MKE Week 22 ~ Lesson from the Comfort Zone

The comfort zone is by definition a territory one feels safe in. “Been there, done that” like the expression says! Whether we disliked being in a certain situation or loved it, maybe even were challenged by it when encountered for the first time, we got it now! Well this zone can and will be challenged from time to time as life happens, willingly or not. And then we are faced with a choice: how we are going to handle, react to the situation that pushes us out of our comfort zone.

Confronted to life situations out of our comfort zone, different emotions can come up that will affect our response. Some can be completely empowering like the emotion of excitement, while others can be destructive, desempowering like Fear – Guilt – Anger – Hurt feelings – Unworthiness. Some of these emotions like fear were originally designed to protect our ancestors survival -like when they had to run away from a tiger or a dinosaur!- but most of them, if not all for a lot of nowadays situations, are made up! I mean by that created by our minds or were planted in our subconscious by authority figures so early on that we think the perceived risk or hurt are real!

One of this week’s focus was on how to shift the effect of these desempowering responses and not letting them use us but instead us using them to our advantage! So let’s start!

Fear: in situations of fear, there is an enormous amount of energy used toward focus and concentration. Instead of wasting these two strong energies on the object of the fear, the suggestion is to redirect them toward an empowering thought/action that uses these same two activities of the mind. With such powerful energy, success is guarantied!
Hurt feelings: instead of focusing on the pain caused, who/what caused of the pain, why … the suggestion is to redirect our thoughts on the fact that having this emotion demonstrates we care.
Anger: again instead of wasting this strong, powerful source of energy, the suggestion is to redirect it toward doing or changing because that’s the energy anger carries.
Guilt: being on one end defined as self-directed anger, we are dealing again with energy to do and change. On the other end guilt reveals with honestly what we are afraid of and that we know what to do. The suggestion is to use it as our internal compass and take the action(s) we know we are supposed to do.
Unworthiness: this emotions again viewed from another angle keeps us on track, or reminds us we are not on track or not doing our best or not accepting our Greatness. Useful, isn’t it?

We simply applied to these negative emotions one of the seven laws of the mind called the law of Substitution. It takes practice of course to manage to change our old thinking most of us (I was one) believe are immutable. But this shows us that knowing this law, nothing has ultimately the power to define us but ourselves.