The Zone

To be perfectly honest, I had such a rough week that I didn’t have time to wonder what I might blog about. Typically something starts brewing in my head at some point during the week, but this week just didn’t lend itself to that. I was that much under the gun. Then yesterday morning the above diagram came across my FB feed via a page I follow called Unify. Immediately it provided a common thread through everything that this week brought across my path. So to the zone we go!

Let’s start at home base in the comfort zone. Aaaaah… comfort. This week was not at all comfortable for me. I wasn’t the only one. I associate comfort with being at ease. It’s a carefree, worry-free space. It’s feeling safe and secure. It’s not just knowing that everything is going to be o.k., but sensing it experientially. To me, and I think for many people, this state of being seems like a prerequisite to happiness. And for that reason alone, we are highly motivated to stay within the bounds of our comfort zone. The comfort zone tends to get a bad wrap, right? The above chart paints it in the alternative light of fear avoidance. While that motivation is equally true, I think it’s helpful to recognize the both/andness of the comfort zone. Why, after all, should we not be comfortable in life??

I have to insert here that I am highly motivated to seek happiness at this moment in my life. This comes at the heels of a long period (many years) of sober reflection about the state of humanity and who and how I need to be in relation to that. It has not been fun. I miss light and carefree. I do know that state. I’m willing to bet that a lot of people feel the same, feeling exhausted from whatever has been holding the focus of your concerns be they sociological, political, economic, environmental or all of the above. It’s easy to arrive at a place of, well, nevermind. As in never let me bring that to mind because it disturbs my peace. And I can’t do anything about it any way so there is no point worrying about it. This is how our status quo is upheld. Less through conscious assertion and more through subconscious omission.

I find myself questioning if and how I can hold an honest view of the state of humanity such that I show up to it with integrity, while also abiding in a state of happiness. I have an inkling of an idea that figuring out how to do this is critical to any viable path forward. I’m trying. When I get it figured out, you’ll be the first to know. Of course I know that it is the trying itself that stands in my way, but that’s a whole other story that I’ll leave for another time. For now, I will say that I do think that happiness is tied to a profound sense of comfort. Profound, however, is the operative word, which is to say that there are different levels of comfort.

The lowest level of comfort is the bubble to the left in the above diagram. The bounds of this version of comfort is very much dependent on that which has been given us. That is to say that it requires us to accept without question our society and our given identity and role within it. We hardly made any of this up. Neither did our parents or elders. But somebody did, and the rest of us have just accepted it as a given. To question the given is to leave the comfort of your place within it. This. is. Not. Comfortable. So much so that while all of us test those waters, most of us learn to leave them well enough alone. In this sense, what holds us in place ranges from pangs of discomfort to existential fear. Leaving this comfort zone in a very real way threatens our survival, given that our survival is – whether in this country we like to admit it or not- dependent upon our social relations.

I currently have the responsibility of walking my students up to the edges of their comfort zone in order to bring its boundaries to consciousness. While I always proceed with this work delicately, this week brought me face to face with how fragile our worldview and accompanying identity is, and therefore how scary it is to question it. As I looked across the room to the end of the table I could see the sheer terror on one of my student’s faces. She was able to verbalize that everything that she believes in was being challenged and she just needed to be quiet. I, along with everyone else in my class (which I was quite proud of), went out of our way to assure her that she is safe. For as scary as it is, we are profoundly safe. Yet that isn’t readily apparent. What also isn’t apparent is that questioning our boundaries doesn’t mean that everything within them is wrong. What I find oh so important as we help ourselves and others to break free from old constraints is to point out that our ruling perspective isn’t wrong, but simply limited. To be clear, the thing that might help us to transgress our boundaries is the realization that we could understand and experience more of what we are already seeing and experiencing, more of who we are. The transgression doesn’t have to be a revolt. It might more fruitfully be a simple act of wonder.

Fear is powerful. It manifests in all of the ways represented above and then some. It can get ugly. We can get ugly when it takes hold of us. I can’t imagine living in this zone, but certainly some do. When somebody is operating from this state, it is difficult to know what to do. The best I can figure is to recognize it for what it is and don’t get sucked in. Just hold space for other states of existence, other zones, to emerge for that person. Maybe some day they will. Maybe they won’t. But either way, it does no good for another person to get stuck there with them. Patience, forgiveness, and wisdom are key here. It is also o.k. and fully appropriate to sometimes just walk away. We are as adults each ultimately responsible for our own growth. Our real job is to be aware if we are ourselves operating from fear and to make adjustments if so. This is no place to hang out. I’m needing to keep this front and center in my awareness at the moment. My life has me in full training mode on this front as well.

Yet the real question is can we move through all of the above levels while maintaining a state of comfort. That is what I mean when I ask if it is possible for me to show up to our challenges full on while maintaining a state of happiness. Our knee jerk reaction is that comfort equals stasis and growth requires discomfort. From one perspective, yes. Moving beyond our boundaries means stepping into the unknown. It’s hard to imagine feeling any sense of comfort there. Yet is there another perspective? What if we could embrace the mystery of the unknown? Then would it feel uncomfortable? Then would it feel scary? Or might it instead feel exciting, enriching, invigorating… dare I say fun? In fact I think it does and I think everyone has had some experience through which to relate to this alternative view. I also think that there are some people for whom this is their m.o. I envy such people, in a good way.

Applying this thought specifically to my life and my dilemma, what I see is that I don’t know what is going to happen to humanity. I don’t even know what is going to happen to me next! There are some likelihoods of course, but then life is full of surprises. That is the very nature of life- spontaneous emergence (some other time 😉 ). All it means is that anything can happen at any time. I will say, however, that what happens is very much tied to what we believe can happen. You know what Billie Jean King says- “You have to see it to be it.” When I coached I often used this principle with my players. I would tell them that if they wanted to be a college hockey player or a national team hockey player or whatever, then the best bet is to start behaving like you already are. Start carrying yourself like such a player does, training like such a player does, eating like such a player does, thinking like such a player does, etc. We are very powerful. We visualize the future into existence. Our problem is that we don’t realize that we are doing this and therefore keep reenacting our old limitations.

Step one is therefore to realize that we are creating our own realities. This is what the process of challenging our comfort zone is all about. Until we do that, we stay stuck in our old limitations. This work comes with the realization that who we are was made up by somebody other than ourselves. It was given us. Moving beyond our comfort zone is to move from acceptance of the given to acceptance of our creative powers. It is to reclaim the full possibility of ourselves, which I would claim is unlimited. It sure doesn’t seem that way though! How do we access this realm of pure potential? Now we are talking! This is what we call “the zone.” This is a very different zone that the comfort zone. “The zone” I am talking about now is the one that athletes, musicians, artists, and geniuses talk about when they describe something flowing through them as if it is coming from somewhere else. Well it is coming from somewhere else. It is coming from the extended realm of pure potential. Some call this universal consciousness, or universal intelligence, or the field, or the All That Is, or just plain God. You are a drop in that ocean, and therefore you have access to it. When you access it, you are in the zone. This is how we reach beyond old limitations.

What is scary about the current state of humanity is that we are a mess! Good grief, are we a mess. Fear is rearing its ugly head without abandon. We are so extraordinarily uncomfortable as limitations close in on us that we are clinging tightly to any old boundaries that we believe might return us to a sense of safety. None of this will work. The only way forward is… forward. It is easy to react to our predicament by operating from a place of fear, but what if we instead operated from a place of wonder? What if we met the observation of the failure of the old boundaries of our comfort zone (who we are) not as a threat, but as an opportunity? What if we leaned into the field of unlimited potential to become more of who we are, rather than less? This is how I, and many, many others, are choosing to interpret this moment in our history. Does it mean that we are for sure going to evolve to a higher state? No. We might just as easily devolve into a lower state, or no state at all. Yet that choice is fully up to us. And while that realization is daunting, it is also really, really cool.

But I don’t want to leave it there. In order to get to any future state, I have to show up in some viable way on a daily basis. It isn’t sustainable for me to be in a constant state of pressure or fear. I need to be comfortable in my skin in my everyday life. I need to get back to happiness. Even more so, I need to abide in the more profound state of joy. I need to do this while staying square in the knowledge of what is. Blinders will not get me to a higher state. Yet neither will staying stuck in the problems. I need to see through to potential. I need to see it to be it. We all do. Joy comes from a deep sense of knowing that we are all of it already. We are already all Olympians. We are already all enlightened beings. We are already the higher state we seek. That being the case, what on earth is there to not be joyful about? Our old crappy selves are a thing of the past. Soon. Very soon.