Hi! I hope you had a very good week!
Mine was busy working as a driver to my three kids, redesigning my website, fitness classes, walks on the beach, my mother’s visit, business meetings, flying to see my executive clients, and so on. Feel free to write to me about yours. I enjoy getting to know the people in my inner circle.
As promised, I am sharing with you one of the chapters from my new book, The One Minute Coach to Mastering Your Emotions. This is chapter 9, called…
Are You an Expert at Surviving?
Getting off the treadmill of painful patterns, might seem like a logical thing to do, but it is scary. Those patterns are our comfort zone and we learn to live with them and to deal with them, to the point that we often don’t even notice the discomfort and the pain anymore.
Consequently, many people become experts at surviving, but not at finding true happiness.
Too often, we fight to stay afloat, making ends meet, living day-to-day, month-by-month, and year-to-year, basically reliving the same patterns. And even though things get better at times and we can see a glimmer of hope, it is too often false or temporary hope. Without doing the work and making changes within ourselves, we will slip back into the same emotional rut, the same financial struggles, and the same relationship issues.
Things will not change unless we change!
I learned that the only way for us to shift our paradigm, the only way to finally break away from the familiar, unproductive comfort zone that allows us to do little more than survive, is to create enough pain so that the overwhelming fear of change and the is a lot less scary.
Pain vs Pleasure Drives Us
Unfortunately, this is our human nature. Most people fear the unknown and change more than their present status, even if they are unhappy and their lives full of pain.
Why? Because out of the two driving forces that dictate all of our actions – Pain and Pleasure, pain is a much more powerful motivator.
The intelligent thing to do here, is to use this knowledge to our advantage and begin to manipulate ourselves to gather the courage to take the actions we were otherwise too afraid to take. Pain is like fire, we can make it work for us, instead of against us, if we learn its value.
Action Steps:
- Think about a situation in your life that you would like to change. For example, do you feel frustrated with the lack of money to do what you want to do and when?
- Are you disappointed with someone in your life because they do not live up to your expectations? Are you unhappy with the way you look?
- Whatever it is that is causing you emotional discomfort, stop fighting it or pushing it away. Feel it fully. Feel what it would be like if the situation causing these emotions did not change for another five years.
- What about 10 years? What if over time, if left unattended and just pushed to the side, it got worse and worse?
- Experience the pain fully until it hurts so much you are willing to shift your comfort zone and to take action, because the fear of the unknown – of change – however painful that action might seem.
- Remind yourself that nothing and no one can hurt you without your permission and that you deserve better than that situation is offering you at the moment.
To your happiness and wellbeing,
Masha