While growing up, we learn things about the world, things that help shape who and what we are. We have all these different experiences with relationships and environments and based on those experiences we make decisions about what is and is not possible, about what can and cannot be done.
After getting burned a few times by life, our lives begin to fall into a certain pattern. A general routine gets formed and from that point on we pretty much blindly follow the pattern day in and day out for the rest of our lives.
That pattern is called our comfort zone and it is one of the biggest stumbling blocks there is to our growth as a person. It is called our comfort zone, even thought it is not necessarily a place we enjoy being, because it is what we are used to. It is familiar, comfortable. In our comfort zone life still happens and things are somewhat random, just in a way that we have control of.
Our comfort zone includes all of our beliefs, traditions and habits. Once we learn something new and accept it into our way of being, it becomes part of our comfort zone. And sadly once that happens our brains pretty much turn off and we live on auto-pilot. We don't think about that thing anymore. It just is.
The problem with this way of being is, life is dynamic. Things are constantly changing. What was true one minute may not be in another. In order to be as successful as we possibly can, in order to get as much out of life as possible, we need to constantly be testing our boundaries, checking for new ideas and testing to see whether old ones are still valid. There is nothing wrong with tradition or routine. What is wrong is blindly following without making sure that what was true once is true still.
We make snap decisions based on environment and negative reinforcement all the time that are true in that moment or that circumstance but not true overall in life. And it hurts us, in ways that we often do not realize.
For example after a string of relationship rejections we might decide that there is nobody out there looking for someone like us. The truth was that those particular people were not looking for someone like us. But we decide to give up on being in a relationship based on those examples. There are billions of people on this planet. Deciding after ten, a few hundred, or even a few thousand rejections that there is no one out there for us is just stupid.
An experiment was done where a group of college students were assembled in a room. They were told they could leave whenever they liked. Immediately one of them tested the door and found it locked.
A few minutes later loud unpleasant music began to play. This was followed up by the lights flickering on and off intermittently. Then gradually all kinds of horrifying discordant sounds were added.
Several hours later all of the students were still sitting there in the room. After the experiment was over they found out that the door had only been locked for the first five minutes.
The one student had checked the door, found it locked and shared that information with everyone else who from that time on just accepted the "fact" that they were locked in even though it wasn't true.
They all suffered for hours just because of one thing that they made part of their comfort zone.
You might say if you were in that circumstance you would make a different choice, and perhaps you would, but we all make thousands of similar blunders throughout our lifetime.
How can this be avoided though? Get out of your comfort zone. Test the boundaries.Don't accept anything as permanently true. There is no need to be belligerent or mean spirited, but always be inquisitive. Find out why a thing is the way that it is, how long it's been that way and whether or not it has ever been different.
Be open to change. Either because things actually have changed or because new information causes you to find that things you thought were true were not.
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