Glenford Smith, Contributor

Do you know you could be limiting yourself in important areas of your life because you have become habituated in your thinking and behaviours in these areas?

At 60 pounds overweight, Patrickhas tried several times to lose weight but always manages to put it back on. He feels stuck at 240 pounds. Suzanneshares that no matter how hard she tries to save, she always ends up spending the money. She feels helpless to get it right. Carlarelated that no matter how early she gets ready for appointments, she somehow finds things to do and inevitably ends up late.

All these experiences are indications of these persons' comfort zones in the particular areas. Your comfort zone is where you are stuck to the same behaviour even when you have tried to change. You have become programmed to think and behave yourself into these set ways that have become 'comfortable.'

Any effort to change these habits will be met with a strong inner resistance, in the form of uncomfortable feelings of unease. Nicolas Lore, in his book The Pathfinder, refers to this state as homeostasis. He states: "We don't like to be off balance. We tend to keep things at an even keel. Every time something in our lives gets out of balance, our internal machinery sets off behaviours designed to return us to equilibrium."

Undesirable habits

If you have formed undesirable habits and want to change them, it will prove difficult without understanding how to override your natural tendency to respond habitually.

The key to expanding your comfort zone is not to fight with yourself but to accept these inner feelings of resistance and keep on practising the new behaviour until you form the new habit. This will initially demand self-discipline.

Lore writes, "As soon as you consider committing yourself to an improvement in the quality of your life, your system is thrown off balance and tries to get back to what is comfortable." It is at this point that most people refuse to bear the discomfort and the inner tension, and surrender to the old, familiar behaviours.

Lore reveals however: "The secret of creating anything new in your life consists of creating new commitments and then holding the tiller to your new course until it becomes established as a behaviour."

Expanding your comfort zone is uncomfortable but you cannot achieve superior success by remaining stuck in your small, comfortable world.

Names changed.

Glenford Smith is a peak performance and self-esteem coach. Email him at glenfordsmith@yahoo.com.