Stepping Out of Our Comfort Zone and SAYING YES to LIFE
For a long time, there was a way in which my fears kept me in my comfort zone in very important dimensions of my life unbeknownst to me.
I seemed fearless because I was curious about life. I especially enjoyed intellectual pursuits, developing my careers, public speaking and Arts for example, which demanded one steps out of their comfort zones. Additionally, I have travelled extensively around the world, and alone. I trained and worked in many different parts of the world, I have made many friends and I can be very socially motivated. However, what was not so obvious to me was that just although I was open in these dimensions of my life, I remained protected in other key dimensions of my being such as intimacy relationally with myself (my own interiority) and with others. There were barriers internally, unbeknownst to me, which could render me unavailable to connect deeply, to be seen, to receive and share with others more deeply.
What I know experientially today was that I did not know how to be fully present with myself/my inner experiences. This was unconscious in me and manifested itself as me being closed to some experiences in life, including with other human beings.
When we adopt this posture, unbeknownst to us, we are effectively unavailable to ourselves. We are not in the moment, and we are resisting the movement of life and what is presented to us. Emotional input might be too overwhelming, having no language for our own interiority and no practice handling it. Our own thoughts and beliefs might be erroneous, in the way, unexplored, and whatever we carry from our past and our own biochemistry effectively makes us tense and saying ‘No’, unaware that we are doing so, to life, to millions of invitations for connection and therefore to experiencing life with more depth.
I, for example, to the outside world appeared ‘open’ as our society values ‘doers’ and I was very much a doer. However, what travelling and learning about other cultures, especially in East Asia, showed me, was that the white Western and Eastern European society I came from did not, until recently, teach us how to connect with and be with ourselves/our internal world. I did not know what introspection, mindfulness, or reflection were. I was pushed to produce, do more, perform more, and be in the DOING never to be still, quiet and slow down.
The societies I came from also were quite steeped in their ‘narcissistic wounding’, unconscious and not-explored traumas. They tended to ‘give to get’, take from others mostly in the form of demands and expectations and rarely taught humans the values of first listening. I was mostly surrounded by humans who liked to talk – about themselves mostly – and at length – and who gave a lot as a way to avoid themselves and have meaning in their life. They did not seem curious about others. It all revolved around abandonment of self, very much linked to societies of exploitation of others.
For habits to be created, they need to be maintained and repeated over and over, over time, and from a young age. The fact that they weren’t created early on, as is the case with most individuals I support, I too have felt an inner void inside. When we do not know and learn how to connect with ourselves, our thoughts, emotions and all that goes with this, when we attempt to connect with another, we abandon ourselves to that other. This is what we have learnt – to either take care of others or take from others, craving like a very young child the positive reflections we might elicit in these (poor) others we have selected to fulfil all our needs and meet hundreds of expectations This is also known as ‘co-dependency’.
“Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart!” Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
There is good news of course and that is that we can change. Even if we are neurodivergent or have other difficulties in our life.
Societal Relationship Templates and Expectations
Like many people, due to my societal and familial conditioning, I held certain ‘relationship templates’ in my head in line with societal templates. This looked like all sorts of beliefs and expectations which created the sort of life choices I ended up making for myself.
These looked like for intimate relationships: ‘If that person loves me then that person should want to live with me, spend all their time with me, move in with me etc. etc. XXXX’, or ‘Being a real woman means I need to get married and bear my own children’. The career template looked like: ‘Being successful means climbing up the hierarchy or corporate ladder or get a Doctorate and living in capital cities’ for example. These three templates are quite common in our society as they confuse and conflate ‘love’ which is not a feeling but a state of being with a societal template for doing relationship. In terms of beingness it conflates success from a capitalistic model with the philosophical subjective meaning of happiness from an existential perspective which has nothing to do with externals. Many individuals, including me, willingly (although unconsciously) old unquestioned templates going back millennia which today might no longer be fit for purpose nor loving to ourselves and others.
What I discovered through my studies and practice was that our beliefs and conditioning, which are mostly inherited and rarely questioned, turn us very much into organic computers repeating ideas, concepts and templates for experiencing and being in life that are not our own. This posture prevents us from knowing ourselves, being curious with ourselves, staying present with ourselves and observant to what arises in the present moment, moment by moment. From that open place then we can make new decisions for ourselves in line with our values.
Even with my two decades of meditation and my training, as long as I was within dysfunctional societal and other systems it was not possible to slow down enough to focus my energy and realise all the ways I was disconnected to life.
How to start ‘SAYING YES TO LIFE’
Slow down:
1000 invitations to connect: each present moment offers us a thousand invitations to connect with life, with ourselves and others. To be able to do that we need to slow down enough to perceive the thousands of invitations presenting themselves to us and remain curious.
Bring more awareness:
to your thoughts, actions, deeds, what you say. Buddhist philosophy defines hatred as resisting or not being open to what is, ‘hatred of the present moment’.
Know Thyself:
Get to Know yourself, Explore and give voice to your ‘very good reasons’ why you might be closed up, stay in your comfort zone. It can be due to temperament or unexplored suffering, belief patterns, differences in neurodevelopment ‘wiring’, lack of awareness, never learnt way to introspect or all of these or some of these overlapping.
Choose NOW:
Choose to stay present, keeping an observant eye inward and asking yourself ‘who’s in charge? Is it my wounded defended ego, or the ‘observant self’ will help you find your truth? As the brilliant existential psychologist Viktor Frankl discovered in the midst of horrors of concentration camp, we do have a few seconds before reacting. We don’t have to make decisions from our ego. We can stay with the ‘seer’ and learn to trust ourselves and our wisdom.
Bringing more slow time, consciousness and curiosity to our own internal landscape and to what is arising in and around you, being in the moment will start to reverse this unconscious and habitual pattern of being in life.
When you say, ‘yes’ to you, you say ‘yes to life’, keeping your heart open, you might go with the flow from an open heart and be surprised by how benevolent the world and others are.
Life is here to be lived in joy, respect and connectedness with all that is.