If you’re struggling to achieve what you want, feel stuck or just plain afraid to move forward toward your dreams, it’s not just you. Somewhere along the way you were programmed to be comfortable in whatever conditions make up your current circumstances. Being comfortable and happy are not the same. Comfort, in this particular definition, is simply a sense of familiarity. It doesn’t even mean what you have in your life is what you want. All it means is that the current state of your life matches up with the pattern of ideas and emotions that you grew up experiencing.
Changing or trying to change the comfortable patterns in your life is an interesting experience. If you are able to really block things out mentally and emotionally, you can move forward pretty easily. If not, you may feel like a bomb went off and you’re walking through a war zone where the sole purpose is to destroy you.
Why does trying to change a comfortable pattern feel so intense? You have no pattern of ideas and emotions creating the new experience yet. If you grew up where change was an exciting, simple part of life, then creating new patterns is easy. If you didn’t grow up this way, like a lot of people, change is difficult. It feels like all of the ideas and emotions get thrown at you when you try to create change. The intense fear, anxiety and stress show up because you are not doing what is expected. You are literally going against the grain. When you recognize this, you can take some time to get a clear picture or vision of what it is you would like instead. Once you create the new vision and define new feelings, the old will give way to the new with much less struggle.