COMFORT ZONE Vs FREEDOM

Staying in your comfort zone is staying with what is familiar. You activate the same neurology and chemistry, the same thoughts and feelings that keep you in that state of being. It is a cycle that perpetuates the same familiar behaviours, actions, decisions and therefore thoughts and feeling over and over. It is your conditioning.

Life, however, is dynamic and change is the constant. If change is that which challenges your comfort zone as it so often is and you resist, the result is internal chaos as well as external disorder.

“New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.”    Lao Tzu – Philosopher

To evolve you will go through and must go through, challenges to your comfort zone; you will go through and must go through what can be perceived as periods of building \ construction \ birth \ growth \ syntropy \ order as well as perceived periods of destruction \ stagnation \ death \ entropy disorder.

Learning occurs by association as information is processed synaptically – linear, neuronal pathways and ephaptically – non-linear, electro-magnetic exchanges. Associative memories, when reinforced over a period of time, result in positive or negative perceptions that recycle whenever triggered and will run your life through emotional reactions; your high’s and low’s. You become conditioned.

Your conditioning becomes what you know, is automatic and often outside of your awareness – your comfort zone. You may not like being there (or you might and you just want to stay there and resist anything that challenges you) but it is familiar and predictable; in a nano-second and before you know it, you revert to familiar behaviour, actions etc.

“There are risks and costs to action…But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.” John F. Kennedy – President, USA

Emotions distort perceptions, distort thoughts and you feel the discomfort throughout your body. Such distortions affect your cognitive ability to make clear, wise and effective decisions as blood flows away from the decision-making centre of your brain. This negatively affects your output, your personal performance and the quality of your interactions.

The stronger your conditioned thinking, feeling, decisions, behaviours, actions are the less conscious control you have. Your automatic sub-conscious programming is running. This is what you live daily.

Ask yourself these quality questions:  How do I want to live? How do I want my life to be - right now?

Suggestions:

·        Observe your High’s & Low’s – make a note of when they occur; under what circumstances?

·        Observe your behaviour – make a note of whether you perceive it to be grandiose or passive\submissive and under what conditions.

·        Observe your actions – note whether you are reacting, or perhaps avoiding and not taking any action or whether you are taking conscious action.

·        Listen to your language and the words you use consistently – they define your experiences and give you an insight into the meanings you have assigned to those experiences.

A pattern will emerge that gives information about your comfort zone.

Commit to taking time every day to sit in quiet reflection and appreciation. Persist. Silence the ego, the analytical Mind.

“At the moment of commitment the entire universe conspires to assist you.”    Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - 1749-1832 - Writer and Statesman

This will nudge you towards making active changes towards a new way of thinking and being. It is the first step.

Find out who you are and do it on purpose.”               Dolly Parton - Singer, Songwriter, and Entrepreneur

“It takes effort to contemplate new possibilities beyond known choices. But that effort is the ‘pattern interrupt’…”                  Joe Dispenza

Lilly Fitzgerald

WHAT IS YOUR DEFAULT POSITION ??

Are you one of those people who constantly looks at life through a pessimistic lens? Or, are you someone who has a more optimistic filter?

More pessimistic, to many, sounds like a space they might NOT want to play in. More optimistic is viewed as more appealing; maybe it is a space that opens one to contemplating possibilities.

However, BOTH positions are out of balance, out of equilibrium.

The first position tends towards more negatives than positives and the second position swings the pendulum towards more positives than negatives. The pendulum swings from one side to the other as you repress the negatives in search of the positives.

What is important to know is that the pendulum is swinging from one side to the other rather than being centred and stable. The less centred you are the more you are likely to be distracted towards one side and then the other. This means less focus, greater distraction. You become scattered and scattered thoughts are scattered energy - a weakened energy, a weakened force and a weakened position. 

This can and does impact your decisions, your relationships, your work-life etc.

When  you are tending towards negativity you close your Mind to what is possible and if you are constantly in that space it will eventually become your neuro-chemical default position to the point where it might seem that 'life is just like that'.......until something or someone shakes you up somehow and you begin to rethink things.

When you are tending towards the positive you dare not even contemplate the negative. You constantly want only the positive and you constantly seek that which you judge to be 'better', the word 'judge' being the operative word here; you chase 'happy' because 'happy' is 'good'; it is positive, it is better!! 

Both positions are closed to their respective opposites. 

There is another position you could play in - that being Balance or equilibrium. When the pendulum stops swinging it comes to rest at centre; having gone from one side to the other, it arrives at the centre. 

Rather than seeking positive without negative or staying in the negative because positive is out of your awareness, consider finding your centre, your balance, your equilibrium in any situation that seems to pull you from one side to the other, that creates doubt & uncertainty.

Open up to the possibility that every positive has a negative (& it does not have to be a hugely debilitating negative so don't panic!) & every negative has it's positive, concealed though it may be.

When you arrive - and I use that word deliberately because it can be and often is a journey - at balance, like the pendulum, you will be at centre. You will seek neither the best nor will you judge things to be the worst; you will seek neither positives nor will you run from negatives. For a moment you will see the balance and the wisdom of the situation. 

The more often you are prepared to take this process seriously and act on it, the less often distractions & imbalance, scatteredness and doubt will throw you from one side to the other and you will more likely take advantage of your wisdom to guide you.

It's a process, it's a journey, it takes committed action and it is so worth doing!

Lilly Fitzgerald

WOW! IT'S 2016

We have already passed the middle of January and before you know it, we will have reached the end of January.

Across the globe, schools resume as students return from their summer break, most workplaces begin another year with most, if not all, of their employees returning from holidays. Things return to the mundane and by that I mean you go back to carrying out all those daily routines that are familiar. 

So, I am wondering:                                    

•  how will you impact the lives of others  in 2016? What is your intention?

•  what is your gift that, if you shared it,  you might contribute to other people's  lives? 

•  What is unique about you? - and of course each of us has a uniqueness to share and make a difference  in some way. 

• Have you thought about what your uniqueness is and how you might make a difference to others?

• Have you reflected on how you made a difference and\or contributed to other people's lives in 2015?  

• Have you reflected on how other people have impacted you and your life in 2015?

If not, you would be WISE to do it NOW!  

"WHY?", you might ask?

I would answer: "Because when you do that, you will come to appreciate yourself firstly, for 'being' and secondly for 'doing' AND you will allow yourself to fully appreciate other people in your life, whether in relationship, career, social life etc."

So, what have you intended for this year for YOU? 

May be you have already begun enacting some resolutions you made; something you RESOLVE to achieve; something you COMMIT to completing. 

As Jim Rohn would say, 
"Have you 'fashioned' your life to how you would love it to be in 2016 and even beyond?"

To a great year!
Lilly Fitzgerald
Consultant\Counsellor; Educator; Mentor
Dip T; Grad Dip Counselling; Cert IV Bus Man; Cert IV TA, Fitness

THRIVE OR SURVIVE - WHAT IS IT FOR YOU?

In light of recent Global events and the consequent fall out from them, never has there been a more important time than NOW to speak about developing COLLABORATIVE societies that have as their goal, to:

further expand their communities for the benefit of each individual as much as for the benefit of the community. 

The sentence above may be long and a bit convoluted in its wording but I am sure you get what I mean. 

For some time now there have been people who have been constantly researching, writing about and delivering presentations about how destructive human beings have been and continue to be, it seems, at an individual level, at a local level, at a global level etc; that destructive tendency appears to be transferring across all aspects of life. We seem bent on destroying things whether it be through the way we think, the way we act, what we say, what we eat............etc.

What is heartening to know, however, is that to the degree that we have suffering, we also have the opposite happening - it just does not get reported on and often the rejoicing & celebration, the respect and collaborative nature of human-ness is dismissed. It doesn't sell, does it!!!

Recently I heard an interview with Dr Srini Pillay during which he explained that according to studies by Freud and many subsequent Psychologists:

the human brain is wired to master disappointment but not necessarily to thrive out of it.

This has been processing in my brain for some time now and this is why:

Those who perpetrate harm onto others use the powerful tool of FEAR to maximize that harm. 

Such people are not only 'terrorists' as we have seen recently, they include those who are violent in communities in all sorts of ways.

Maybe they know that the people they target will not only suffer the psychological harm & physical hurt, they will also have ongoing consequent
FEAR that will put a halt to any thriving.


If this is so, then such perpetrators have been successful not only in the harm and ongoing fear they set out to inflict; they have succeeded in stopping the Global Community in its tracks from THRIVING for the GOOD of all and for the good of the planet in a COLLABORATIVE way.

So my questions are:

Do you as an individual want to just manage disappointment or do you want to thrive out of it?

Do we as a diverse Global Community want to just manage disappointment, manage the harm and hurt or do we really desire to THRIVE out of it on a Global scale?

What is the answer to be?

What does 'to THRIVE out of disappointment' as opposed to 'managing harm & disappointment' mean:           for you?
                                               for your community?
                                               for the Planet?

I agree with Gregg Braden and others when they say we are at a turning point rather than a tipping point. 

Warmly
Lilly

DON'T LINGER AT THE CROSSROAD............

So, you have come to a crossroad - metaphorically speaking; a fork in the road and you find yourself in a position requiring you to make a choice between two paths, a choice of direction.

• Which way?
• What road or direction should I take?
• What if it isn't the right decision, right direction?
• OMG, what do I do?

You find yourself agonizing over the fact that the choice you make might fundamentally alter your life - and it might not be the best decision, the best choice, the best path. 

You find the weight of having to make a decision or choosing between two paths, very difficult.

Does this sound familiar??

I would be surprised if it doesn't. There would not be one person reading this that has not been in this position - AND if you haven't yet, you will at some stage in your life.

• You wait - waiting buys you time and you hope it will all go away, perhaps solve itself.
• You think it over....and over....and over; time passes. You become ambivalent;  ambivalence creates inner conflict.
• You weigh up the options.

Fear sets in AND that's another whole story, another BLOG!!

KNOW THIS:
When a path presents itself - however frightening it might be to follow - it may be the best path to take. YOU WON'T KNOW unless YOU TAKE SOME ACTION.

AND KNOW THIS:
The action you take WILL BE THE RIGHT COURSE OF ACTION, THE RIGHT DECISION.

I read just recently that "in Medieval times, crossroads - intersections of ancient highways and by-ways - were places to fear, to move through quickly; places not to linger for too long."

I also read just recently that "in Irish folklore, crossroads were between worlds where witches met and spirits passed."

SO AVOID LINGERING AT THAT FORK IN THE ROAD - AVOID LINGERING AT THE CROSSROADS.  If you allow it, ambivalence will keep you down, immobilize you.  SO MAKE A DECISION; TAKE ACTION!

Here's to helping you at that fork in the road, that inevitable crossroad!

Lilly
www.lifecentric.biz
www.nitts.biz
Authoring forthcoming book - "How to Get the Most out of Me"

DO YOU REALLY LISTEN.......& HEAR?

I received this in my email inbox just recently. It was from a person called Amish Shah to whose newsletters I subscribe. It relates his wife's interaction with their daughter and it explains VERY WELL how so often in life, we listen to respond \ react rather than listen to hear............Do you agree?

Enjoy the read!!

"My wife Puja is really into Buddhist and Zen philosophy and I recently overheard her telling our daughter a story that was told by a Zen master.

She said, "Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era, received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served his guest tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then just kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in! Stop!”

“Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”

Like this story depicts, we often approach life situations with our own views and ideas, without taking off our opinionated lens. How then can we truly live life if we don’t release judgments?......"

When we judge something as either only positive or only negative, we are blocking ourselves from understanding the complete picture. No situation or circumstance is ever only positive or negative - however, each individual may have a PERCEPTION that it is.

Your perception then is KEY in understanding that every negative has an equal and opposite positive and every positive has an equal and opposite negative. 

An intellectual understanding of this concept is one thing; applying it to your life is another!

Where are you seeing something ONLY as positive or ONLY as negative?

Who are you seeing as ONLY positive or ONLY negative?

To living life fully,

Lilly

YOU, MOSTLY YOU, can make a DIFFERENCE TO YOUR LIFE!!!

Anxiety attacks are created when YOU have trained YOUR Mind to be aware, to be vigilant, to be on the look out for and be prepared for an ANTICIPATED STRESSFUL experience. 

This is what fight \ flight \ freeze is about. 

We were never designed to remain in that state of being, in that state of Mind, for prolonged periods of time. Yet for many, that is the state of play.

It is often the very thought of these stressful experiences that creates the anxiety rather than any event or experience itself! That in itself tells you how powerful your thinking is and can be. Keep that in the forefront of your Mind. Interesting isn't it, the expression 'forefront of your Mind'? The forefront of your Mind - your frontal lobes - is the operating system of your body!

So why is it wise to keep the sentence "that in itself tells you how powerful your thinking is and can be" in the forefront of your Mind? Read on.

Have you ever experienced, what you considered to be an 'over-the-top' reaction to a certain event or situation, either by you or someone else?

The 'over-the-topness' of the reaction is evidence that your brain (or the brain of someone who is reacting in an 'over-the-top' way), alerted by thoughts, has activated familiar inner chemistry and has sent it cascading throughout your body. "You feel the thoughts" ; you physically experience them throughout your body!

Those thoughts are often a memory of a perceived traumatic \ fearful \ extremely sad etc

event or experience of the past that created the chemicals you are experiencing now, in the first place. 

By association, feelings - triggered by thoughts, therefore emotions, therefore the resulting inner chemical mix that has been repeated over and over in your life - seem to be an automatic response - the automatic response being the same synaptic connections firing over and over and hence the brain releases the same chemicals over and over - which then becomes a familiar pattern for you. That is why you literally feel the thoughts through the emotions (chemical responses) throughout your body.

Hence, your brain has become "neurologically hard-wired as well as chemically dependent" over the years, to the emotions experienced by the initial perceived stressful experience and when they are triggered by thoughts and by association, it is as if you are reliving that same experience over again internally, in your Mind and throughout your body. 

This is a physical manifestation of a habitual pattern of thinking. 

This is the power your Mind has. 

That being the case, you can utilize that same power to break the habitual pattern of thinking and therefore feeling. 

Remember that. Know that. 

Each and every person is empowered to alter habits. It is knowing this information, understanding it and the acting on it that enables a different pattern to emerge and evolve.

Use this information as a stepping stone towards creating a different response (as opposed to reacting to a particular situation!). Become empowered!

For you!

Lilly Fitzgerald