I have left my comfort zone on many occasions and I therefore don’t see this prompt as threatening or difficult. In fact I now welcome opportunities to step out of my comfort zone because that is where the growth is. That certainly wasn’t the case as a child. I lead a fairly sheltered life as a child growing up with my grandparents in a small country Victorian town but once I left home to join a postal course in Melbourne I started to embrace many new things. I subsequently moved to New Zealand, ran away from my new home with Dad, joined the RNZAF. From the time I finished my Air Force service I was married, divorced, raised two boys, took up acting in amateur drama groups, did two years in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, started a new life back in Australia, and the list goes on.
Since remarrying eighteen years ago my wife Molly has constantly prodded at my comfort zone and I have got into meditation and discovered an ability to heal with energy, probably best described as Reiki although this comes to me naturally without any symbology involved.
This leads to me to my latest step out of my comfort zone which was to start teaching meditation to fellow residents in the retirement village where we now live. I have learnt meditation and meditation techniques on a number of courses I have done and meditate most days myself. However it was a bit of a push to be the one up front demonstrating, teaching and leading a group of people in meditation. These classes are run every Saturday morning and have evolved from just meditation to include my introducing a topic for discussion on various aspects related to meditation and its benefits at the end of the meditation session. This helps to ease the meditators back into the world as they come out of their meditation. I introduce the group to a number of new concepts and insights that the attendees may not have discussed before like the concept of impermanence and the purpose and side-effects of meditation. We have a core group of six ladies but the attendance has fluctuated up to about fifteen at one stage of the eighteen months we have been conducting these sessions. It has become very familiar and therefore part of my comfort zone now I guess but it was quite a challenge at the start and I clearly remember my nervousness at the first session so I guess it counts as a stepping out of my comfort zone.
Staces Place 