Last week I wrote the biggest lesson that I learnt with Professor Tomas Lopez. Simple summary of the lesson, we’re conditioned to think in certain manner. It cause more trouble to our daily situation then anything else. I was fortunate to have been reminded of this problem of mine (our mind) by Professor Mankad too – read here. Professor Lopez put me out of my comfort zone many a times. Getting out of comfort zone is very important if you want to earn some pearls in life.
Here is a short story of loss, that one must avoid in life. This story is from the book – Prayers of the frog Volume 1 and Volume 2. An awesome book with short stories and life lessons.
Awareness
An oyster saw a loose pearl that had fallen into the crevice of a rock on the ocean bed. After great effort she managed to retrieve the pearl and place it just beside her on a leaf.
She knew that humans searched for pearls and thought, “This pearl will tempt them, so they will take it and let me be.”
When a pearl diver showed up, however, his eyes were conditioned to look for oysters and not for pearls resting on leaves.
So he grabbed the oyster which did not happen to have a pearl and allowed the real pearl to roll back into the crevice in the rock.
From the book – Prayers of the frog V1
The author concludes – You know exactly where to look. That is the reason why you fail to find God.
It happens with all of us, we look for happiness in something other than what we have in hand. This is where we end up being unhappy. Many a times we know the answer to – “When will I be happy?” Yet we miss the path to the goal. In fact, when we achieve the goal; our goal post has already changed. This is the problem of our mind, we are never calm, even before we reach somewhere we find the next destination. Here the destination can be as easy as the next venue for dinner or as ambitious as next company, job, or car. What we need to change is our way of thinking.
Our life experience and circumstances programs us to become a certain individual over time. Be it the diver of the above story, or me or you. We must ask a question to ourselves – are we ready to get out of our comfort zone?
How to get out of the comfort zone?
Our comfort zone is the worst enemy of our possibilities. As was the case with the Digger. I think we can get out of comfort zone by some of the ways such as
- Getting into tough spots with choice – life is a trouble… only death is not I was put in those situations by Prof Lopez
- Awareness in actions, if you had read my blog on conditioned mind, you would understand the context
- Get out of your ego, do something that does not conform to your definition of YOU. Read how Mumbai brushed my ego
- Learn from past experience (slingshot example), yet try things without getting bogged down by your past experiences
- Remember our perceptions create our reality, do not limit yourself with those limited perceptions of yours
- Keep things simple as ABC – story from Prayers of the frog
- Think and know, you are nothing in front of the creation, why limit yourself, why feel low, embarrassed even before trying?
The Buddha also went beyond his comfort zone to be enlightened. In fact he had put his everything on the gamble. Let me know which one you can relate to? Or what you think is even better method of getting out of comfort zone, it would interesting to learn.
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