’s unfamiliar. In other words, fear will permanently reside in the unknown. Whenever you sense anxiety, lean into it and do it, despite any discomfort that may arise. In the manner in which there was once great fear in the things that are now routine, the same goes for the new. You will inexplicably experience anxiety, lean into and do it anyway.
5. Journal
Allow yourself to journey into the silence as many times as need be and sit in a quiet space where you will be undisturbed and can completely rest and relax your body into absolute stillness, and focus your attention on the breath, letting go of the urge to coerce or force anything to happen. Redirect your focus within and subconsciously ask some empowering questions—Journal what all comes through.
Journalling prompts:
What am I to do?
How can I serve?
What is I seeking to express through me?
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