Resistance And Barriers 04:
Your Comfort Zone
You travel along in life making choices as to what you are going to do. You make most of your choices--in fact, you make damn near all of your choices--in an automatic and unconscious manner.
Now, it probably doesn't seem as if you make your choices in an automatic and unconscious manner. Well, of course it doesn't seem that way. It doesn't "seem" at all. It's automatic and unconscious. There isn't any "seeming" going on.
You make almost all of your choices utilizing pre-determined mechanical protocols that, among other things, set up barriers. You make your choices so that you conduct shows up inside these barriers.
I call the largely mechanical standards that govern the manner in which you make choices your "choice-making protocols." We discuss your choice-making protocols at some length at various places in SkyVillage.
The barriers that govern your choice-making protocols are determined by anticipated discomfort. In other words, you have your choice-making protocols set up so that you don't experience discomfort. In so doing, you anticipate discomfort. For the most part, as you go about the business of life, your conduct doesn't stop when you actually experience discomfort. Instead, your conduct stops short of the place where you anticipate that you are going to experience discomfort.
(To make things even more complicated, the way that choice-making protocols operate, anticipated discomfort is itself uncomfortable. Don't worry about this for now. We'll get to it down the road.)
So, let's review what we just covered.
In your life, in mechanical operations that take place automatically and unconsciously, you anticipate discomfort, and you implement choice-making protocols that set up barriers in accord with that anticipation. You make your choices in life in accord with those barriers, with the goal being that you don't experience discomfort.
A colloquial, but effective, way to label the area inside your barriers is as your "comfort zone."
You can get a real life handle on all of this by taking a proverbial step back and observing your own conduct. You don't sit around and spend time contemplating your every action and behavior. You just do stuff. For the most part, you just do the same old stuff you always do. And, in so doing, almost all of the stuff that you do falls within your comfort zone.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with this, by the way. It's not wrong, and it's not right. This is just the way that things are.
In fact, if you want your life to work, then you have no choice but to do most of the things that you do in an automatic and unconscious fashion. If you sat around and contemplated the fundamental rationales and implications arising from the fact that you put milk in your morning coffee, you'd never get anything done.
Now, the ideas that we covered in this page are important. Are you with me so far? We've got time, so if you are confused or uncertain, then please look this page over again before we move on.
So, are we good? Then let's journey forth to our next set of ideas.
Click here, and off we go!
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