The sin of our comfort zones.
August 12, 2007 at 1:20 pm | Philosophy | 2 comments
With the vast majority of people, what they do is defined by what is easiest or most comfortable.
To expand, a comfort zone is the zone (unsurprisingly) in which people feel comfortable.
This zone may be emotional, skill based, locational or otherwise.
Outside this zone most people react by doing whatever they can to get back into their comfort zone.
For example, many people stay in the same job for years, decades on end simply because they are comfortable in this role and do not want to go through the ‘stress’ of the unfamiliar new job process.
Equally people as they age become less and less likely to learn new skills. I recall reading a report which said that only around 20% of people over the age of 35 ever learnt any significant new skills, and though I loathe to cite statistics for ‘proof’ (especially unreferenced ones), it tallies with my personal experience.
We are defined by our comfort zones, they cause us to repeat the same daily patterns over and over again year in year out.
Infact, I would go so far as to say that comfort is akin to boredom.
If you are comfortable with a situation for too long, it will manifest itself as boredom.
Comfort is a lack of challenge, how can something that doesn’t challenge you be interesting?
Of course, you may perceive it as being interesting, but it’s actually the same as switching off your brain and coasting on auto pilot.
For an everyday example of this one need only look at television, which to me is virtually the same as sleeping, except with the caveat that you’re not refreshed afterwards!
It’s unreasonable to attempt to vary your day every day, but to at least limit it to cycles of a few months or a year perhaps is more achievable.
If you ask most people if doing the 9-5 every day and going out drinking once a week with a holiday once a year was ‘living’ they’d reply with a resounding no.
You can then ask them what would be living, and they’d reply in line with their interests and fantasies, be it hobnobbing with the rich and famous or going rock climbing and sky diving every day.
But doubtless if you ask the people that do these things day in day out whether they’d regard it as living the majority would reply no, and cite something completely different.
This could easily lead you into dismissing it as ‘The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence’, which is exactly what I’m saying, it is always greener, but the conclusion to draw from this is not the nihilistic ‘Be content with what you have’ that most people feel it is, but more the idea that we should keep hopping the fence to see what shade the grass is on the other side!
Because in life there are an unlimited number of fences, a person can never experiences all the facets of it in a single life time, but oh-so-few people even try it is criminal.
This leads me to my meaning of life, which is that it is to experience.
Experience what? Everything! Be a glutton of experiences, cram into your capacious maw all that life has to offer!
If you find yourself being presented with an opportunity and saying ‘no’ to it, you’re doing it wrong!
If you can find it within yourself to throw yourself into new situations constantly and land on your feet, and once these experiences are said and done draw upon them to deal with the next one, then you can truly say that you’ve lived your life and not coasted along the path of least resistance.
Failure Phobia
August 15, 2007 at 4:59 pm | Philosophy | No comment
Failing is good, or at the very least it’s not bad.
People are often scared of trying something new, learning a new skill or changing something in any way in case they or it fails.
Even if it does fail, it’s useful, every failure is an experience, every experience builds you as a person, gives you something to draw on and learn from.
Experience is the key to life, its very meaning if you haven’t experienced anything you can’t say you have lived, and if you’ve never failed then chances are you haven’t experienced very much.
“If you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough”.
Failure is a part of life, it’s not the failing that determines whether or not you’re competent or intelligent or made of stern stuff, it’s how you handle it.
If you handle failure by crawling into a corner and sobbing (literally or proverbially) then not only have you failed in the task you were trying to accomplish, you’ve failed to grow from the experience.
There are some people in life that seem naturally gifted at a subject or skill, that never lose a game of chess, or can’t be beaten at golf.
These people are the least experienced of all, it’s only through failing and our acceptence and above all appreciation of our failure that we can grow.
I feel I haven’t expressed myself well in this post, my point is to embrace all situations, be they positive or negative and view them as a good thing.
Choose your experiences, they define you.
August 20, 2007 at 5:59 am | Philosophy | No comment
Whoever you talk to, everyone can pretty much agree that people are vastly affected by their experiences, may they cause them to be cynical or naive, angry or calm, people are basically a product of their experiences.
The way our experiences affect us is linked to our subconcious, on a concious level we may be thinking one thing, but often as not we’re feeling another.
Our subconcious, our instinct, our ‘bones’, our heart, they all tell us the sum of our experiences even when we conciously choose to ignore them.
This is why when some-one trys to change themselves, to be mentally stronger, more confident, more outgoing, whatever; unless they make big moves in this direction the change is relatively short lived.
We are our subconciouses, we as humans are not truly concious beasts.
How much time have you spent honestly thinking at a concious level today?
Not a huge percentage I would wager, you leave most of daily life to your subconcious and occasionally it gives you a nudge and says ‘Hey, wake up, there’s a decision to be made!’.
So when we make a decision to change we conciously think “Right, I’m going to act this way now!” which is fine, when we’re thinking.
But as soon as we hand things over to auto-pilot we revert almost instantly to our old ways.
That is why when you make a decision to change, you have to go out and do something BIG, experience something that begeats the kind of personality you want to have.
Want to be mentally stronger? Throw yourself into a conflict!
Want to be more confident? Go out and pretend you’re confident until your subconcious believes it!
By choosing what experiences you throw yourself in to, you can choose who you are.
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