What do you think? Everyone strives for more happiness. Everyone wants a life that feels good inside their body. Unfortunately, most people don’t achieve the happiness or the success they want because most people live in their comfort zone and stay there.
Your comfort zone is that place where your conditioned mind tells you that you are comfortable right where you are, even if you’re experiencing challenges in your life. Even if you’re not happy.
That’s because your mind is conditioned to keep you safe. To your mind, safety equals comfort. Not taking risks equals comfort. In order to find the happiness and success you want, you must challenge your conditioned mind that’s telling you to stay right where you are and to remain safe.
You must move out of your comfort zone if you want to live in your success zone.
To do this, you have to notice when you are resistant to changing the habits and negative thought patterns you’ve created in order to stay safe. You have to take the steps to live in discomfort to reach your goals. You have to challenge your conditioned mind so that it doesn’t get in the way of your new goal, your higher standard.
One of the ways your conditioned mind keeps you “safe” and stuck right where you are is with negative mind chatter. It’s that little voice inside that’s always telling you things like: you’re not good enough, you’ll never get there, you don’t deserve to be happy, so and so are the reasons for your lack of success, you can put this off for a while, you’re not ready to make a change, etc.
Another way your conditioned mind keeps you safe is when something good happens, or you start to reach your goal, or you do something that is successful and you notice that you become shy, or embarrassed, or guilty, or you pull back, or an uncomfortable feeling comes over you deep inside that you just don’t deserve to be happy or successful at this. You may recognize this feeling and not understand why you feel this way, but it’s there.
The difference between successful people and those who are not as successful at achieving their goals is that successful people are in the race to finish, and to win. Unsuccessful people stop before the finish line. They don’t finish the race. They may not even believe they can win before they start the race.
They never finish what they set out to do. They let other things or excuses get in the way, or they sabotage themselves so that they’ll stay in their comfort zone. They repeat their failures over and over again and don’t learn from their mistakes.
Recently, I came across an interesting quote:
“The definition of insanity is someone who keeps doing the same things over and over again expecting different results.”
Is this you? I know I’ve been there at times.
If you keep repeating the same patters of behavior over and over again, it’s because you are stuck in your comfort zone. The distinction between being successful and not being successful, in anything you set out to do, lies in being able to move out of your comfort zone and live in the discomfort.
There’s always going to be a good reason not to do something. It’s so much easier not to take the risk. But most of the successful executives and entrepreneurs I mentor will admit that unless they’re feeling a little uncomfortable, they know they’re not stretching and growing.
I remind myself every day that there is a cost for not doing something.
What’s the cost?
For my successful coaching clients, the cost is not to grow. It’s the cost of staying right where they are and never reaching their desired goals. If they do that, they don’t move forward. We all have too much at stake to stop learning and growing. I am convinced there really are some risks worth taking. As for me, these risks usually involve my willingness to get past my own fears of living in discomfort or trying something new.
My willingness to stop listening to what my mind has to say.
Unless you get comfortable with the discomfort, trying new approaches to solving old problems and making calculated mistakes, you’re not reaching your full potential as a manager, executive, leader, business owner and winner. You’ll never be as successful as you want. You’ll never be as happy as you want.
What do you tell yourself? Do you believe you can win? Do you even try to finish the race?
If you don’t try to finish the race, you’ll never win.
In order to win, you have to recondition your mind so that it will support you to win. To recondition your mind and change any thought pattern or habit, you must support yourself and keep your new habit in place for a minimum of 30 days. This is equivalent to building a new muscle. It takes practice and exercise to make it strong.
You can recondition your mind to be more supportive by doing this simple exercise for 30 days: (It is based on a process I learned by T. Harv Eker)
Get yourself a rubber band and put it around your wrist.
The next time you set a goal for yourself, start out by saying to yourself,
“I am going to complete this race.”
“I am going to finish this race.”
“I can’t win unless I finish this race.”
When your mind starts to talk to you in an unsupportive way, when you notice the “negative mind chatter,” or you start to think negatively about anyone or anything, simply say,
“Thank You for Sharing.”
Then snap the rubber band on your wrist.
You don’t have to snap it hard. It’s a reconditioning exercise. It’s just a gentle reminder that your mind is not being supportive of you. You acknowledge the thought and move on. You let the thought go and move onto a better thought.
It’s a way to get your mind out of your comfort zone by moving into awareness, through the discomfort and into your success zone.
Once you get past the discomfort, you realize it wasn’t so bad after all. Your fear of the unknown was worse than the discomfort. Try it for 30 days and see what a difference it can make in your thought process and in supporting your goals to be more successful and to win. http://www.Kathryn-McKinnon.com/blog
Feel free to share this with others. Let me know your thoughts.
To Your Success!
Kathryn McKinnon
