Comfort
Comfort Zones
I watched Grey Gardens (again) this weekend, and I started thinking about comfort zones, and how sometimes our comfort zones are way too comfortable. And the longer we stay, the harder it is to venture out. And before long, our little hide outs turn into prisons and traps. Sometimes they even decay and fall apart all around us, and they aren’t even comfortable any more, but we stay in them anyway… because it’s what we know, because it’s what we do, because we’ve forgotten that we have other options.
So, I thought it might be interesting to explore the boundaries of our safety zones, take a look at them and decide if they are still safe, if maybe it might be good to push our boundaries a bit… let some fresh air in… climb out of our boxes.. go on an adventure… do something different…
I spent a long time writing and rewriting this post… working and reworking a number of different ideas… and I have come to the conclusion that this is not a simple subject. There are so many different facets to the boxes we close ourselves into. We need our comfort zones just as much as we need to be able to break out of them at will. In order to break out of our comfort zones, we first need to see them from the outside.
One way to do this is to write a number of lists.
The first one is geographical:
- I normally go … where?
- I usually don’t go … where?
The second one is social:
- When a stranger is (insert word from list below) … I usually react … how?
- When someone I know really well is (insert word from list below) … I usually react … how?
* Generous
* Unkind
* Acting Irrational
* Dishonest
- How many other words or scenarios can think of that you might want to explore?
The third one is personal:
- When I am afraid … I usually react … how?
- When I am angry … I almost always … what?
- When I am bored … I usually … do what?
- When I am happy … I almost always … what?
- When I am worried … I usually … do what?
- When I am excited … I almost always … what?
- How many other emotions can you think of that you might want to explore?
The fourth one is more intuitive:
- My comfort zones are …
- My patterns with people usually look like …
- My knee jerk reactions tend to be …
Here are some examples to help get us started:
- I normally go to the same places over and over again…. because it seems so much safer.
- When a stranger is rude to me, I usually withdraw into myself and get really quiet.
- When I am afraid, I usually invoke my angels and guardian spirits…
- When I am angry, and I am at home, I almost always stomp around and cuss and rant.
- When I am happy… I smile a lot, make jokes, and chatter.
So, let’s get started figuring out our comfort zones, and as always, it’s really going to be helpful if you write these lists down. Tomorrow we’re going to try to find ways to challenge them.
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