Written by: Leslie Gaudet, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Why is having Clarity important to me?
In my last article, I talked about Chasing My Perfect. Today, I’m taking you into my inner mindset and my reasons for why clarity for me has been so important to figure out, because I found myself feeling overwhelmed and my overwhelm, as it turned out, was just me having lack of focus; having a lack of direction in what I wanted for my life, and for what I wanted to do with my life.
When I found myself here, what I ended up doing was, I put myself in a timeout of sorts.
I like to call this space the Uncomfort Zone (the uncomfortable space) which is a state of mind where I slow down the pace and I allow myself to really listen and to really see possible solutions to figuring out the whats and the hows to moving forward.
In this case, how to become clear on my purpose and finding my answers as to how I wanted to move forward with whatever is revealed to me.
Before I go any further though, I feel that the Uncomfort Zone needs a bit further clarification so as to give you a clearer picture of my journey.
I came upon this revelation of the Uncomfort Zone when I was getting my certification in Emotional Intelligence and I started thinking about living my story, living my life with intention and purpose and joy and gratitude, and I realized that I had been living in what I call the Safe Zone.
I was letting my past stories dictate my future stories and I wouldn’t let myself see past that and so I stayed stuck in my Safe Zone.
The Safe Zone is the place where you find yourself repeating the same patterns and never see change but you don’t or won’t let yourself trust and have faith in yourself enough to actually step outside of your comfort zone to see what’s possible for you.
This is where you stay stuck in the muck and will often not make any changes out of fear of the unknown. You also know (for the most part) your usual processes and how you manage your life, and you don’t want to rock the boat because of your fear.
You also know that you have emotional trigger moments. You may even be dialed into your emotional triggers and know how you will typically respond, and how the situation will typically pan out because you have been down this road before (a million times) and you know that as time passes, it will dissipate, it will go away, everyone will calm down (yourself included), and even though your trigger most likely will rear its ugly head again in the future, you know the process but you don’t do anything to change it because you either don’t know how or you just don’t want to take the time to learn.
You recognize that your emotional responses are based on your Trigger, your Emotional Response, Calming Down, Apologizing, Kind of Forgiving, and then moving on only to rinse and repeat it again sometime in the future.
My theory is that it’s safer to follow what you know than to step outside of your comfort zone into the uncomfortable space because you don’t have all the answers of how to make a change or if a change will happen or what it will look like and you cannot control the process and so the FEAR of the unknown, because that is what it usually boils down to, will keep you from trying; and you would rather stay in the known zone (your Safe Zone) even at harm to your emotional wellbeing.
You see our emotions influence how we think and when we can get a handle on that and allow ourselves to take back our power over our emotions and get real and honest and raw with ourselves, and if we allow ourselves to go there and to step outside of our comfort zone and make those decisions to make a change and do the work to make that happen, we gain so much more than we could ever imagine.
Here’s an example of a Safe Zone problem. It’s an issue that lingers and affects your life but the solution is in your control. However, instead of taking action, you rely on excuses to support you not taking action.
For example, maybe you are just starting a new business venture and if things don’t work out for you the way that you planned, that becomes the reason why life is the way it is for you and then you can fall back on the excuse “Well that’s just how life is. I’m not meant for more because I grew up poor or ___ (fill in the blank).” Or “I’m not worthy or deserving because only the privileged few get to have success.”
You can fill in the blank with something else that is limiting you but whatever that is, it’s still you staying in the Safe Zone mostly because you’re comfortable there.
It’s easier than stepping outside of your comfort zone and finding ways to take action because maybe you’re like a lot of people believing that because you can’t control the outcome, you’d rather stay stuck.
Now a quality problem, on the other hand, is a problem that if achieved would significantly affect your identity, your environment, and your quality of life but again, it’s harder to go after because that means you have to put in the work.
You have to step outside of your safe zone into the Uncomfort Zone where you don’t have control of the process, where you don’t know how something is going to work or if it will work or not, and where you may not know what to do next to get that quality result that you want.
All you know is that it’s stressing you out to even think about it, and so, you again choose to stay in the Safe Zone where you know that change won’t happen but then again, you won’t have to go out and try to make change happen and it possibly not going the way you want, and you won’t have to fear that you can’t control the process because it’s scary even thinking about it.
Instead, you’ll stay in the Safe Zone because when things don’t go your way, you can fall back on your excuses and say “Oh well, that’s life. Those are the cards I’ve been dealt.” Or “I’m not worthy of more. My life right now is proof of that.”
And so many people will avoid going after their goals, of making a change in their life because they equate high risk to change and they equate low risk to staying the same, and that will stop them from actually going after their bigger and more desirable goals.
If they can’t control the journey, and they can’t control the process, and they can’t see how or if it will turn out, they’d rather stay stuck where they are because where they are is at least somewhat in their control, or so they think.
Now let’s get back to the Uncomfort Zone which is the place I found myself getting way too comfortable sitting in. I stopped listening and I stopped looking until I realized and recognized and owned that what I was doing was keeping myself stuck in timeout purgatory.
When I finally realized this, I got my aha breakthrough moment and started taking steps (tiny little steps) that helped move me forward and out of this little cell I had placed myself in.
I finally found my Clarity.
I have goals and I have clarity now around my purpose and I’m ready to step into what I call the Unknown Zone of Possibilities (the place where the magic happens) and I’m ready for so much more to be revealed to me because I’m open to and accepting of change (because as we all know, you can’t control change), and I will pivot when necessary thereby allowing myself to grow and learn and take inspired action.
So….Are you stuck in the Safe Zone?
Maybe you have a few times allowed yourself to take risks and stepped into the Uncomfort Zone but because it was super scary, you found yourself looking over your shoulder thinking that maybe the Safe Zone is where it's at, and you wanted to go back there.
Maybe you are ready to step through the Uncomfort Zone into the Unknown Zone of Possibilities and open yourself up to the limitless possibilities that are waiting for you.
My final question for you is this. Are you ready to step out of your comfort zone and finally Get into Your Story of your life? Because the fastest way to living your life on purpose is by getting into your story and taking chances and doing the things that make you uncomfortable so that you can bridge the gap that has you stuck.
For me, being in the Uncomfort Zone has been a necessity at times, and like I said, this last time around was challenging as I found myself becoming complacent and too comfortable in feeling comfortable in my time out and I forgot that the purpose for this small exercise was to help me quiet my mind, to allow myself to lean back and get a bird’s eye view of what was happening in my life so that I could look for solutions to the spaces I was trying to navigate that had me feeling overwhelmed and in essence without clarity of purpose.
And when I finally figured out that I was using my time out as a way to keep myself from having to really deal with the what that had me stuck, I realized that what I had been doing was procrastinating in my solution quest and I allowed myself to be so comfortable being uncomfortable in this space that it became more comfortable to do nothing than to look for the path out and into the zone, I wanted to be in (the place where the magic happens).
The Uncomfort Zone had worked for me before, many times and I had always found myself having those aha breakthrough moments that allowed me to make tiny shifts and take small simple steps to get moving and to keep moving.
It’s a simple process, really, and I will tell you how to navigate it in case you’re stuck, like I was, looking for your Clarity.
These are the steps that I take when I’m in the Uncomfort Zone:
1. I allow myself to get quiet
2. I meditate on my uncomfortable comfortability in being stuck and start looking at the problem from a solution-based mindset and ask myself reflection questions.
a. What am I working on?
b. What do I believe is the reason for being stuck?
c. How is being stuck impacting my life?
d. Is what I believe true, and does it have to be true? (For me, and what I think is happening for most people, is that it usually comes down to a limiting belief that is holding me back which is usually an old story trying to dictate my future one.)
e. How can I learn from this and change my belief for my benefit to empower me to take action?
f. What supporting evidence do I need to help support me as I move through my limiting belief into a more empowering one?
3. Next, I lean back to get a bird’s eye view of the situation so that I can figure out the how to action steps based on the answers to my “what” questions and what was revealed to me.
4. I also reflect on and own that sometimes everything that I set out as a task doesn’t always fit into the plan that I have for a specific goal and that the only reason that that task was there in the first place was to fill time. I’ve come to realize that sometimes it’s better to not map it out all of the ways OR if I do insist on putting a task into a list of action steps, that if I’m not 100% sure about it then I also write beside that task that I’m not 100% sure about it and that I may have to revisit it when I get to this step and then I own it and I don’t make it wrong which keeps me from the negative self-talk.
5. Finally, when I allow myself to embrace these moments of reflection and I’m open to change and pivoting, if necessary, then I’m able to take small tiny action steps daily to keep moving forward and to keep growing.
One more tip that I’d love to share with you is this.
I started tracking my habits around my moments of uncertainty that lead me into my timeout zones and I’ve become more self-aware of and dialed into my trigger moments and the habits that I formed around those moments, and I have learned to switch up my habits into something more positive.
An example of how I used to do things would be that before when I would have carved out some time to do a daily task that was on my to-do list that I wanted to complete, I would often find myself checking my email or my social media feed first and then get distracted and waste valuable time scrolling often finding myself chasing a couple of rabbits down the rabbit hole (someone else’s content that although interesting was just me wasting valuable time) and keeping myself from doing the thing that I had set time for me to do.
Instead, I’ve since become hyper-aware of my time and how I’m spending it. I’m tracking my triggers and the habits I formed (becoming really super aware of them), and I am using set timers on my phone to get up and go and do whatever it is that I scheduled that time for. Instead of reading my email or social media scrolling, I use the alarm as my trigger to get up and go for that walk, or to work on that important task, and in essence changing my old habits to new ones.
I like to say that I’m using an old habit to create a new and more empowering one by becoming self-aware of and creative in those moments to make effective and positive changes.
Bottomline is this. When you find yourself in those moments of uncertainty, maybe feeling overwhelmed and lacking clarity, I want you to know that there is a way to find your way through it.
You can find your answers if you let yourself be intentional around those timeout moments and take a deeper look at the what so that you can learn the how and then take inspired action.
You can do this.
All you need is Faith and Trust in yourself with a little sprinkle of Believing that you are on the right path.
Leslie Gaudet, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Leslie Gaudet is a Mindset and Emotional Awareness Coach for women. She helps her clients achieve self-awareness around their emotional triggers by shifting their mindset to make better decisions when they respond, which allows them to bring more balance, peace, and harmony into their life.
Almost 4 decades working as a Legal Assistant and Paralegal in the corporate world left her feeling emotionally and physically drained. That’s when she decided that she had to make some changes for her to live the life she loves. Those changes involved learning to love herself (without judgment or criticism). That mindset is the key to everything because our mindset influences our thoughts, and in turn, our thoughts dictate our words and actions. Thru her journey to self-love and self-acceptance, Leslie became certified as a Life Coach and attained further certifications in Group Coaching and Emotional Intelligence.
She works closely with her clients, starting with mindset because that is the foundational piece to self-love and self-acceptance. She teaches her clients about triggers and how they affect us emotionally by helping her clients tune into, spot, and understand their own so that they can become more self-aware of their trigger moments and emotional responses.
With proven tools and techniques and with her guidance, her clients tap into and discover their true potential to living their life and loving the life they are living.
Leslie believes that you will transform your life when you Change Your Brain (the way you think).
