When you move
out of a Comfort Zone
it challenges everyone
in your life to
move out of theirs...

Comfort Zones can be tricky to identify. At some point it will occur to you that what has worked until now is no longer serving you. Sometimes you change bit by bit, and sometimes a big event transforms you on the spot. You may have to be in a Loop a few times before you step away completely from a Comfort Zone. In my case, I set increasingly larger goals, managing higher and higher levels of adrenaline. After a ski accident blew out my knee, I spent two weeks in bed and was then in an immobilizer from my right hip to my ankle for three months. I came to a full stop for the first time in my life. I regrouped. As a result, I was able to recognize and move out of my lifetime blueprint of chaos. You won't need a major life change to get your attention if you follow these steps:

1. When things aren't working, notice what's familiar. Are you trying everything, and still nothing's going right? Identify what's the same. That's where the question and the answer lie. Many of us gravitate toward the same kind of partner or spouse. You may have a friend who always has tyrannical bosses. Or you may know a man whose girlfriends always leave him for someone else. They're not aware that they keep revisiting these Comfort Zones.

Often significant childhood events define a Comfort Zone. Comfort Zone behaviors usually sprang from a need to survive and have served you well in the past. The asthma in my early life added a Comfort Zone that brought a high level of intensity into my life, and I felt bored when I didn't have it. When I began to construct my relationships and my jobs to re-create this level of intensity, it wasn't healthy and didn't serve me.

2. Zero in on the real issue. When you're in a Comfort Zone, you've got a blind spot and often don't perceive the Zone until you're ready to break free. Find the blind spot. A friend, therapist, teacher, mentor, or boss can point it out, if you will let them.

You can't receive from someone what you don't give yourself. If your child is numbing out with drugs and alcohol, ask yourself how you are numbing out. If you're bent out of shape because your boss won't empower you, empower yourself. If you keep gravitating toward noncommittal partners, perhaps you are not committed in some way as well.

When my best friend, Laurie, asked me why I was attracted to emotionally unavailable men, I instantly realized it was because that's how my early relationship was with my dad.

3. Take the next step. Once you detach from a Comfort Zone, both you and it begin to change. Picture how you want your new life to be. What steps will you need to take to move you toward this new way?

4. Hang in there. Your decision to change a lifelong program is significant. This new way of being won't feel familiar, and you may find yourself doing things to get back to the familiar, lower-energy Comfort Zone. Psychologists Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks call this an "upper limits" problem and the core to every challenge we face. When things get too good, we find a way to reduce our good feelings back down to the familiar. The greater the struggle, the more deeply rooted we become in the Comfort Zone.

Keep in mind that other people get used to your Comfort Zones, so when you begin making changes it will take a while before people respond to you at this new level. Some people won't trust that you've really changed, and others may prefer that you stay in your Comfort Zone because it meshes perfectly with theirs.

When you move out of a Comfort Zone it challenges everyone in your life to move out of theirs, either because of your inspiring example or because your Comfort Zones are interdependent and you have disrupted the interaction. Whole family systems have transformed because one member changed; some family members may not like it. But don't let others discomfort hold you back.

Excerpted from Playing the Quantum Field: How Changing Your Choices Can Change Your Life - ©2006 by Brenda Anderson. Printed with permission of New World Library, Novato, CA. www.newworldlibrary.com or 800-972-6657 ext. 52.