Tag: fear

Comfort zones

Posted on by philipdodson

The path of least resistance is where we often naturally gravitate to, especially, if we are not motivated in life. Honestly, writing our daily to do lists and we start off with heaps of enthusiasm of all the great things that we are going to achieve that day.

Then you start, often though, you will pick an easy task on the list, avoiding the one you deep down know that you should be doing, but it’s hard and often requires you to step out of our comfort zones.

Comfort zones are an interesting thing and it is often talked about by coaches and guru’s. ‘You got to get out of your comfort zone’. That implies that you need to step in to somewhere which is going to make you feel uncomfortable.

I’m not sure that is the best sales pitch that I’ve heard, to be honest, to get you to do something, especially something that you are already putting off, as you think it will be hard.

Imagine if DFS advertised ‘ditch your comfortable sofa and grab one of our range of uncomfortable couches’ or ‘feel the pain of our latest armchairs’. Not sure that would be a real winner of a campaign to be honest.

There is almost this ‘macho’ tag attached to doing things, you have to be ‘tough’ to run a business, you need ‘big balls’ and so on.

I think that this kind of thinking actually has a negative effect on doing stuff and often puts people off stepping out of their ‘comfort zones’.

I actually think that the ‘zone’ of doing the same old, same old and just floating along through life doing the familiar is actually mis-named to be honest.

As the reality is, most of the people in this supposed ‘comfort zone’, aren’t these happy contented people living a familiar and ‘comfy’ life of inertia. They are in fact living a life full of worries, anxiety, stress, fears, feelings of being trapped, inadequacy and in fact they are very uncomfortable.

The phrase should be free yourself from your discomfort zone and step into a new life.

Actually, this whole notion of ‘comfortable’ sounds fairly mediocre to be honest too. Who wants to be settling for comfort, we actually want to be happy.

So, perhaps it could be free yourself from your discomfort zone and create a life of happiness.

Now that sounds a better sales pitch to be honest.

Life for a good deal of people is that discomfort zone and it is because they fear that breaking free from their mis-named ‘comfort zone’, it is this giant leap, as you’ve ‘GOT TO GET OUT OF IT’. But by leaving what they have, that’s described as ‘comfort’ implies that they are going to somewhere less comfortable.

Negative and fear based messages are often how we ‘drive’ people to do things. This is wrong and it can easily be changed too.

We could encourage people to be more open, encourage people that it is OK to talk about how we really feel. We can start to make progress on getting people to see change as thing that will bring them a happier life.

Not to have to frighten them to go into this ‘discomfort zone’ to get them to change.

Imagine a game

Posted on by philipdodson

Imagine if you could get a game, but not a game you’ve bought online or downloaded on to your PS4.

Imagine it was a game that had no pre-destined outcome, it had no rules, no minimum or maximum numbers of players. The map wasn’t restricted to a certian size, the game was truly without any pre-set limits.

From the outset, you could design the game play, choose the characters, where the journey went, what places to go, things to build and so on. You could decide how every part of it went.

However, like any good game, there would have to be consequences or outcomes, that would occur as a result of your choices. Otherwise, there would be no point.

The fact is, we all have this game already, not quiet from birth, as we can’t make all our own choices, a number are made for us. It is our lives.

You only have the one life, unlike other games, where you can start again from the beginning or the the last save. But you set the rules and you decide everything.

What would we all do differently, if we saw our lives as a complete blank canvas, that we could freely create our own outcome on?

If we all could see life as a game, we’d all be less fearful, we’d end up with less regrets and we’d more than likely do the thing that makes us happy.

So what’s stopping us?