If the anxiety starts to feel distressful, try to refocus your thoughts on all the positive reasons why you want to do what you are feeling anxious about. Doing something different can make almost everyone feel a sense of normal discomfort, but that feeling doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it if you believe it will bring you closer to something you want in life. Distress is often the result of focusing mostly on what could go wrong instead of what could go right. Your belief that you can succeed is likely not strong enough to carry you through in a successful way and any unsuccessful experience will just reinforce any negative beliefs you have about doing something new.ĭistressful anxiety occurs when your thoughts about what you don’t want in the situation outnumber the thoughts about what you do want. When you are in a state of distress this is the wrong time to act. Distress tends to feel consuming and overwhelming, you may even feel panicked or like you might die if you take the action. For example, if you’ve always wanted to sing on stage but your anxiety overwhelms you so much that you completely freeze up, the anxiety is preventing you from achieving what you want. Anxiety becomes a problem, however, and creates what we consider to be distress when it starts to feel overwhelming and it gets in the way of doing something that we want to do by impairing our ability. When you are feeling discomfort what you want to do should still feel exciting and like something you are looking forward to. Growing your comfort zone is important if you wish to expand your life experiences and change anything about your life the way it is.Ī healthy level of discomfort is a form of anticipatory anxiety which may even improve your ability to perform many activities. In essence, your comfort zone will follow you, and each time you step outside it and tolerate the initial discomfort of the new space, you give your comfort zone an opportunity to grow. The good news, however, is that if it is just normal discomfort, and you can tolerate staying outside of your comfort zone, you will eventually become comfortable in the new space, and your comfort zone will have expanded. Any time you step outside your comfort zone and do something new you will experience some type of discomfort as that is the very definition of being outside the comfort zone. WHATS YOUR FEAR HOW TOWhat you really need to do is learn how to distinguish discomfort from distress. You should also not just feel the fear and do it anyway unless you have reasonably assessed where the fear is coming from and that what you want to do is really in your best interest. Fear is an emotion we have that alerts us to possible danger and tells us to prepare for it. It is impossible to live life without fear nor should you want to. When you first step outside your comfort zone in life, you will likely experience some type of fear which is very normal.
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