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Just One Step: Moving Beyond Your Comfort Zone

July 28, 2011 By Lena Leave a Comment

It’s good to have a comfort zone. Really, it is. Even though I’m going to tell you how to break out of yours, it’s always good to know that you have that safe, familiar place to go back to when things get a little scary. It’s when your comfort zone turns into a cage that leaves you feeling trapped even when you know there’s a better life outside it waiting for you, that it becomes a not-so-good thing.

I know, because I was stuck in my own comfort zone for about eight years. Even today I have to consciously work at moving beyond the walls of my own safe zone every single day.

Comfort zones are filled with those nasty things that self-help teachers and life coaches call “limiting beliefs.” Jack Canfield calls it a “collection of can’ts, musts, must nots, and other unfounded beliefs formed from all the negative thoughts and decisions you have accumulated and reinforced during your lifetime.” (The Success Principles, p. 70) Not much good there, is there?

Sometimes it’s about more than just being held in check by your limiting beliefs and being stuck in a rut. Sometimes comfort zones become physical cages as well. This is what happened in my case. After several years of being emotionally abused, by the time my abuser was no longer in the picture, I was afraid to set foot outside my front door and afraid to let anyone in either. I stopped seeing friends, stopped answering the phone, and just about drove myself to an early grave with a heart attack at the age of 40. All because I was afraid to move beyond, to take just one step to start moving myself out of uncomfortable, but safe, place I had created for my body and my mind.

Fast forward to today, and it’s almost ten years later. I’m getting better at dipping my toe in the waters of change, and if not moving completely beyond what’s 100% comfortable for me, at least I’m pushing at the boundaries a little more often by doing the things I’m going to share with you in the next part of this article.

Three Ways To Move Beyond Your Comfort Zone

These are what I call my baby steps. Just one at a time, nothing too drastic and you will find yourself pushing back the boundaries of your comfort zone.

Use Positive Thoughts and Affirmations

Yes, positive thinking is your friend. It’s natural to feel scared when you’re moving away from what is familiar. If you can take those feelings of fear and turn them into positive thoughts of all the good stuff waiting on the other side for you, it will make taking that first step a little easier. You might even find yourself looking forward to it!

Affirmations can help get you in the right mindset for making changes too. Even something as simple as “I can do this” will put you in the positive frame of mind you need to be successful.

Try something new every day

My big breakthrough came when my son bought me golf lessons for Mother’s Day one year. I had no choice but to go out and look like a fool in a group setting. It was terrifying the first few times, but by about the end of the second week I was glad he had forced the issue.

You don’t need to try anything that drastic to start with though.If you can do something small, but new to you, every day you will soon find your boundaries expanding to encompass all your new adventures.

So what can you do? Go for a walk in a different direction each day, take a new way to or from work, try a new food, check out a shop you’ve never been in before, or even just smile at someone on the street. All these examples are baby steps in your journey outside your comfort zone, and they all add up over time.

Meet New People

This goes along with trying new things, because as you do you will be meeting new people. For me this was a big issue, even without considering my background of abuse. I’ve always been a very shy person and had trouble talking to others. Trust didn’t (and still doesn’t) come easily so having to be around people I don’t know is still a stretch for me. That’s one reason that for me, the golf lessons were a great idea. I was forced to meet new people, and have actual conversations that didn’t include a keyboard.

Finally, don’t be afraid to ask for help if you need it. If you have family and friends that will support you in your efforts to make changes, ask for help. No one should have to walk through life alone, and having a friendly shoulder to lean on or hand to hold when the going gets a little rough is sometimes all we need to take that next step.

Moving outside your comfort zone shouldn’t be a traumatic experience. It should be fun, exciting, filled with passion and joy at being alive and able to make changes for a more fulfilling life. All it takes is just one step to start the process.

(Photo Credit © Lakeemotion | Dreamstime.com)
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Finding Yourself, Creating Yourself, and Becoming Self-Aware

July 21, 2011 By Lena Leave a Comment

George Bernard Shaw wrote, “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” That statement means a lot to me because I believe that we can and do create our lives the way we want. Even when we’re not getting the results we want, we have still created them from our thoughts and action because we’re not paying attention to those thoughts and actions. This is because we have not yet mastered the art of self-awareness.

A big part of personal growth is becoming self-aware. Before you can find your self or create your self, you have to know, as Jack Canfield says in “The Success Principles“, where you are now and where you want to get to. It doesn’t matter what kind of changes you want to make — mental, physical, financial, in your relationships — they all have to have a starting point and an end point.

While you can choose the end point that you want to get to, the only way to determine your starting point is to learn how to become more self-aware.

Sounds easy, right?

What most people don’t realize until they start on the path of growth and change is that so much of what we think and feel is driven by outside forces. Self-awareness means learning to pay attention to your inner self first and act on what you are seeing, hearing, and feeling instead of reacting to those outside forces that you have no control over.

So how does a person learn the art of self-awareness?

Books and courses have been written on this topic. If you stop and think about it, learning to become self-aware is at the heart of personal development. So I won’t insult your intelligence by trying to answer that question in a short article. What I will do is give you a few tips to try on for size that will help you to at least begin the journey.

Make friends with the practice of self-reflection. As well as knowing where you are and where you want to be, it’s important to understand who you are right now and to have a vision of the person you want to become.

This doesn’t mean creating a catalogue of only the things you want to change. It means knowing yourself well enough to be able to list and celebrate your strong points as well.

It also means you need to examine your likes and dislikes, and determine if these are really your preferences or if they are the result of choices you have made in order to please others around you.

Above all, mastering self-awareness means being honest with yourself. If you don’t really allow your true self to shine through, or don’t accept yourself warts and all, then you can’t begin the process of creating lasting change in your life because your starting point is an illusion instead of a true picture of yourself.

Don’t be afraid to ask others’ opinions. That sounds almost wrong when we’re talking about self-awareness, but the truth is we’re not always the best judge of our own character. It doesn’t hurt to ask family and friends for their opinions on what they see as your strengths and weaknesses. They may see something in you that you’ve never even considered before, and this will only add to your inventory and give you another avenue to reflect on.

The key when it comes to soliciting other peoples’ opinions is to remember that they are only opinions. The final determination of what and who you are has to come from wtihin yourself. The whole point of learning self-awareness is to really see yourself as you are now.

The art of self-awareness is really the art of listening to yourself. We all have that inner voice that tells us when we’re being true to ourselves and when we’re not. Whether you call it your conscience or intuition, it’s there and so often we don’t pay it enough attention. Yet it’s a big part of us and we can’t really begin to create the self we want to be or the life we want to live without it.

Yes, life is, as Shaw says, about creating yourself. But in order to create yourself you do have to find yourself first. Mastering the art of self-awareness allows us to find ourselves, make peace with ourselves, and move on to creating the life we were born to live.

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Lessons on Living For the Moment, Part 2

April 7, 2010 By Lena 1 Comment

If you missed part one, you can read it here: Lessons on Living For the Moment, Part 1

Lesson Three: Be Mindful of Your Choices

A lot of the fun of living in the moment comes from being able to make the choice of what to do each minute of the day. There is responsibility too, in making sure that you accept that the choice you make for this moment will have an impact on all the moments that follow it.

Being mindful of what you are doing and why you choose to spend time doing it can be a hard lesson to learn. It can be a frustrating one too if you have trouble staying focused. Take this article, for instance…

I knew that when I chose to sit down and write this article, that I would also be committing to spending the next 45 or 50 minutes with pen and paper, engaged in the task of creating something. So the choice to write an article in one moment has a definite impact on the next several minutes. It means my butt can’t leave the chair until it’s done, that my mind has to stay focused on one topice until it’s done, and any other thoughts that don’t relate to the current topic have to be set aside for the time it takes to get everything I want to say down on paper.

It also means that I have to be mindful of each and every word that goes in to the creation of this article, because it’s very easy for me to just start spewing out whatever comes to mind. And as you’ve no doubt noticed, I can ramble with the best of ‘em!

If I’m not paying attention to where my thoughts are heading, it’s easy to get dragged so far off topic that the only way back is to just stop and start over.

It’s also possible to hit a roadblock where the thoughts just stop. If you’re not mindful of the moment when that happens, you can find yourself crashing head first into the barrier. The moment has passed, and you’ve missed the train of thought you were supposed to be on.

Lesson Four: Let Go of the Past

Which brings me to the fourth lesson I’ve learned about living for the moment. Life is too darned short to live in the past.

And I’ll be perfectly honest with you here — this is the one lesson I still struggle with on a daily basis. I’m not good at letting go, and I still spend way more time than I should thinking about the past. Even though I know I can’t change it (and if I’m really honest I probably wouldn’t if I could since it’s brought me to where I am today), it’s still there rumbling around in my mind doing its level best to interrupt my present.

Learning to accept the past for what it is, is one of the biggest obstacles I’ve faced in my quest to live each day in the moment. I’ve found that sometimes the best way to handle it is to spend a few minutes wallowing in the memories, and then just say “thank you” and send them on their way.

Sometimes, too, thoughts of the past can serve as a good reminder of why it’s so important to stay focused on the present. Like those rare moments that I catch myself thinking “Gee, I wish I had a cigarette right now,” and then I remember all those cigarettes of my past and just how good they were for me. That’s when the past shoves me firmly back into the present, and in a hurry too. I have no desire to repeat those hospital visits, thank you very much.

These days I try to live for the moment and be conscious of my thoughts as often as possible. I’m still working on it, and some days are definitely better than others. One thing I’ve noticed is that the more I pay attention to each moment, the less stressed I am about what tomorrow may bring. Who knows… I might not make it to tomorrow, and that makes me determined to enjoy today’s moments to their fullest.

Thanks for spending a few of your moments reading this. Please leave a comment and let me know if you liked it, or just say hello so I know you were here.

Thanks for being here!

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Lessons on Living For the Moment

April 7, 2010 By Lena 3 Comments

One of the lessons I have learned from being a diabetic and a heart attack survivor is the importance of living for the moment. It’s so easy to become distracted by all the “stuff” of daily life that the dreams and pleasures of each moment get forgotten, or worse, set aside. We no longer live for the present moment because our thoughts get caught up in the next big problem or in rehashing something that happened years ago that we haven’t let go of. Until something comes along, like a heart attack, to remind us that this moment is really all we have, it could be our last, and if we don’t pay attention to it, it will be wasted instead of enjoyed.

As far as heart attacks go, mine was a pretty mild one. But it was enough of a wake-up call to make me want to change. Add diabetes into the mix and I got downright mad at the situation. Because even though I wanted, and still want, to be healthy and make changes and live each moment just for itself, I know I’ve not been very successful at it up to this point.

Why?

Mostly because I was afraid. For the first two years I sat in my house, afraid to do anything in case it triggered another heart attack.

Lesson One: Letting Go of the Future

The first lesson I had to learn was to let go of the future. By that I mean I had to quit worrying about what might happen before it happens. Instead of saying “I’d like to go for a walk, but what happens if I get chest pain out there and can’t make it back home,” I had to retrain myself to say “I will go for a walk today, and now is the perfect time.”

I found that if I was worried about the chest pain, I would sit back down on the couch and not move for the rest of the day. The moment to take action was wasted because I worried about what might happen before it even had a chance to happen.

But, if I accepted that I felt good in that one moment when I decided to go walking, put my shoes on and headed out the door, then I was usually fine. Sure there were, and still are, times that I have to stop and catch my breath, but now I see those moments for the gifts they are as well — a chance to really notice my surroundings.

Lesson Two: Pay Attention to Nature

Do you know what a gift it is to be able to take pleasure in the smell of wild flowers, freshly cut grass, or the river? The sight of ducks playing in the water, or a squirrel jumping from branch to branch? Or the feel of a spring breeze gently caressing your skin? There are days when I could happily spend the whole day just sitting on a rock letting the smells, sights, and feelings of being outside wash over me. My favorite moments are the ones where I am sitting on that rock, and I can take a deep breath and know that for just this one moment in time everything is absolutely perfect in my world. There is no future to worry about, no past to agonize over how I could have done things differently. There is only now, and in this moment everything is exactly as it should be.

Being in nature is a wonderful way to live for the moment. When you take the time to reconnect with nature, whether it’s to take a walk, ride a bike, or just sit on a rock, you realize that all of nature lives for the moment. We humans have got so messed up stressing over the things we can’t control. The best stress-reliever I know is to get outside and really be a part of nature, because at that point you can’t help but be in the moment.

Going back to my example of the walk, I found that no matter how crappy I was feeling at the time, the moment I opened the door and stepped on to the sidewalk, I started feeling better. Even though for the time being I have to trudge through the urban landscape of downtown to get to the green stuff, as long as I could breathe in reasonably clean air and feel the sun on my face, even those moments where I have to deal with people in my space become tolerable. Seeing them rushing about just makes me more grateful that I can choose my moments and what I do with them.

To be continued…

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When Not Making a New Year’s Resolution Can Be a Good Thing

January 5, 2010 By Lena 1 Comment

0957yellowdaisiesI have always had a love/hate relationship with new years resolutions. There have been years when I’ve mad some really good ones and kept them. There’ve also been years where I’ve blown my resolution at about one minute past midnight on January first. Then there have been those years where my resolution has been not to make any resolutions at all. And as I’m learning quickly, there are times when not making any new years resolutions just may be a good thing.

New Year’s is such a stressful time of year. For me, it’s even more stressful than Christmas because it comes at the end of the holiday season. By this time many of us have spent a week or two (or more) eating too much, spending too much, perhaps indulging in too many cups of cheer, and spending too much time around people we’d normally avoid like the plague (aka well-meaning relatives). Sound familiar?

It leads one to ask the question — why did anyone ever think that New Year’s Day was the best time to start making lifestyle changes if they wanted a snowball’s chance in warm weather of success? That has to be one of the world’s unsolved mysteries, at least in my mind.

And let’s face it — for the majority of people making resolutions to do things like lose weight, get out of debt or quit smoking (three of the most popular new years resolutions) we are talking about serious lifestyle change.

This is something that should be done with planning, forethought, and clear intentions. It’s a true goal for improving your life and it should be given the consideration a major lifestyle change deserves. It’s not something you dive into because it’s the first thing that came to mind at the New Year’s Eve party when you were asked what your resolution for the new year would be.

Another reason why not setting a new years resolution can be a good thing is because it should be something that you choose for yourself. It’s very hard to set a clear goal about what’s best for your life when you’re being pestered and pressured by those well-meaning friends and family. Negative pressure to maintain the status quo can be just as damaging to your well-being as being urged to make changes. And we all know how hard it can be for others who are not ready to make changes to accept the fact that you want to do something to improve your life that might leave them behind.

The bottom line is, it’s okay to not make a new year’s resolution. Between the stress of the season and the pressure of people who “only want the best for you” (or at least their definition of it) sometimes you’re just better of waiting until all the hubbub from the holidays has died down. If you’ve thought about it, made your plans and decided that January first is the day you want to put your new plans into action, then by all means go for it. But if you don’t and you’d rather wait until you are clear on your intentions, then not making a new years resolution is a good thing.

When it comes down to it, every day gives you an opportunity to start a new year in your life. New Year’s Day as a holiday is just a mark on a calendar. Don’t get trapped into thinking that if you don’t quit smoking or start dieting on January first that you’re doomed to failure for the entire upcoming year. You can choose to make changes when they are right for you. Whether that’s January first or the middle of May, making a new years resolution is your choice and that’s definitely a good thing.

Did you make any new year’s resolutions? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Thanks for being here!
lena

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