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By Dean Fraser BSYA (BL)
Public speaking had already become second nature to me, I felt (and still do) a buzz of excitement of pure joy stood before an audience ready to communicate. This will always be an inherently two-way communication. I know my own story inside out; I prefer to know yours and then I might help you more effectively. I often get asked if I feel nervous before giving a talk. Never, I love what I do and standing in front of an audience open to learning life-transforming techniques is an amazingly life-affirming experience.
I never work from scripts. I trust when I get up to talk that I will automatically have the words to impart the points I wish to cover; and because of this every event sees me adapting my subject matter once I begin to sense what will work best for this particular audience. As with my writing, I feel my role as a public speaker is to mainly get out of my own way to allow the relevant information to reach my readers and audience through me.
Poetry was an altogether different proposition¬
The prospect of laying myself creatively on the line, publicly sharing my poetry for the first time did lead me to question my sanity more than once as the date of the evening literary festival approached. I felt compelled to go ahead regardless though, if only to walk the talk once again and live the message I have been sharing with others for years about the leaving of our comfort zones.
As I arrived at the venue on the night in question the organiser came to see me backstage and asked me for a favour. Having attended one of my Naturally Stress-Free Events, he already knew how I function in front of an audience and so he asked if I might mentor two nervous first-time performance poets and let them share the stage with me, then they would feel more at ease. He assumed, as a regular on stage I knew what I was doing and equally assumed that I must have performed poetry many times before. All my own concerns forgotten, of course I said YES to his request.
And us three went on stage together that night, standing next to one another at microphones, with me there in the middle lending them an extra sense of security. I introduced us all, performed a poem, then led my new friends through their own performances, each of us taking it in turns to share our creative endeavours. It was brilliant fun and for the hour we had been allotted I believe we managed to entertain our audience. Well they applauded when we reached the end and before that laughed at the right moments, so chances are they enjoyed our poetic tales.
Ironically the organiser did me a great favour that night without knowing it. He placed me straight into a mindset I felt 100% comfortable with. Mentoring others, helping them to find the inner confidence to leave their comfort zones, resulted in me not even considering my own anymore. After all mentoring is my stock-in-trade, it is what I do! My own misgiving completely forgotten, out I went personally feeling like I had been performing poetry for years and that is exactly how everyone perceived me.
Mindset is everything and the apparent limitation of a comfort zone might well turn out to have been a mirage after all, once you and I choose to do something awesome and embrace one of those slightly scary new experiences.
Thought patterns get hard-wired into the neural pathways in our brains. The more we practise something the better we get at doing it. Yet, unfortunately not all these neural pathways work in our own best interests. They become a self-limiting way of life and usually it takes a wake-up call for us to transform away from these patterns and form a new neural pathway or paradigm.
The Third Thought
For most people their thought processes, those inner conversation going on through their conscious minds go something along these lines:
THOUGHT ONE A brilliantly original idea or concept spontaneously appears out of nowhere. Maybe it is there when they awaken one morning; perhaps observing something in passing opens their eyes to a hitherto unseen opportunity or an overheard conversation suddenly inspires them to see the world in an entirely new way. Naturally they feel engaged and excited at this point.
THOUGHT TWO Okay, so next to do something with this amazing inspiration. For a short while their mind works overtime on different positive ways this idea can happen for real. Practically getting from where what at the moment is only the idea, carrying on all the way through to its magnificent realization consumes their attention full-time.
THOUGHT THREE They gradually begin having an inner conversation of limitation. Helping them to find some valid (and poor) excuses for inaction. Next they persuade themselves how it would all be far more sensible to not really have this happen anyway. Their newly formed excuses convincing them that this was all a terrible idea after all. Far better to stay put right there in their safe comfort zone (trapped) because this is always the easier option.
We have all just witnessed a comfort zone in action. Sadly, this mindset single-handedly stops more potential winners from achieving their goals than anything else. How many incredibly pioneering inventions or life changing innovations have been lost to comfort zone self-limitation we will never know.
It bears repeating that repetition creates habits, this fact can be invaluable when opting to move our life forward. The more we do something new the more we lock-it into ourselves and then gradually it becomes second nature to act or think within this new paradigm.
It is precisely the same with those old, entrenched comfort zones – we hold so tightly onto them precisely because we have always thought or done things that way. And yet we have always possessed the freedom to live beyond comfort zones. Effectively by-passing all those inner conversations that we run through our minds, those self-justifying excuses for inaction.
In fact, only possessing the knowledge of the existence of these inner conversations of limitation goes a long way towards reducing their power over us. Through this awareness we can recognise them for what they are when faced with any moments of decision making and choose to buy-out of running those old programmes once and for all.
Loving To Pay Tax
Back in my early days in business a few decades ago, each year I would take myself miserably off to my accountant when it came the designated time to file my annual accounts, and each time for sure I dreaded being informed the amount of tax I found myself burdened with needing to pay that year. It never grew smaller; in my mind it seemed to me I was working hard in my business to fund the tax office and keep all those guys employed. Dave, my accountant would usually shrug his shoulders and remind me to pay my tax before the due date.
One particular year along came that dreaded tax-time again, only for me to discover Dave had promptly taken early retirement due to poor health. I needed to find a new accountant and fast!
A recommendation led me to Amanda; recently having left one the big accountancy firms to set up in practice for herself. Her advert tagline went something along the lines of ‘Innovating New Approaches To Accountancy’. I liked the sound of this and duly made an appointment.
Bringing along my accounts files for Amanda to look over, during the meeting I mentioned my usual grievance about how each year since I started in business I needed to pay more tax and how I felt I was working for the government.
She looked over her glasses across the desk at me. “Dean, I love having to pay more tax each year, this means I must be becoming more successful each year and if I am earning a higher percentage of profits annually then I have to be doing things right. My taxable income increasing year in year out is really what motivates me as I know my turnover is heading in the right direction!”
Okay, this one took a few moments to sink-in. I suppose I must have looked a little shocked as I sat there for at least a minute staring at her and feeling temporarily speechless.
In one short statement Amanda had managed to entirely transform my belief patterns regarding paying tax. Given me a new paradigm.
Before then my mindset and thoughts had been focused entirely on the 35% (or whatever it literally was at the time) of everything I earned needing to be given to the government in tax and increasingly resenting when each year this amount grew. From that moment on I loved paying my tax, especially if it turned out to be significantly higher than the previous tax year. I knew if this happened I must have equally significantly increased my profits that year.
A friend recently stated that if he worked overtime at the weekend he would have to pay 40% in tax on everything he earned. I suggested he would be wiser to look at this as earning 60% more than if he hadn’t done the overtime. Given his grumpy “I suppose so” response I am not sure he is quite ready yet to buy-into my proffered different way of looking at his reality.
How we chose to look at life ensures the experience we will have in that same life.
A comfort zone is very much like an old favourite jacket, it is a little shabby and doesn’t look so cool these days, yet carries on being worn only because it feels comfortable.
Although many of us do for sure initially have every intention of carrying through a plan or working towards fulfilling a long-held goal, unfortunately for the majority it does not quite end up playing out like that. They end up buying into Third Thought excuse making instead…
Excuses Won’t Cut It Anymore
Some hold onto the excuse “it’s just my karma” to validate their reasons for remaining static, they feel this is a good enough reason to stay exactly where they are. To be blunt, this is a poor excuse for inaction.
And my word there are so many more awful personal excuses for inaction!
Proclamations along the lines of:
- “Oh well, you know nobody in my family ever achieved much so I guess I’m just going to accept that I won’t either”
- “I tried further education years ago when I left school as a teenager and when it didn’t work-out I felt like a failure, I’m sure never going to study anything new again”
- “It’s not my fault I wake every day lacking in any energy and motivation, it’s just my genes”
- And then we have the classic “I’m too young, old, short, tall, unqualified, overqualified, beautiful, unattractive, unconventional, shy (delete as appropriate)!”
Every single one of these are frankly garbage excuses to now throw right into the trash where they belong!
Before we leave excuses I absolutely need to share with you this one extra special gem of an excuse that I had said to me a few years ago and in all seriousness “well you know, I would love to stop smoking cigarettes, but I meditated on this and I now know God intends for me to be a smoker”. This woman really felt she had come up with the ultimate validation to keep right on doing things the way she always had. I mean what an excuse! Wow!!!
The Easiest Way To Leave A Comfort Zone
This applies equally if we are afraid of going for promotion, dating, public speaking, visiting the dentist, travelling to another country, ballroom dancing, mountain climbing, spiders, reading a book, getting physically fit, having our own business, further educating ourselves, skiing, writing a CV and any of the thousand and one things which can cause us to break-out into a cold sweat at the prospect of.
Is there something you might have always wondered what it was like to do yet your self-imposed comfort zone limitations seemingly rendered this impossible?
If you live with a phobia think about when you first really experienced it, where in your personal history did you become aware of this reaction? What age were you?
If you have a fear of spiders, as a small child did you witness someone else reacting in fear at the sight of a spider?
Same with a fear of flying, perhaps you once saw photos in a newspaper or saw an incident on television what featured a plane crash? Maybe you even overheard a conversation or documentary questioning the safety of flying.
Since quite early childhood I once possessed an irrational terror of large ships. Even seeing one in a movie or documentary was enough to trigger sheer panic within me. Eventually, as an adult I decided it was time to do some tracing back through my own timeline to find the cause. After recalling when I first felt this way about ships, I realised this all originated from a children’s picture book I had glanced through in year one of school (when five years old!) about Titanic and other shipwrecks. These images became lodged in my subconscious and ‘protected’ me from ever going near a ship, so I didn’t end up sharing the same fate as those people I saw in the child’s picture book. Crazy as this all sounds, for sure my story does mirror those of many others who go through life fearing certain experiences or even objects, with no real knowledge of why this might genuinely be.
Finally, about twenty years ago I chose to undertake a daytrip on the very source of my fear. A large passenger ferry for a day trip to visit France. In quite rough seas as it turned out to be on the day – only to leave myself with no other alternative but to have to repeat the same journey in reverse (in even rougher seas!) coming back home later that day in the evening. This experience sure cured me of that one once and for all!
And you can do the same with anything similar in your own life to mentally tick off another supposedly impossible task completed…
The most effective way to leave any comfort zone is to walk right ahead towards whatever is limiting you. Confront that inner demon. Tweak it on the nose a bit. Face your fear head on; and then actually go ahead and do it!
I can promise you the feeling is incomparable, the boost to self-esteem and confidence is worth all the temporary pain and angst. Better still you have permanently removed another barrier from your life.
To change life for the better quite literally all that is needed is a shift in awareness of what can really be brilliantly possible and then consciously choosing to go out there to make that possibility your reality.
This simple shift in belief about what is possible becomes empoweringly transformational. Overcoming comfort zones places your future directly into your own hands, then any changes you choose are measured and intentionally carried through by YOU!
Do Something Different Each Day
Routine is a killer to ambition. Repeating the same pattern day in day out puts us into a passive mindset of limitation. Doing something different each day rather usefully places us instead there into the empowered mindset of accepting our life can also be different.
Doing something different can seem trivial yet pay incalculable dividends in terms of our adaptability to new situations.
Something different can be as small as:
- Driving past the usual slot here we always park our car, to go and park someplace else on the car park.
- Taking an even slightly different route on the same journey we habitually do every weekday.
- If we always head left out of the door from our place of work to go buy a bagel for lunch, turning right to sample something we have not had before.
- If we constantly wear black, putting on a red top today.
- Reading a book or doing crosswords rather watching television for one evening.
- Going to the opera one mid-weekday or indeed any of the millions of other small variations in our daily routine which lead us into experiencing new unchartered waters.
Getting into the habit of doing something different each day will usefully also make dealing and coping with any unexpectedly stressful situations considerably easier for us.
Committing to even one small change in daily routine ensures our subconscious becomes used to variety, then as we gradually leave behind any limiting discomfort zones, positive change happily becomes our expectation from life.
Does Your Instinct Say It’s Right? Then It Usually Is…
After a decade or so of working successfully in one form or another within the business world, I took time out from my career for an entire year. I learned meditation, travelled to visit ancient sacred sites, built up my library and networked with fascinating people who were also exploring and experimenting with human potential. Having quit my well-paid job I lived off savings, taking the opportunity to explore within both myself and human potential. Some people thought I was mad; I knew I was right!
Avoid clinging on to any situation which is clearly intended to be part of the past. Let it go. Seek pastures new, a different horizon to aim for…
Refining Life Every Day
Constantly push back the boundaries of what we are capable of. Improving ourselves each day in however small a way, refining how we function within our living and working environment is a magnificent way to live. These tiny adjustments every day are outstandingly self-motivating and will send your self-esteem skyrocketing once the results begin to show for you.
As one who has spent years daily looking at how I might do things better, I can tell you not only does this add to our success mindset, but it also always ensures we constantly feel inspired to achieve more.
Even if you ever feel anxious about something you are contemplating doing for the first time, go ahead anyway and jump right in, then learn as you go along. None of us are born experts, this only comes through experience!
Doesn’t matter what this is; however trivial or random it might seem to others or even to us, every single time a small but well-entrenched discomfort zone is overcome it further validates the fact those bigger ones can surely also be taken-on and left in the past…right where they belong.
A significant part of living life as it is meant to be is this willingness to push on regardless of any fear which might well-up inside us, those inner conversations of doubt trying to persuade us to make another poor excuse to stay-put. Carrying right on through without becoming paralysed with procrastination or talking ourselves out of the action.
Rather than being a spectator, choosing to be an active participator in life. Jumping out of that old discomfort zone to confront the mirage of a limitation head on. The compelling sense of inner satisfaction is incomparable. And go through the process once, next time around it is going to be palpably easier. Start small and break down that first comfort trap, then move right on to another.
The only way we can grow is to feel that fear and then take control of over the overwhelming sense of wishing to be someplace else. And then do ourselves the greatest service possible by going right ahead with whatever has always freaked us out to finally do it!
Dean Fraser BSYA (BL) is one of the world’s leading advocates of dowsing as a means of connecting to our own intuition and is also a passionate teacher of meditation and holistic lifestyles – PSYCHIC NEWS. The author’s quest for metaphysical growth has seen him travel across two continents in search of truth, network with fellow seekers of enlightenment and visit sacred sites to attune with their energies – BODYMINDSOUL.COM .
