Why You Must Dare To Escape Your Comfort Zone

Lately, I have found myself at a fork in the road.  In truth, I've been here for some time, staring blankly down each path that lies before me, attempting to figure out which is the right one, agonising over which option is most suitable, and utterly unable to decide which is the path that I should take.  Yet, no matter how hard I stared, trying in vain to see through the darkness that obscures each of these futures, I have been unable to fathom the direction in which I need to go.  For some time, I have reasoned with myself that it has been because I was unsure, seeing equal merit in each one, knowing that they all held the promise of the future.  That was until today, when a sudden moment of clarity and insight dawned upon me.  The reason I have not moved forward from the place where I am is because of one reason only: I am afraid.

You see, my life has become far too comfortable.  Take now, this moment for example.  It's 6:04am, I'm sitting up in bed, daylight from an already risen sun streaming in through the window, I'm listening to the early morning calls of the exotic birds drifting in from outside, I've got a cup of freshly brewed Costa Rican coffee sitting on the bedside table next to me, my laptop sits on my lap as I type this blog post, and in another browser tab, I'm following the early football kick-off in the Premier League on the BBC sport website from back in England.  Later on, around 9am, I'll take a leisurely bike ride the mile or so down to work, where I'll spend most of the day sitting down at the hotel, chatting, surfing the web, maybe take a swim in the pool or ocean, and generally not do very much, since it's low season here, and there are not many guests around.  This is not exactly a taxing life.  Sure, when work gets busy, it can be full-on, long, physically and mentally demanding and tiring days, but the balance of that is the couple of hours or more I get to spend under the ocean, in my absolute element.  This is perhaps the life of which I always dreamed.

And that is the problem right there.  It is the life that I have always wanted.  I attained my dream, so I should be happy, because that is what I tell everyone else, that the path to true happiness lies in seeking out and attaining your dreams.  Am I now advocating that everything I spoke of before, that everything in which I have believed and gambled on, was nothing other than a falsehood, one of life's lies?  I have been happy.  Very happy. I still am.  I have no need to change where I am or what I am doing.  Diving under the ocean here, with a tank of air strapped to my back, my only means of survival, gives me the utmost pleasure.  Simply stated: I love it.  The vast array of life, from the smallest nudibranch to the graceful ease of a manta ray, the seasonal changes, the unpredictability of the ocean conditions, the chance to see some of the most incredible sights, these are the reasons why I love it.  My dream has been fulfilled.  It's time for a new one.

I have learned that I cannot stay still.  At first, I believed that the cause of my constant need for change was a lack of commitment to any one thing.  I tended to view this in a negative way, as if there was something wrong with me, that I had a phobia of commitment.  What I came to realise was that my heart has been ever urging me on, never letting me settle, driving me forward in search of each new adventure.  My heart is a wild beast and it is hard to tame.  And like all wild beasts, I believe that their rightful place is being free, to wander wherever their will takes them.  There are many things that I want to achieve in this life, many places that I wish to visit, many things that I wish to experience.  I have always known it.  As a young boy, I had a strong urge for adventure, that urge exists in my heart still.  I have to grow and learn, my heart demands it of me.  My whole life has been a series of progressions, of learning experiences, academically as well as psychologically.  I have to continue to do this, until my heart tells me it is time to stop, that at long last, we have found our home.

This is why I find myself at the fork in my path.  I have been looking for something new.  To step away from the path that I am on, to change my direction once more.  But I have felt a great reluctance to change.  At first, I firmly believed it was because none of my options were the right ones for me.  Good options, but not quite right.  Being heartstrong means that I have to feel it in my heart, or I am just nor there.  I could feel none of my options in my heart, and so I knew that I needed to wait a little longer and the right choice would present itself to me at the right moment.  And it did.  I wrote of my moment of epiphany last week in my post, Knowing The Path.  Yet, even after experiencing this moment, there was something that held me back and that confused me.  After the euphoria of my epiphany came some moments of doubt.  Was this truly right for me?

I began to think that the answer was no.  That the choice to go and travel again was not my true path.  Almost, I began to believe this to be my truth, that is, until I had to make the jump across the border to Nicaragua this past week, to renew by tourist visa for Costa Rica.  In the process of travelling on public buses, of watching life unfold before me, of seeing exotic places, of being in some place different, of needing to push myself to know which bus to take and when, walking across the no mans land between neighbouring countries.  All of these things fired up my desire for travel.  Just a moment ago, as I was typing an earlier paragraph, a picture came floating into my mind of a far off distant shore, and in that moment, my heart leapt with a great sense of joy.  I know that it is what I wish to do.

Even though I feel the truth of it in my heart, I am afraid.  You see, I like my life, I like being in Costa Rica, I like having the chance of meeting with a manta ray or a huge school of devil rays.  I like my fully furnished apartment which contains everything that I need.  I like my landlord and next door neighbour, with his super cute, little two year old daughter and his crazy dog called Manny.  I like that I can go into the grocery store and be greeted by the people that work there, because they know me.  I like that I can cycle down the road and see people who wave at me, cars that hoot to acknowledge me, as I wave back.  I like that I can pop down to the bakery, just one minute away and buy freshly baked bread for my lunch.  I understand how life works around here and I like that.  I feel safe and I feel secure in this existence.  I could stay and perhaps I would be content.  Perhaps I might be.  Why risk change and a voyage into the unknown?

I believe that it is this fear of change that prevents many people from achieving their true dreams.  As humans, we enjoy comfort and security.  After achieving the necessities of life - air, water, food, shelter - security and comfort are next.  After all, we have it drilled into us from our earliest days that we must work hard, so we can take out a mortgage to buy a house, so that we can save for our retirement, save for our medical insurance, we must surround ourselves with the trappings of modern life, with possessions that add to our sense of security and comfort.  Unfortunately, the truth is, that we are never as secure as we might believe.  No one is immortal.  No one is immune to illness, disease, or accidents.  No matter how secure you believe your job to be, it is not.  No employee is indispensable.  When a company needs to cut back in order to maintain solvency and profitability, it will do so ruthlessly, without mercy, and the axe can fall on anyone.  I've seen it happen, I've seen first hand how technological advancements affected the workplace.  I was an instigator of those changes, I had a role in affecting the lives of others in a negative way.  It always left a sour taste in my mouth.     

We cling on to all that we have attained because it provides us with a sense of security.  It is the attainment of that security that causes us to sacrifice the dreams of our heart, to forsake the true path in life, the one that would provide us with the greatest sense of happiness and joy.  In this, I am no different.  I too feel the pull of that voice that urges security.  It is a deeply rooted, primeval urge to create security in your life.  But there is a stronger voice that beats inside of me.  The voice of my heart.

My heart rules me.  Its voice is so strong to me, that I cannot avoid its urges.  I must forsake my comfortable life if I wish to follow its call.  My fear of change almost paralysed me.  It almost held me tightly in its grip, telling me that here, in the life I lead now, I am happy and that I possess all that I need.  My heart never ceased its constant reassurances.  My heart knew that it needed to wait only for the right time, when I stood in a moment of silence, to act, and it did.  These other paths that I might take, perhaps I will come back to them on a different day.  Perhaps then, they will be the right paths for me, paths that my heart urges me to pursue.  Until that day, I must follow my heart along our present course.  And that is a course that leads me away from my comfort and security and into the unknown.

If I do not risk change, then I will never grow.  Life is a learning process, I see it as the process of evolving the soul.  Change allows us to learn and to grow.  Taking yourself outside of your comfort zone demonstrates just how much you are capable of, how much we are all capable of, and that always comes as a surprise, it is so much more than you can possibly imagine.  If I stay here on this path, I might be happy, I might enjoy my comfort and security, but I know there will come a time when I will have missed my opportunity of discovery, of growth and of learning.  And rather than the fear of losing my comfort and security, that is my greatest fear in this life.  That is why I must continue to live the life that I do, until the moment when I finally discover my home in another soul.  Perhaps finally then, I will be able to rest.  But I don't think so.  Perhaps I can sum it all up best with the words of Lord Alfred Tennyson:-

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

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Beginning Is Everything

It is February 1999 and I'm sitting beside a campfire with a colleague from the local office, we're in a game reserve, a couple of hours drive outside of Johannesburg, South Africa.  It's my first visit to South Africa, I've been here only a few days, and I barely know Sergio, yet here I am, knowing that there is something important, something significant about this weekend.  Perhaps that is only the excitement I feel of embarking upon this little adventure, the kind of adventure of which I had only ever dared to dream.  Perhaps it is the calming affect of the flames and the twinkling lights of the sky above me, but as our conversation turns to matters of life, despite our knowing each other only for a very short time, I feel completely at ease.  A moment arrives and Sergio asks me what it is that I really would like to do with my life, what are my dreams?

As I sit there, staring into the flames, my mind becomes blank.  There is nothing, only a vast emptiness, static through the radio.  I shuffle uncomfortably in my seat, knowing that I should be able to say something, to be able to elucidate a response, but I cannot.  "I don't know", I mutter it, feeling a sense of embarrassment that I cannot articulate any deep seated passions in life, that I don't have any clear vision of my future.  Sergio surprised me then.  Most other people would probably drop the topic, let it go and move on to a subject in which we could both actively engage, but he did not.  Instead, he said something that I was not expecting.  "Yes, you do", he said.

Three simple, one syllable words, that were to change my life forever.  Sergio continued to explain to me that I did know what it was that I wanted, only I had locked it away deeply inside.  "Everyone has something that they wish to do, something that they wish to be", he told me, "Everyone has a true purpose".  Try as I might, that evening, I was unable to find it inside of me.  I knew there were elements of things I enjoyed but these were incoherent, they were pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that I saw no way of slotting together.  I had always loved the outdoors and nature.  Each winter I longed for the onset of spring, knowing that this was to usher in the months of summer, and summer meant I could spend time at the beach and in the sea.  I loved to feast my eyes on mountains, rivers, valleys, hills, trees, flowers, grass, wild animals and birds, all of nature, but these alone were not anything that I could do, they were not a plan for the future, they did not constitute a life that I could lead.  Although I had told Sergio that I did not know, I did know somewhere deep inside, that it had something to do with all of these elements, but I feared that to say as much, meant that I would look a little foolish in front of a colleague, and so I remained silent and kept this to myself.

From this time on, I began to give thought to what it was that I really wanted to do in my life.  These thoughts would come and go, and it would take several more years, many different people, many different places, and a single book, before I was to make my own discovery.  But the seed had been truly planted and from this moment on, I had begun to awaken to the possibilities, I was becoming open to life.  I knew back then that there was a desire inside of me to do something different with my life, something that had greater meaning for me.  How then, was I ever going to unlock it and give it the wings that it needed to fly free, if I could not articulate it for myself?  And if I could not articulate it, how was I ever going to be able to bring it to fruition?

I think this is true for many of us.  We have a very clear idea of what it is that we do not want to do in life and we find it easy to say what those things are.  However, when it comes to saying what it is that we do want, we find it incredibly difficult to describe what that is.  I have asked others the same question that Sergio asked me that evening, and I have received similar responses.  People tell me that they do not know what it is that they want, that they know they want to make a change in their life, but they cannot say for sure what that change involves, only that they feel the need to make it.  I hear their words and they echo back through time to my own past.  Having experienced and learned all that I have during my own journey, I know that somewhere deep inside, every single one of us has our own particular answer.  That answer is the truth for your life, it is your one true path.  Discovering it, will allow you to unlock the light that lives inside of you.  So, why is it easier to say what we do not want, but not so easy to describe to someone that which we do want?

I believe that it is primarily out of a sense of fear.  Fear of change, fear of the unknown, fear of losing your comfort and security, fear of what people will say, fear of what comes after, fear of failure.  There is one other fear: the fear that if you are able to visualise clearly what it is that you want to do, then you no longer have an excuse for not doing it, and if that were to happen, you would live with a constant sense of regret.  All of the time that I could not articulate my own vision and dream, I could not make a start, since there was nothing that I could grasp and work on.  It was like trying to hold on to mist.  In not being able to say what my dream was, I gave myself the ultimate excuse for not beginning, for not doing it.  I know that I used to look at other people, all of whom seemed to have such a clear vision for their lives, and I would feel a sense of inadequacy.  I know that there was a part of me that felt that I was not worthy of achieving my dreams, that I was undeserving of finding my truth, and because of this, I did not believe that I was worthy of making a start.

How did I overcome all these fears?  I simply began.  I think I always knew that I would begin, I waited only for the right moment and the right set of circumstances.  In truth, I didn't just wait, I actively looked for them, I wanted them to come to me, I wanted an excuse to quit my old life and begin the new.  And they did come to me.  When they did, I seized upon them and I made it happen.  I took my first step towards changing my life from the one that I had, to the one that I wanted.  I took that step without really knowing what awaited me down the path.  I took that first step full of fear and trepidation for what lay ahead.  I walked into the unknown and the moment that I did, it was no longer the unknown, it was no longer the fearsome darkness, instead, it became my life.

Even though I began my journey, I still had no true idea of what it was that I was going to do, where it was going to lead me.  I think that was the point though.  My own dream started out as a need for travel, travel that was unhindered by time or any other commitments.  What I did was to give myself the opportunity to make discoveries about life and about myself.  Along the way, I found what it was that I had been seeking, I found the thing that I had never been able to articulate to anyone before.  I discovered the world under the ocean, and from that moment on, my life changed and I began to become the real me, the person I had always born to be.  If I had not begun, I could never have made this discovery.  I would never know it and everything that has happened since would not exist.  Isn't that an interesting thought?

So, you may be sitting there, saying to yourself that I was lucky, that I had good fortune and yes, this is true.  But that would never have come my way if I had not begun, if I had not taken a chance on life.  You may be sitting there telling yourself that you still do not know what it is that you want, that you cannot visualise your own dream.  To you I say this: Open your heart.  That is where the answer lies.  No matter how ridiculous your idea may seem to you, nor how impractical, foolish or silly, if it comes from your heart, then it is your own truth.  It is what you must do.  If you feel afraid to start, consider how you are going to feel knowing that out there is your dream just waiting for you to find it.  I will leave this post with just one word of advice for you: begin.  You see, beginning really is everything.

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