Sometimes invisible winds blow us away and we have trouble getting back. And maybe there is no going back and we have to accept the fact that we are on a journey that keeps going. Change is inevitable and we can’t expect to be happy once and stay that way forever. Or, on the contrary, wait until we are happy and just survive in the meantime.
The problem arises when we lose control of the rudder of our ship and allow ourselves to be carried far away by the current until we find ourselves in a storm from which it is difficult to get out.
What am I writing about? I felt exactly like this one year ago (and many times during the year). As if I were sitting on a ship in the middle of a stormy sea, a storm was raging around me and I just sat idle and despaired of the impossibility of influencing it in any way. Sometimes this moment is also called the “dark night of the soul”. It is practically the moment when all the buried things that we have ignored for a long time come to the surface. And because there are so many of them and they come out simultaneously, we feel like they will completely engulf us.
It is a call for change. If we sail in the wrong direction and ignore all challenges, we can’t be surprised that it manifests this way. But it’s good to know that just like a storm at sea doesn’t last forever, this one will calm down with time. It is important not to create resistance or be completely submissive. When we already know that the way back is not possible, then we have no choice but to take the oars back into our hands.
What does it mean in real life if we don’t use metaphors?
It means that the storm happened because we ignored something for a long time. We let someone else make decisions for us, we were afraid to take risks and we stayed where it didn’t suit us just because we were afraid of the new and the unknown. What’s more, it means we weren’t being authentic. To avoid having to deal with it face to face, we found an escape route. Something that occupied our minds enough to avoid solving problems. And when this substitute “helper” stopped working, we found ourselves already inside the storm. Without noticing that we are heading towards it.
This means a mix of all the unpleasant feelings – sadness, devastation, anger, rejection, regret, questioning, a sense of injustice, and meaninglessness.
As I wrote above, it is useful not to resist these feelings, but it is important not to give in to them and not let them “work” for too long. These unpleasant feelings can help us find what needs to be changed. Because that’s the indicator of the problem.
At this moment, I consider solitude to be the most important thing. It is absolutely necessary to start listening to your soul. No one will do this work for you. Not a therapist, not friends, family, or random people on social media or anywhere else.
Being alone, completely alone..without watching TV or on the phone, is something that should be a part of every day. And yet it’s a thing we so often avoid.
It’s unpleasant to be confronted with all that crap, but on the other hand, isn’t it also annoying to carry it around all the time and try to hide it?
Let’s move on to the practical part
Although I have only lightly outlined the topic, I think you know what I am talking about. Let’s just say that this all revolves around our comfort zone. We’ve gotten used to feeling bad being comfortable because we know it so well. And so we continue to curse (ourselves and others), complain, and fall into despair and rage. It is a bit paradoxical that what is so uncomfortable is actually comfortable.
And here comes the practical part – that is, getting out of the comfort zone. At this point, it’s important to remember that there is a difference between when our intuition tells us not to do something and when we don’t want to do something because it’s easier for us.
If we often spend time alone with our soul, then we can easily distinguish this feeling, because we know what we would like, and how we would like to be. A simple indicator of this is when we imagine how we would feel if we did that thing. Without thinking too much about “what if”, we just think about it and the first feeling can be our pointer.
Let me give an example. I once worked as a gardener for a rich family. At that time it was difficult to find work and we didn’t have much money. One day the owner of the land asked me if I would also like to babysit his young son. It was a good opportunity to make some extra money and I already knew the people, so it wasn’t a completely unfamiliar situation.
The first thing that came to my mind was that I would take the job, but I didn’t feel completely sure.
And so I imagined the situation where I work as a babysitter, play with his son, and everything around. And the result was that I didn’t like it. I didn’t feel like it was something I really wanted to do, and if I decided to do it, it was only because it seemed convenient at the time. And so I refused. That surprised everyone.
Don’t expect that the point of the story is that after this got my dream job and became rich. That’s not how life works. It’s just that I made a decision for myself and I felt good about it.
You might be thinking “So what’s the big deal?” How many times a day do you do things that you don’t like or would do differently, and you do them only because you think you have to or because someone told you to do them? And that’s the “big deal”. Can happen that we play different roles and live up to the expectations of others so often that we completely forget who we really are.
The result is that we are constantly not feeling well, we are frustrated and angry. This theme offers two different approaches – change it or let it go/flow. I’ll get into that a bit later.
The comfort zone is also a control zone
The comfort zone is where we know it well, have everything under control, and feel safe. The problem with this place is that it is at odds with life.
Life is something that is constantly changing, flowing, and transforming. And so we are.
Staying in our comfort zone creates resistance to life and ourselves. This leads to the already mentioned frustration, which after some time, when we ignore it, creates an inner storm.
I heard that when a soul is born into this world, it chooses its own destiny and the challenges that a person has to undergo in the material world. This means that we create all that shit (and nice things too) either because it is inevitable for our growth or because we create resistance to the flow of life.
We may fear loss of control, painful experiences, repetition of unpleasant situations, ridicule, receiving criticism and disapproval, or abandonment. But isn’t the fear of these things ultimately the same as the things themselves? The only difference is that you feel it to a lesser extent for a longer period.
It is quite normal that life is not beautiful all the time. Those unpleasant things and problems happen to us. Only thanks to this we can enjoy the beautiful things and be more stronger.
An example is the situation when we love someone and for some reason, we have to move away from each other for some time. Saying goodbye can be so painful that someone may decide they don’t want to see that other person anymore. He thinks that it will be better to suffer a little for many years than to feel that great pain again. Instead, he deepens his grief and at the same time deprives himself of beautiful feelings and experiences. Which, in addition, can be much better and more intense thanks to temporary separation.
And now really the practical part..
I discovered that stepping out of your comfort zone is such a fun game. I like to do it in everyday life situations. I don’t see the point in getting into big things right away.
Also because it may often have no effect. As if you were now going on a trip around the world and then coming back to your life. At first, everything will be different, but soon you will understand that nothing fundamentally has changed, and so after a few days you will return to familiar patterns of behavior.
I will tell you an example from my life.
Once I needed some things in the store. We live on a mountain and the nearest shop is in a valley several kilometers away. In this situation, I could ask my father-in-law (who was just there at that particular moment) to drive me there. The problem is, however, that I hate the way he drives – he drives in the opposite direction, doesn’t look in his mirrors, and almost crashes into someone at almost every corner (and we have many of them here). Short trip, but too stressful for me.
So instead I decided to walk through the woods by myself.
I told myself that I must find the old house where the crazy guy lived because there was a path with stairs to the road under it that would lead me to the store. Everything was slippery because it was raining, so I had to go slowly. When I was almost at the house, I heard a family of wild boars not far from me. It was spring, so it was better to avoid them.
Because of that, I had to change direction, and I went to a place I didn’t know. I found myself directly above the store. The problem was that there were also other houses and enclosed gardens. I looked for a way between the houses, but it looked like I would have to step onto someone’s private property, and I wanted to avoid that. Then I noticed that one house was uninhabited. There was a lot of mess outside, thrown furniture, tiles, etc. So I thought I’d try walking past this house’s yard when no one was there.
The way down was difficult because the stairs were broken, I had to climb over the iron bars and be careful not to let the rotten wood fall through. When I was down, I found out that the gate by the way I was supposed to get to was locked with a chain. I started cursing and complaining that I would have to go up again and go back to the path where the boars were.
At that moment, I noticed an old man standing on the other side, watching me with interest. I immediately explained the situation to him so he wouldn’t think I was doing something illegal there.
He didn’t wait for anything and said: “Then wait, I’ll find a ladder!” Between us were two stone walls about 5 meters high, between which a river flowed. After a few minutes, he came up with a ladder that didn’t even reach halfway up the wall. I started to doubt that it was a good idea. But he was undeterred and before long he came down with a longer ladder and placed it on the slippery stones in the middle of the river. I looked at the rickety ladder in disbelief and hesitated.
The old man climbed down, stood in the river, held the ladder, and said, “Get down, what are you waiting for!”
I started laughing because it seemed absolutely absurd that I had more faith in an unknown man holding a ladder in the middle of a river than in my colleagues at a team building where I was the only one who refused to “fall into the crowd” because I didn’t believe that they would catch me.
I climbed down, climbed over the wall to his side, thanked him, and said goodbye. After that, I went shopping and came back along the path around the madman’s house as I had originally intended.
It’s such a bullshit, but I can tell you it lifted my spirits for the day. Because it was simply fun. I did something more challenging and time-consuming, but it left me feeling energized and happy. Instead of choosing the shorter option, where I would be stressed and angry – because I had already said once that I would not get into the car with him again – which I would have broken at that moment.
I think I’ve already mentioned that I enjoy wandering in nature. Being alone in nature where we don’t know is a great example of stepping out of your comfort zone. Amplified by the fact that we are alone – we don’t have the comfort of help of another person. And so we have to rely only on ourselves – that we will find a way, that nothing will happen to us, all decision-making and thinking is up to us.
This is the moment when you will be completely in the present moment. Enjoying the nature around you and shift thinking. Places in nature that you already know are still your comfort zone – but spending time in nature is important anyway, so it’s also good.
Shit, this article is getting long..and I still don’t have the feeling I explained my point of view.
“Go fuck with yourself” is a rotten comfort zone
In essence, stepping out of the comfort zone represents anything and anywhere where we act for ourselves and are true to ourselves. And at the same time, it is, in a certain sense, overcoming oneself, and crossing boundaries that we have created for ourselves. No one else is responsible for what we feel, what we think, or what we do.
Sometimes it happens that someone says: “If I had to tell everyone what I truly think about them, I would be alone because I would simply say to all “screw you and go fuck with yourself..” When I think about this, I think to myself, “Is this really what the person should say to be authentic, or is it just a learned mechanism, a defensive reaction, and nonsense that doesn’t solve anything?”
Think about it from this point of view – if someone bothers me and I send him to hell, what will his reaction be? He will probably be upset/angry and give me my reaction back. This means that I will establish my opinion that he is a jerk and we don’t get along well. I practically stay in my rotten comfort zone.
If I approached it differently, I could openly say what I don’t like, what annoyed me, and what I would like to change. In this case, it would be stepping out of the comfort zone, as the reactions of others may be different. They might say, “What an oversensitive idiot, you’re making too much of a drama.” Or they would stop talking to me. And this also applies to nice things, which are perhaps even harder to say. The bottom line is that whatever the reaction, I expressed what I needed and stayed true to myself, so I don’t really care what others think about it.
This means that I didn’t stay in my comfort zone full of fear of a negative reaction, rejection or not being accepted, and, instead, I stayed authentic to myself.
And from my experience, I can say that resolving the situation is usually a matter of time. Sometimes people need time apart to process things.
I can think of such an analogy – if you feel like sending someone to hell, you should be the one who goes there. In the sense of “I need time to be alone and think things over”. Which brings us back to the beginning of this article.
Letting go and letting flow
Continuing this process naturally leads us to let things flow without the need to control them.
As I wrote at the beginning – everything is variable and constantly flows on. This means that there is nothing permanent. The sense of control and predictability of the situation is just a huge illusion.
Don’t get me wrong, letting things flow doesn’t mean being manipulated by others and doing what the situation dictates. Because that would be exactly why we got to the “dark night of the soul” stage. This simply means enjoying the present moment without thinking about how we should behave and why we should do something in a certain way to get the desired outcome. Also don’t insist that things happen exactly the way we want them to.
If each of us could create an ideal world where only what we want would happen, it would be pretty boring super comfort zone. Man needs challenges and problems to improve and overcome his limitations.
If it were not so, then we could stay where our soul comes from. There would be no point in incarnating in the material world.
We can let go of things that do not belong to us and are not related to our mission in life. What I can’t change myself, I don’t have to deal with.
It’s a little easier to constantly deal with what’s going on in the world (illusory, because we don’t even know if most things are true) instead of organizing our own lives.
One may argue “Oh, so I’m going to ignore all the wars, starvation, suffering, and exploitation, just because it doesn’t directly concern me?”
Let’s just say it’s not about ignoring, we can always speak up and make changes in our lives that don’t support that behavior. E.g. we don’t throw garbage in the forest, we don’t buy goods from cheap webs, we don’t incite violence and arguments, etc.
But what is important is that we do not dwell on it every free minute of our lives, we do not watch videos that incite fear and anger in us, and we do not argue with people on the street to prove our truth to them.
Going back to the idea that we can’t control what happens, only how we perceive it, is what I mean by “let it flow”. We don’t live alone in this world, everything doesn’t just revolve around us. This means that everything has to make sense together. For everyone involved..and that’s not easy!
It is also not easy to understand that someone needs suffering in their life and needs to make mistakes.
Therefore, if we wish for something, it is important that we give freedom to that thought and let it work on its own. Let it happen in the best way and at the moment when the time is right. I can guarantee that what happens next will far exceed your limited imagination.
The point of it is not to cling to ideas, beliefs, and “right” ways. Instead, give a free space to the flow of life.
Instead of trying to get others to do what we want and make things happen the way we want, we can step aside and think about why it makes us feel uncomfortable. What is behind it?
Mostly it’s fear. Fear of losing control, fear of abandonment, fear of not being accepted, fear of the unknown..when we admit it, we can go further into deeper self-reflection and find out what is the cause of this fear.
What usually happens is that we uncover one layer, one point of view, and immediately another and another appear. The longer we ignore this, the deeper this work will be. And it’s also very unpleasant. That’s why we stay in the comfort zone for so long.
A nice way to approach this is to follow the events with curiosity – “So I’m curious what will happen next..or how this will be resolved!” In such an approach there is no longer fear, but rather joy.
So far I’ve only talked about letting things flow, but what about letting them go?
The first thing that comes to mind in connection with this is forgiveness. When we resist forgiveness it’s like saying “I don’t want to give up my anger because I feel good with it.” It’s still the familiar rotten mud of comfort.
It reminds me of my Italian aunts when they talk about a woman who was very rude to their mom. A conflict that ended in an argument and almost physical assault. One of them met this woman after a long time and it stirred up a wave of emotions between them again. After listening to the whole story again, I told them, “Have you ever thought it might be time to forgive her? It happened so many years ago…”
One aunt got angry and replied: “But what about them, they won’t forgive us!”
The point of forgiveness is not to condone what happened and say it was okay. It is that we allow ourselves to let go of our anger and sense of injustice and say “I don’t want to keep this inside me anymore”.
And we can also think about how to prevent something like this from happening again. Every bad thing that happens to us is an opportunity to realize what is important to us and where our boundaries are that we will not allow anyone to cross again.
So, above all, let’s forgive ourselves for giving permission for this to happen, and at the same time, let’s thank ourselves for giving us a valuable lesson from which we can draw strength for the rest of our lives.
When you give permission to someone or something, you give up your personal power. Being in your power means being authentic and expressing your feelings clearly, in every situation.
If you doubt that it is possible to find something good in your suffering, write everything down on paper. By hand, so you have time to feel every word. Write without wanting to achieve something. Just let your thoughts flow.
If we write things down, we can get out of the cycle of the same thoughts that lead nowhere. As soon as we write something, we can move beyond the limits of our previous thinking. Suddenly we see new connections and new paths. As if suddenly everything makes sense and we are able to see it on a wider horizon.
Inner peace comes when we understand all our wounds, life lessons and we are in tune with our soul. But that doesn’t mean it lasts forever after that.
It’s a life journey. There is always something new that derails us or leads us astray. But if we know our own center, it won’t take us long to turn back and calm the stormy sea. Instead of years, it can take days or just hours.
Fuck your judge. The one who constantly reminds you of your mistakes. Love yourself exactly as you are. And the others too.
You can feel that your life is not a burden, but something wonderful and magical.
In connection with this topic, I would also like to focus on the concept of white and black magic in the contemporary world. Why is it so easy to become a “victim” dependent on different people, communities, and belief systems. You can find the entire article here.