Only when we are willing to get out of our comfort zone do we regain our self-esteem, but above all we begin to really live.
"Your life begins where your comfort zone ends."
Neal Donald Walsch.
That's right, if you want to get over the fear, if you want to wipe out the limiting beliefs, if you want to have theesteem of a superhero, in short, if you want to live your life 100%, you have to learn to get out of your daily comfort zone.
No look André, I pay a fracco of rent to stay in my area and I'm fine there! There must be another way to regain self-esteem from the comfort of the sofa!
I'm not asking you to jump from 39km to get out of your comfort zone. You can make much simpler gestures to regain the helm of your life, but it is essential that you start making these gestures now, without procrastinating.
But before I see what practical strategies you can take to reclaim your self-esteem, I want to make sure you understand the concept of the comfort zone.
The comfort zone and the fence around your lawn
Wikipedia defines the comfort zone:
"As the behavioral state within which a person operates in a condition of absence of stress and anxiety."
Source: Wikipedia.
Seen this way, it would seem foolish to leave one's comfort zone: our life is already stressed out on its own, going to look for them would be just like cojones. For dindirindina I have written entire articles on how to overcome stress!
Yet, in my opinion, there is a better way to explain the concept of the comfort zone.
Imagine your comfort zone as a lawn delimited by a white fence.
You know everything inside the lawn very well, what is beyond the fence is a mystery to you and it does not matter that it can change your life for the better, since you do not know what it is. scares regardless.
If your comfort zone is the size of the park of Versailles, in the end you are not doing too badly even if you stay within its borders. The problem exists when your comfort zone is so small that you start to see the striped sky and the posts of your beautiful white fence become the bars of a prison you can't get out of.
Was I right or not, which view of the comfort zone is more interesting? The problem is therefore not the comfort zone itself, the problem is its size.
Paraphrasing the quote with which I opened this article, we could say that: "your life begins when you expand your comfort zone".
Are you ready to widen your fence? Here are 3 practical strategies that have proved particularly effective for me when I had to expand my "Comfortian possessions" ;-)
1. Nobody gives you self-esteem: you have to earn it
One of the hardest to die limiting beliefs is that of self-esteem gene.
Many believe that being confident is some kind of divine gift or the result of external factors, such as: a rich family behind them, a beautiful appearance, a beautiful girlfriend (and vice versa for young ladies).
In short, either you are born a braggart or you are born a loser. right?! Wrong!
Self-esteem is aability that is learned over time. If some people are safer than others, it is because they have constantly gone out of their comfort zone (an activity that they consider a real game, by the way).
Does this mean you have to pretend to be what you are not? Absolutely not, don't pretend, especially with others: there are already too many inflated balls for my taste. If you have to pretend you have self-esteem, just do it with yourself, applying the "as if" technique.
Remember, you have to earn your self-esteem day after day: by facing your own fears, living situations that make you uncomfortable, but above all by stopping it once and for all procrastinate actions that scare you.
2. Being afraid is natural: facing it is courageous
There is a scene of Three Kings, a late 90s film about the war in the gulf starring George Clooney, which, in my opinion, sums up the link between fear and courage very well:
"Do the things that scare the hell out of you and only then do you find the courage, not before."
Three Kings.
Fear can be a curse or a blessing. The choice is yours.
You can choose to surrender to your fear, let it conquer your lawn by turning you into the slave of your fence, or choose that fear is a test of life and decide to face it by looking it straight in the eye. Here are some practical tips to do this:
- Drop the tile of fear. I've told you in the past about mental domination (not to be confused with domination) and how fear is the most important piece of work. If you drop it, you trigger a ripple effect that may surprise you. But the first gesture is up to you.
- Strike while the iron is hot. Self-esteem to be consolidated must be built day after day; you cannot limit yourself to single acts of courage, you have to face your fears day after day, taking advantage of the adrenaline rush that comes from a fear faced and overcome.
- If you fall back, get up. There are no linear paths when it comes to personal growth: we fall, we often fall. The secret is to get up every single time. When you discover what life is like beyond the fence of your comfort zone, you imprint a memory so powerful in your brain that you can use it whenever you lose your compass.
I wish I could convey to you in words what it feels like to cross the fence, but the truth is that certain sensations can only be experienced by acting.
3. Widen the fence by working on your Inner Game
The outside world does not exist.
If you can prove to me that everything around you is real without a shadow of a doubt, I will award you the Nobel Prize for Physics right now!
I'm not kidding: the world as we perceive it exists exclusively in our mind and it is the result of the processing of nerve signals from our five senses. A group of German physicists has even created a test to understand whether the world around us is the simulation of an artificial intelligence or not: well, the news is not good at all (unless your name is Neo, you work for a software company during the day and hacking at night ;-).
All this physical-hollywodian blowjob to show you that what really matters to have self-esteem is your inner world, the little voice in your little head, in short, what the experts call the Inner Game. Your "Internal Game"Is what decides how good you will be during a public presentation, how you relate to other people, and even whether or not you will be able to win your dream girl. Revolutionizing your Inner Game means revolutionizing your life.
The end is your beginning
Here ends the article, now it's up to you to start taking action.
What do you plan to do this week, today, now?
Do you think about continuing to mow your beautiful lawn (your comfort zone), or do you think instead of climb over that damn fence?
