Are you aware of your Comfort zones and how they may be impacting negatively upon you? I certainly wasn’t until I listened to a Getting Things Done podcast titled Making Change Stick. It seems that often, despite our best intentions, it is our comfort zones which draw us away from achievement and hold us where we don’t want to be.
We all have set points of comfort and are destined to return to them time and time again. Most of the time we aren’t even aware what is going on—precisely because we are comfortable where we are. The easiest way to explain this is through some examples.
Do you know how many coffee cups have to be lying on the sink before you wash them? Is it 1–2, 5 or all of them? This is your personal comfort zone, or in this case the number of unwashed coffee cups you feel comfortable with. Let’s say your number is five, that is, you will not wash any coffee cups until there are five sitting on the sink. Throughout the day you will continue to drink coffee and stack up cups until the magic number plus one is reached. Only then will you experience a gnawing feeling that something needs to be done. Moments later, despite whatever else is calling for your attention the cups are washed. In extreme cases, let’s say there are eight cups, you may only have time to wash three of them to feel comfortable again.
This simple example highlights some very important points:
- People with different comfort levels are likely to clash without knowing why. If your coffee cup level is five and mine is one, then it is likely I will be forever washing your dishes, or become angry with you for not doing so. Neither of us is right or wrong (I’m unaware of any scientific studies on the optimal number of cups to leave lying around) in this matter but the discordance between our comfort zones can cause conflict.
- You will return to your comfort zone. This is a point of balance for you. It feels right. Too few cups and you’ll allow them to build up. Too many and you’ll wash them (you may have a secondary zone which says all dishes have to be washed once a week which gets you to zero now and then). If your bank balance is typically at 750–$1,250. When too low you will automatically find ways to save that were previously unseen to you and if too high you will find urgent needs to own items you previously couldn’t afford.
- When we are uncomfortable we take action. Have you ever gone on holiday and forgot your toiletries? Do you find you’ll move heaven and earth to get a toothbrush as soon as you can? If sufficiently uncomfortable we take action. Of course, if we are not uncomfortable, we can do nothing.
When dealing with motivation, the second point is important because it explains why we get held where we are despite our best efforts i.e., we self-sabotage, and shows the way forward. To move into a new level of comfort you must reset your comfort zone. You must become uncomfortable with something which is comfortable now (point three above).
Before moving on, here is a list of some of the areas in which you may be
comfortable now:
- My bank balance
- My credit card balance
- The people I associate with
- My work situation
- The number of emails in my in-box
- The height of paper in my in-tray
- The partially flat tyre on my car
- The amount of fuel in my car’s fuel tank (I’ll fill my wife’s car when the needle shows empty. She fills it much later than that because she knows it’s possible)
- The warmth of your bed
- How many bills you have unpaid
As I started listing my negative comfort zones (those working against me) I found
that I was distinctly uncomfortable with what I had become comfortable with! So I
began the necessary conversations to reset my comfort zones to something
which works better. The core way of doing this is via Affirmations.
Example of using affirmations
Here’s an example. Joe has a credit card balance of $20,678 which costs him a significant amount of interest each month. His bank loves it but for Joe it’s just wasted money which prevents him from achieving his goal of flying around the world business class. Despite that, Joe’s card has been maxed out for so long that he has become comfortable with it. As soon as he gets ahead he ‘somehow’ finds an urgent reason to max it out again. Several times in the past Joe has decided once-and-for-all to reduce his balance to zero. It’s never happened.
He decides this time to try an affirmation and affirms, “I have a zero credit card balance”. This fails also because each time he reads it the little devil sitting on his shoulder says, “Rubbish. It’s $20,000 and always will be”, effectively negating the affirmation. Learning from this Joe tries something different and affirms, “Because I have a zero credit card balance I am able to fly around the world business class”.
Something strange happens and Joe’s subconscious says, “Really? You have a zero credit card balance? How did that happen? It must have been because you had the strength to avoid additional purchases” and all of a sudden Joe has the strength he needs. He’ll quickly become uncomfortable with his previous comfort zone and work subconsciously towards having a zero credit card balance.
Try listing those comfort zones which work against you. If you’re like me you’ll find that knowledge distinctly uncomfortable. Develop an affirmation for each and share your results.