COMFORT
ZONE
A
few years ago, I met a lady that has allowed me to re-discover myself
as I had buried my dreams and myself under a lot of garbage. It was
a little scary, re-discovering my emotions, my dreams, my wants and
needs. As men, we aren't really taught how to handle our emotions,
how to decipher them and feel the subtle nuances within each of the
basic emotions of anger, fear, shame, happiness and sadness. I know
for myself that a few were definitely cut off and I hadn't felt the
emotions, let alone the subtle variations for a long time. As I
started to become open to them I felt a little uncomfortable and had
to really stretch myself to know what they were at first. As I
explored them and found out more about them, I became comfortable.
As
I was doing all this discovery work internally, my external world was
stretching into areas that were uncomfortable. I moved from
comfortable suburbia in a 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom house on a little
block to renting a 5 bedroom, 3 bathroom house on 50 acres,
surrounded by horses with a slightly more than doubling of rent.
More financial pressure, more responsibility pressure, and on top of
that I changed jobs a couple of times to find something that fitted
in with my journey. To say I was a little tense was a bit of an
understatement. After a few months I became comfortable with the
situation and was a little less tense. Since then, I've been slowly
pushing the boundaries outward and getting more and more comfortable.
The funny thing is that as you push the boundaries, you realise that
you aren't going to die and life goes on, before you know it your
life is nothing like it used to be.
This
is where most people struggle, they decide to get fitter, lose
weight, save money, whatever they choose to change, they make these
massive plans and after a few weeks fall flat. The key to change
though is that people only change when the pain of change is less
than the pain of staying the same. This means for example that they
generally have to have a divorce, a major health scare, a redundancy
etc before they address the areas of their life that need
improvement.There are many things going on behind the scenes that
affect this but it all comes down to small steps planned a little way
into the future. I'll use losing weight as an example, as most
people seem to struggle with this.
If
people started with a small incremental change in a number of areas,
it would be far less overwhelming and more likely to work. This is
based on the idea that any habit becomes permanent after 30 days. If
you said, 'for the first week I'm going to eat one less donut, one
more apple every second day, I'm going to walk 200 metres every
second day and read one chapter of a reputable eating plan each
night', then that is a series of small achievable steps. As they
become easier, and a habit, add to the different areas until after 6
months, you aren't eating donuts, except occasionally, you're eating
more fruit and vegetables, you're walking 5 kilometres per day and
reading a book a week on increasing your health and fitness. It
should never be massive steps but small steps. A god analogy is if
you are driving at night, a great distance, you can only see as far
as your headlights reach. That is all you need to do, is see as far
as your headlights reach, move into that lit area, then you see
further and before you know it, you've driven across the country.
It's what I'm doing and seems to be working great. Get your plan,
chunk it down, and just regularly apply yourself. Make it a series
of small choices and you'll be fine, because after all, it is just
small choices. Your choices, so what do you choose?
Wayne
Brown is a facilitator for life change. Contact him at
or
listen to his podcasts at
www.the7bigquestions.podomatic.com
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