How to move away from the comfort zone, and into the learning zone?

About Life, work & growth: Conversations between Ezilarsan PKP and Sumiit Mathur, founder of Transformational Coaching, Sydney.

Sumiit Mathur: For a generally safe society where members already have the basics of food, shelter, clothing, physical safety and family, the need for being safe and in control at all or most times dominates those who are being driven by the core need of ‘Certainty’.

In the current context, insecurity is another name for fear of loss of control – whether it is related to money, relationships or physical assets.

Read: Overcoming fears and moving ahead in life

For someone driven by core need of Certainty, a conscious approach is to set clear goals across all the key areas of life (#wheeloflife), determine milestones and activities to be done, and clearly define what success would mean in each area. This helps the person to wake up each day and execute a pre-decided task list. The challenges then mostly are around completing all the tasks with available resources and time. Having some contingency or buffer is also very helpful in bolstering the sense of control.

While this approach may not be very effective in case of relationships (as the others involved in the relationships could be driven by a different set of core needs), the certainty and sense of control that this approach provides, significantly reduces the fear that arises from uncertainty.

For others who are driven by the opposite core need of ‘Variety’ i.e. who frequently crave for changes and newer experiences, if fear and insecurity are regular feelings, the cause may not be addressed as easily. Frequently, these strong negative feelings in one or multiple areas of their lives, have roots in past traumatic or tragic events. Seeds of insecurity are often sown in the unconscious mind during the formative years between the ages of zero to seven. This can be diagnosed by a qualified Life coach, who can use techniques based on NLP, Timeline Coaching and Hypnotherapy to help remove such insecurities.

Sumiit Mathur: Our mind’s default preference is the ‘lazy state’. It wants to ensure that we continue living in the comfort zone at all times, because it is a known space that gives a sense of safety and certainty. This however also means that continuing for long within our comfort zone significantly reduces our learning and growth.

To do even the smallest of physical or mental activities that we are not doing regularly within our comfort zone, there has to be a ‘push’ in the form of an inspiration, motivation, fear or pain, and there are various ways to create this push.

To help move out of the comfort zone, people focused on conscious approaches advocate listening to motivational speeches, watching inspirational videos, encourage everyone to set goals, milestones and to strive for something they strongly desire – wealth, health, comforts, networks and even love. Fear and Pain too can temporarily drive people to consciously raise themselves to higher activity levels.

As these extra initiative are not part of our usual lifestyle, there is a constant fight with our mind’s internal resistance. Persistent efforts do eventually support the new modified levels of activity, that over a long period of time form the ‘new comfort zone’, that includes the new learning and growing zone.

However, most people find it challenging to sustain themselves at their increased activity level for long, as their unconscious mind has not fully accepted the new reality as its new ‘usual life’. Since the unconscious mind is far more powerful than the conscious mind, eventually these people fall back into the old comfort zone or ‘old habits’.

NLP and Hypnosis based effective tools and techniques can help in re-programming the unconscious mind to shift one’s core identity to a new reality and levels of self-acceptance. This means that the mind’s internal resistance to new activities is reduced significantly, and the new levels of activity (that support the learning and growing) quickly becomes the default zone. This state then becomes the ‘new comfort zone’ and there is lesser possibility of falling back into old habits, as the unconscious mind is supportive. A modified core identity can also encourage further expansion into newer and higher activity levels as well.