Leaving Your Comfort Zone is Darn Uncomfortable

(Part 1/3 of Passing Through the Nozzle)

One of my most important jobs as a Coach is to nudge my clients right up against the edge of their Comfort Zone and then help them apply just the right pressure to P-O-P! them through to the other side.

Why would anyone want to leave their Comfort Zone?

Because everything we want, but don’t yet have, is just outside our current Comfort Zone. In other words, we define the Comfort Zone as holding all the behaviours and abundance and people and things that we are comfortable having.

All that we’re comfortable having? We have it… right now.

Which means everything we say we want but don’t yet have, is outside of our Comfort Zone, or else we would already have it.

Interesting?

(slow down, read it again, take a breath. I’ll wait. It’s a really big concept.)

Navigating the edge of a Comfort Zone is a skill, and it’s one that most of us haven’t got much experience with because, to our Unconscious Mind, the edge of our Comfort Zone is like the edge of ancient maps where the monsters lived – it isn’t safe.

Coming up to the edge of our Comfort Zone can be uncomfortable and scary and it’s a big part of my job to hold my client’s hand as we walk through that edge together.

After a while it gets easier – I promise! – but the first few times it is definitely, absolutely, downright uncomfortable to leave your Comfort Zone.

After all, that’s why we call it that – because it’s comfortable to stay in and uncomfortable to leave.

Even if it makes us miserable to be there.

Yup, you heard that right, even if we’re miserable, it’s still comfortable to be in our Comfort Zone.

And what we’ve learned is that, on the other side, instead of being monsters, is actually where we become more of who we are meant to be and grab hold of our dreams.

But getting there takes courage and determination and not everyone makes it through.

I liken this approach through the edge of our Comfort Zone to squeezing through a nozzle:

Science!!!

(and somewhere out there, one of my very favourite clients just fell asleep)

Don’t worry, I’m just messing with you – though, yeah, that is what a nozzle looks like in MY head – thank you Chem Eng!

To keep our brains from melting, here’s a simplified version of flow through a nozzle:

What it basically means is that, as the fluid (or us!) approaches the ‘throat’ or narrow point of the nozzle, the speed increases as the cross-sectional area reduces.

On the other side of the nozzle, the speed and force are much greater.

If it helps, imagine what happens when you put a sprayer on your garden hose.

https://giphy.com/gifs/afvpets-dogs-afv-o7BebTgj44jmw

Very simply: It gets tight and squeeze-y before it gets easy. 😉

What does that feel like energetically in YOUR life and business?

There are five stages:

Stage 1: Before the nozzle (green):

Life is open fields of choice and normalcy. All is well and you may stay here for months or years – or decades! You’re happy and comfortable here even if you start to feel kind of bored or stagnant. You are in your Comfort Zone and, yet, because we’re designed this way, you have the urge for more and better.

Your Desire tells you that what you want is just on the other side of your Comfort Zone and you get a Vision of what is possible. You get excited and move closer to the nozzle and the edge…

… and that’s where the danger and desire and drama and magic all come into play. We’ll complete our journey through the nozzle next Tuesday and, for now, take a breath and imagine where you are right now: are you happily swimming in the green, or are you starting to feel the pull to change?

(find out what happens next in Part 2/3 of Passing Through the Nozzle)

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