Getting Unstuck and Out of the Comfort Zone

I especially enjoy doing life coaching with adults who are feeling stuck in their lives. Each of us has a comfort zone, and if we stay inside it we can get bored, complacent and unhappy. Challenging yourself to learn a new skill or try to get past your comfort zone in a small way can help keep you feeling alive, fresh and growing.

Are you feeling that your world is too small? Expand your world by volunteering, helping others, or joining a cause that you care about. Many of us get too isolated and feel too alone, and being around positive people who care about the same cause that you do will reduce those feelings. Watch less television or do less time with technology and see what you can create with that space and free time.

Taking a class or learning a new skill at any age is a great way to meet other open-minded people, challenge yourself, and build a sense of community in our often too fragmented world. Even after college, I like to see people learn new things or try new adventures. Taking on new things to learn gives you a growing edge. It makes you more interesting. In an classic life planning book, The Three Boxes of Life, and How to Get Out of Them, the focus includes not making the mistake of doing all your learning at the front end of your life. Brain experts tell us that life-long learning and keeping your mind active is critical to optimum aging.

Setting some goals for the summer or the remainder of this year may also help you get unstuck. What's on your bucket list? Is there a trip you want to plan, a bad habit you want to release, or a way in which you'd like to develop yourself so that at year's end you can look back with satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment? What do you really, really want that you could take some steps toward accomplishing?

Get more active. Set your intentions to get outside every day this summer spending time doing something active you enjoy. We think better, sleep better and feel better when we get exercise daily.

Watch what you say to yourself. Most of us have picked up an internal critic along the way who says mean things to us and contributes to staying stuck. Fire that critic. Write down negative internal chatter and counter it on paper. Consciously upgrading your self-talk makes a huge difference. Try to avoid telling yourself you can't, or that you are not good/strong/attractive/disciplined/brave enough.

Don't let fear run the show. If you really want to go back to college, find a different job, improve your relationship, move, get out of debt, travel, or date and find a partner, make a plan and go for it. Notice the fear any time you do something different, but don't let it stop you. Like Susan Jeffer's book by the same name, feel the fear but do it anyway. This is the only life we know for sure that we get, so don't leave unaddressed dreams on the table.

Take calculated risks. Trying new things or going for goals that you have may make you feel vulnerable, but it's also where the good feelings of growth and accomplishment live. If you don't get some rejection or disappointment, you may not be risking enough or aiming high enough with your goals.

Take baby steps toward a goal that you have. Many people fail to meet their goals or get unstuck because they won't break down their goal into tiny little bites. As I often share with coaching clients, we eat elephants one bite at a time.

Do extreme self-care. Think of how you might be neglecting your health, your spiritual growth, your sleep, or any other area of your self-care, and reverse the trend.

Don't live in a world that's too small. Come out of your comfort zone to keep growing and creating the life you want. Get an accountability partner who hears your dreams and encourages your steps towards them, while you do the same for them. There are lots of people who live life in a sort of automatic pilot, rather than challenge themselves to keep growing. Don't be one of them!

Do One Thing Different

If you keep doing what you've always done, you will keep getting what you've always gotten. In relationships, and in life, sometimes it's important to mix things up a little. Surprising things can happen when you do just one thing different. For example:

If you normally overreact and get defensive with your partner, next time focus on staying calm and listening.

If you always become a couch potato after work in the evening, put on your walking shoes and go for a stroll in your neighborhood.

If your normally withdraw from others when you feel down, try the opposite and reach out to make plans with a friend instead.

These are solution-focused approaches to solving life problems. This approach focuses less on why people do what they do, and more on changing patterns of behavior that don't work anymore. Solution-focused therapy tends to be faster and shorter than traditional psychotherapy.

Bill O'Hanlon is a talented therapist from Santa Fe, New Mexico, and one of the founders of the brief therapy movement. In his classic book, Do One Thing Different (Harper Collins, 2000), O'Hanlon provides a useful, concise, and practical look at ways to get unstuck in your life, and move forward to solving problems.

O'Hanlon has some great tips for using the solution-focused approach to improving your communication and relationships:

1.      Change your standard conflict pattern or style: change the timing, the location, interrupting, speak up more, listen more, etc. Some couples need to work out before arguing. It could also be fun to agree to only argue at Starbucks, or on a walk.

2.      Do a 180: Most couples have a pursuer and a distancer. Change up that pattern. If you're usually the distancer, take a turn at pursuing. If you are usually in pursuit, step back and create a little space.

3.      Notice the other person (your partner, your child) doing something right.

4.      Give up vague, blaming, and loaded words. Instead, be specific and ask for the actions or behaviors you would like to see.

5.      Make action requests, not complaints.

6.      Take responsibility for making changes and supporting your partner, close friends, and family members in making changes.

7.      Have some fun blowing up your partner's stereotype of you.

8.      Listen with a compassionate heart.

Solution-focused approaches, like Bill O'Hanlon teaches in Do One Thing Different, give us some clever ways to break old patterns, remember past solutions that worked, shift our attention, and change problems into solutions. Living in a solution-oriented way gets us to collapse the old stories we told ourselves about us and who we are, and rewrite them.

Why not do something different this week?

Creating A Vision Board

If you are up for a challenge or feeling a little bored or stuck in your life, you may want to try making a vision board for your life. It only requires a piece of poster board or art paper and some markers. This is a fun tool for getting you thinking creatively again about your life, your activities, and keeping yourself challenged and growing.

I had heard of this idea years ago, but only in the past few months as a friend shared that pretty much everything she had put on her vision board a year ago has actually manifested, did I get in gear and make one up for myself. It's a fun project that can be added to over several weeks, and may cause you to think more in daily life about what you really want to create in your life now. It's powerful, and motivating.

If it's an inside job for each person to develop themselves, become multi-dimensional, and keep yourself thriving and interesting, then we need ways to visualize the life we want. Too often, people drift through daily life, and don't set personal goals for how they wish to develop themselves over the next year.

Having a blank piece of art board and hanging it somewhere prominent in your bedroom, bathroom, or front of your closet where you will see it each day is a great way to keep yourself on track and motivated. How will your actions today help you step further toward your goals?

You don't have to draw well to do this project. There are no grades! It's just for your own use. Several of my patients have also added pictures from magazines.

Think about the fact that we all live in a box. We can grow personally by taking steps out of our comfort zone in many different directions. It will make you feel more alive, inspired and energized!

Here are some ideas to get you thinking:

Where would you most like to travel to this next year? Why don't you start to research, budget, and plan it? If not now, when?

Would you like to learn a new sport or skill? Take a class to learn something you haven't ever had time to study? Find out where you can start. Learning something new makes you really feel that you are pushing your edges.

What positive change would you like to see in your body or physical health? (Put it on the vision board like it as already happened. seeing your goal daily in this area may help encourage you to take positive steps today towards your goal for your physical health.)

Do you have a relationship goal? Would you like to make your marriage more fun or closer? Add a few more friends? Start dating? Become a better parent? Develop your patience or ability to communicate well about difficult things? Become more assertive? A good therapist can get you headed in the right direction in any of these relational areas in a couple of sessions, and give you suggestions of ways to move ahead in your personal life.

What is your work goal? Would you like to develop your work skills further, or get additional skills? If you are not excited about work, consider meeting with a career counselor about getting vocational testing. Finding a new option for your work might help you find your passion again. Recent studies show that as we live longer, most of us will have several different careers in our lifetime.
Here are some other ideas for your vision board:

Would you like to set a goal for monthly savings? Pay off your car early? Get rid of debt so you feel lighter?

Develop yourself more by volunteering for a cause you care about?

Identify ways to be more connected to your faith or spirituality?

Perhaps you'd like to improve your living environment? Get rid of the old couch you hate, and find something you love? Redo the backyard? Create a serene office space for yourself at home?

Have you always wanted to get over your fear of public speaking?

Have you always wanted to drive a race car, join a book group, or learn to surf?

Have you always wanted to go back and finish your degree? Why not now?

Would you like to add more color to your wardrobe?

Let yourself have some fun with your vision board. It's an enjoyable and creative way to bring your hidden or repressed dreams and desires into your conscious awareness and help them be realized. You're worth it! This is the only life we know for certain that you get, so get the most out of it and live boldly. It will make you a more developed, vital, and interesting person and partner. A vision board may be a secret weapon for taking back your passion from the repetitiveness of daily life.

Getting Unstuck From Fear

This week, fear seems to be the theme. Getting past fear has come up in several of my sessions with patients who are dealing with life changes. Overcoming fear was part of the conversation I had with a friend while walking together at the beach over the weekend. When it was the topic in a meditation group I participated in earlier this week, I knew I wanted to write some about facing and moving through fear. The intriguing question that kept reoccurring was, "What would you do or be, if you could get beyond your fears?"

What do writers and thinkers tell us about fear? Louise Hay, author of You Can Heal Your Life says it's important to remember that fear is a limitation we place on ourselves. She suggests we release the need for fear and replace it with reminders to ourselves that are positive and loving. We create safety within ourselves. Hay offers us this affirmation," I am a powerful human being! I love and honor myself. All is well and I am safe." (Repeat often!)

Zig Ziglar, the amazing motivational speaker and writer, offers about fear that we should let our faith be bigger than our fears.

Dr.Wayne Dyer, psychologist and writer, says on this topic, "You can transcend any fear and self-rejection that defines your life. Treasure your magnificence and live as beings of light and love."

My favorite book on the topic of letting go of fear is the very useable and readable, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, by Susan Jeffers, Ph.D. I have often recommended this book to people, because it really helps you understand how we can get immobilized in our fears, being so afraid of making a mistake. Jeffers helps us see that if you are gentler with yourself, you can often realize that any movement out of your own small box of life can be good. It can help you get into the next sized box of life. We each need growing edges in our life, or we get bored and stale.

Many successes are a series of choices and course corrections, so try to take the pressure off yourself to have a whole path to a big goal figured out in advance. If you take one small step, the next step may get clearer. Think of driving in a rainstorm, where you can only see so much of the road ahead of you at one time. Jeffers helps us to see that the bottom level fear that most of us have is not being able to handle "it," whatever "it" is that life throws at us.

Another classic I love on the topic of overcoming fear is Gerald Jampolsky, M.D.'s Love Is Letting Go of Fear. This book is elegant in its simplicity, with lovely drawings to illustrate its main points. Jampolsky, a psychiatrist and writer, believes there are only two places people operate from in relationships, and in life: love and fear. It's far better to choose love as your base of operations.

How can you get unstuck from your fears this week which are making your world too small, and your vision of yourself too limited? Try these tips:

1. Write down your own reflections about what you would do, be, or have, if it were not for your fears.
Share your thoughts with someone you trust. Set some baby steps. For example, if you have been thinking of going back to school, your baby step could be looking at the course offerings at the college nearest to your home or office. The baby step should be something that you can do with a small amount of effort within an hour or so.

2. Use the energy invested in the fear to break through it. Let it make you mad that we are all here for a limited time, and that you have not been taking on the task of leading a bigger, more meaningful life in the present.

3. Imagine how you feel when you accomplish one of your desired goals. Take in that proud, warm, alive feeling. Channel it into more baby steps forward. Do, evaluate, adjust, and repeat.

4. Be present in the now. Fear is past and future based. Take what constructive action you can take today towards one goal. Don't use your past guilt or hurt or your fear of the future keep you using those things as an excuse for making your life the best, most beneficial thing you can create.

5. Ask a therapist or someone else you trust for help in getting started. Often in working together collaboratively, we can nudge you ahead in a more efficient way, helping you build insight as to what is getting in your way. Smart people ask for help and don't try to do everything alone.


Fear? Just because it's normal, don't let it limit or harness to create, improve, grow, and be of service to others. Recognize it, and push past it. Your bigger, bolder, better life is waiting for you to step into it!

Getting Unstuck

It is easy to get in a life rut. It is important to take a personal inventory from time to time,and determine if you want to mix things up a little bit, create some new patterns, or add some more fun into your life mix. If you are bored, you need to take some positive action to move towards being a happier and more interesting individual.

When the fall routines and schedules get going, the calender can look like school and work commitments as far out as you can see. Ho hum. We each live in a box, says writer/therapist Susan Jeffers,in her classic book, "Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway".
Jeffers suggests that all of us need to consider moving out of the small box that is our comfort zone, and getting into the next, bigger-sized box.

How do we break out of our current comfort zone? There are lots of unique and personal answers to that. You might take on a personal challenge that requires you to grow or work hard towards a goal. For example, training for a race, or taking a class in something you were always curious about. At mid-life, it is helpful to consider experiences you haven't had, but always wanted to try. Have you ever wanted to learn to dance, or learn another language? You may want to set a plan to travel somewhere you have always been interested in. Making plans is important to mental health. Even if those plans are a year away, or you have to budget carefully to make those plans happen!

Sometimes mixing things up is fun. While I am a proponent of family structure and routines(mealtimes,homework time, bedtime), who says you can't surprise your spouse and meet them on Wednesday for lunch? Think outside the box! Children love to have fun and variety, too. I know several families who keep things fresh for the family by having a theme-night dinner once a week. My own children always liked our 'breakfast for dinner night'. Who says we can't we practice spelling words with shaving cream? Or sidewalk chalk? Or chocolate sauce!

Tackling a fear you have can also move you to your bigger box. Are you afraid of public speaking? One person I know feels so good about having joined Toastmasters this last year, and becoming more confident in communicating in groups. Perhaps this is the year you collapse your story that limits you, and take positive action to deal with a rut of depression, anxiety, addictive behavior. We are not getting any younger! You can even stop and imagine how free you might feel if you gave up your own limited view of what is possible for you. Your respect for yourself will surge.

Truly, the biggest limitations on any of us are the limits we put on ourselves. I am a big believer in the idea that within each of us is a more whole person yearning to be fully developed and expressed. If we cling to our ruts, out of habit or lack of awareness, we miss the wonderful possibilities that life has to offer us. Getting unstuck is an an inside job. Nobody can do it for you. When you are ready to get unstuck, or collapse the story you've been telling yourself about why you can't have a great life, talking with a professional therapist can be just the jumpstart and accountability that you need. Have a great week, and stretch to do something healthy, but out of your comfort zone.