Life is a series of comfort zones. We begin in the comfort zone of our mothers womb, which expands until we are too big to fit. From crawling to walking, home to school, school to work. As we grow, our comfort zones grow too. In between each comfort zone is a period of discomfort. Oftentimes we want to avoid this discomfort, but it’s a necessary part of growth, and we can move toward it and utilise it to develop the self confidence which helps us achieve our goals. 

How often have you heard a voice inside you “I really want to write a novel, travel the world, build my own home, get married, teach 1000 people what I know…” only to have it followed up by ‘but it’s too difficult, I don't have what it takes, only special unicorns can do that thing, everyone will think I’m an idiot, it’s dangerous and I’ll die of shame” 

You might try a safe version of your dream instead; a blog instead of a book, reading biographies of world travellers instead of booking the flight, redecorating your home instead of getting the money together (somehow) to build your own.

The mathematical equation might look like this;

Discomfort + Courage = Growth

In this equation discomfort is a palatable catch-all for negative emotions associated with taking action for the purposes of growth; fear, terror, anxiety, nervousness. Add courage and your personal growth knows no bounds.

Our primitive brain wants us to stay alive and nothing more.

Our soul wants to thrive, to expand, grow and evolve. I believe that is what we came here for, to this human life on earth; to thrive, to expand, grow and evolve. 

There’s a conflict between your heart’s desire and your primitive brain, a longing for something greater, for expansion, versus a constant drive to keep you alive, breathing and with a pulse. Your primitive brain is exactly that; primitive. It believes we exist in a cave, hundreds of thousands of years ago. It believes that food is scarce and that there are tigers outside waiting to eat you. It does everything to keep you alive. Bless it, it's doing it's best for you. The trouble is that it isn’t useful to you when it comes to your goals, your heart's desire for personal growth and development. 

Your soul is expansive and has come here for growth, learning and development delivered via the experience of human life. Working with a coach you can learn how to use your prefrontal cortex, the modern part of your brain to overcome your primal conditioning in order for you to evolve in ways you never imagined possible before and in ways that will blow your own mind. 

We can mediate between the primitive brain and heart's desire with the prefrontal cortex. This is a relatively new part of the brain and is where our decision-making functions reside. This is the part of our brain that we use to watch ourselves think, to observe and control our thinking. We put ourselves in charge when we use our prefrontal cortex. 

The dual nature of being human

In the opening of the ‘Power of Now’ Eckhart Tolle, describes a moment of breakdown. He said ‘I cannot live with myself any longer’ and at the same moment he recognised the ‘I’ and the ‘Self’. We can call these the ego and the soul, the mind and the heart; the terminologies here matter less than we comprehend the dual nature of being human. We are both human and spiritual, earth bound and heaven sent, ego and soul.

Discomfort in the form of fear and anxiety will never go away. They are feelings created by thoughts delivered to us on autopilot by the primitive brain, the ego. We can't simply x them out, but we can overcome these feelings with courage.  Rudolf Steiner teaches that the Angels build altars to human beings for their courage to come into physical form. Whether you believe in Angels or not we can know that we have courage simply by being a human on earth. The two go hand in hand.

Doing the courageous thing is what helps you grow.

We do the courageous thing because we want to grow and we discover on the other side of it that we're still human. Wait, what?? Courage is supposed to make us superhuman! We look around ourselves and don’t immediately see how we’ve changed. Our act didn’t change the world instantly. Enter stage right, the primitive brain (remember, also known as the ego) that thinks it’s separate from that which created it (something far greater than you or I) to announce “you failed, I told you it was a terrible idea, now you’re going to die” and we nosedive into a Shame Spiral. ‘Why did I ever think this project was a good idea, all those people saw me, I look such a fool’ We believe this rubbish spouting forth from our brains. These thoughts create a whole heap of pain.

After I’ve done something courageous I like to reframe the Shame Spiral. I say thanks to my brain for offering it thoughts ‘oh thanks, so cute, I’ll take it from here’ and I noticed that what I’m really experiencing is a Vulnerability Hangover. 

Think about it; go to battle with a dragon (your mind) and do the thing you want, that scares you to bits and you make yourself incredibly vulnerable on purpose. This IS the key to growth. Our growth does not look pretty! Contrary to what instagram tells us growth is uncomfortable, vulnerable and downright scary. I did a Facebook live in my group ‘How to be your own best friend’ (if you haven’t joined then now is the time) this week and afterwards I wanted to crawl under a stone and die. My brain was telling me what a terrible idea it was to have done that, but I also recognised that it was a great idea and that I’d shown up with courage and I grew in confidence as a result.

Working with a coach can help you to jet propel your growth.

I wish I could tell you that in order to grow you just had to go shopping to buy a bunch of stuff, or could eat something sweet like a slab of chocolate cake with a side of fries and mayo. Instead what I’m teaching you is that showing up to our dreams with courage when we feel scared is how we grow. In return we get the result of the growth we want and we also develop self confidence, which helps us to do the thing again, to do harder things again, to grow more and more and to become the next version of ourselves. This is the process of changing our lives deliberately. 

If you are interested to know more about how coaching can help you and how working with me as your coach will jet propel your growth book in for a free consultation session by clicking this link.