Your brain is constantly active. It has to be to keep you alive. The brain is continually receiving information, even when you’re asleep. So if you want to expand your mind, you must exercise your brain like any muscle to build new neural connections. Don’t worry; you won’t have any muscle aches because the brain feels no pain. After all, it has no pain receptors. So move out of your comfort zone and consciously choose to expand your mind.

Learning is not attained by chance. We must seek it for with ardor and attended to with diligence. ~ Abigail Adams

Why Should You Move Out of Our Comfort Zone?

You know what your comfort zone is, and you like to stay in it. It’s safe, and you’re familiar with what occurs in this area. However, sometimes you’re asked to stretch yourself a bit and go outside of your comfort zone.  When that happens, what do you do?  Do you decline, or do you show your bravery and do something new?  If you refuse, you choose to lose out on a great opportunity. But, on the other hand, if you decide to spread your wings, you soar with the eagles.

The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change. ~ Carl Rogers

Adventure Happens When You Expand Your Horizons

Most people operate in a comfortable rut that limits their possibilities, their thinking, and their achievements. If you want a more exciting life, then you have to take some risks. If you’re going to be more adventurous in your thinking, you should be bolder in your actions.

Deliberately push yourself out of your routine. Try things you rarely would do or scare you. It is by trying novel activities that you gain new experiences and skills. If you keep doing the same things, you learn very little.

Here are some ideas for pushing yourself out of your comfort zone.

1. Take music, painting, or dance lessons.
2. Take a training seminar to help your job skills.
3. Drive a different route to a familiar place. Science has shown this helps neuroplasticity. 
4. Change your routine and get out of the rut.  Try something new, do what you enjoy, meet up with friends, or take a walk in nature.  Changing up your day allows fresh energy and new thinking to enter.      
5. Talk to somebody new every day. Listen to them carefully.

If you want to succeed at a personal level, then you need to challenge yourself continually. Keep trying something new.

All the world is a laboratory to the inquiring mind. ~ Martin Fisher

How To Expand Out Of Your Comfort Zone

All the significant expansion in my life occurred when I moved out of my comfort zone.  Look over your life, and you will see a similar pattern.  When you stretch yourself in new ways, this opens doors to you that weren’t there before.  You can’t expect a new perspective if you aren’t willing to change your environment.  You have to make a change, and any positive change will do.

There may be unexpected and even negative results, but you are to use these to help you learn and to see differently.  Being courageous and moving towards something new is always rewarded.  Routines don’t cause expansion, and miracles happen when you reach out and develop yourself in new ways. 

You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one. Each day is different; each day brings a miracle of its own.  It’s just a matter of paying attention to this miracle. ~ Paulo Coelho

What Does It Mean To Have A Growth Mindset?

Chaos can seem comfortable because you can blame, shame, and judge others and yourself instead of dealing with your masks and armor. However, it’s a tool of the ego to keep you stuck.  You can’t grow and expand if you constantly fight through drama, and the egoic mind likes to fight.  Remember, fight or flight are the ego’s immediate reactions to life.

Many factors hamper your ability to be fully present.  The ego’s job is to keep you safe, so it reacts to your negative emotions when you feel uncomfortable about something.  This reactionary response from the egoic mind is why it’s important to know what topics, situations, or issues trigger you into a defensive posture.  Your hackles go up not because of the current circumstances but by the old emotional wounds you haven’t healed through forgiveness.

No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking. ~ Voltaire

What is Your Mindset?

You often have feelings and attachments to the past. The past can be challenging to let go of, and it affects you emotionally.  Yet you have a choice to make. Choose a different outlook, a growth mindset, instead of a fixed mindset. 

The fixed mindset is you believing your attributes and abilities are inherently limited and can’t be changed. For example, you may think that you’re as bright as you’ll ever be, and therefore, that thought process causes you not to learn new things.  Since you don’t believe your intelligence can expand with time and experience, you can’t change, and your future will be the same. 

A growth mindset is an exact opposite.  This mindset is founded on the conviction that your basic abilities can be cultivated and are malleable.  This belief allows one to expand the mind with enthusiasm, time, and a commitment to improving, learning, and becoming better than before.  With a growth mindset, failures are short-term setbacks, and the process is usually more important than the outcome.  So, with a growth mindset, your future is never predetermined. 

The fixed mindset is the most common mindset and the most harmful.  So, you need to know which perspective you favor to learn from the past and then choose a different future.  You can change your mindset just by thinking it through.

The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power. ~ Mary Pickford

You Must Choose to Expand

In this day and age, you don’t lack access to information to help you grow.  You have the internet 24/7, but do you apply the resources you have at your disposal?

Knowing isn’t the same as growing. Aging may happen automatically, but expansion doesn’t always come with experience. First, you must decide you want to expand. It is a conscious choice.

What viewpoints keep you from expanding? Two main ones get in your way:

a) You believe failure is terminal. Therefore, you allow fear to keep you stagnant.

Failing doesn’t mean someone is a failure. Mistakes are an unavoidable part of life, and disappointment often teaches you lessons you could never learn otherwise. Missteps are steppingstones to accomplishment.

b) You believe you don’t have the extra time to improve yourself.

Time is the one resource you cannot recapture once it’s lost; there’s no way to make up for months and years of neglecting personal growth.  You always make time for what you think is essential.  How much television do you watch in a week?  You probably have the time to invest in yourself but choose to do something else instead. 

Believe you can…. and you are halfway there! ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Creating Space for New Ideas

Unlearning is a powerful tool that enables you to create space to change the world’s reality into what you desire.  By abandoning obsolete ideas, you allow expansion to occur in our lives.  This unlearning may be an uncomfortable process because the ego doesn’t like change. But change is neutral because you determine how you feel about the new circumstances. You can choose. 

When you are defensive of your position or are feeling ashamed or frustrated by the conversation, these are signs you may need to deal with an outdated belief.  Or maybe you are angry and fearful because of the harm you are experiencing from an old belief system. 

Part of unlearning realizes what you believed was false.  It isn’t true for you, which means you were wrong to trust it.  Yikes, you made a mistake- you failed.  Not really.  You only fail if you recognize the error in your thinking, and you don’t correct it.  You learned from the circumstances by taking responsibility for your incorrect thought process and choosing to alter it. This unlearning, releasing the old to accept the new line of thought, allows personal and spiritual expansion. 

In some sense, our ability to open the future will depend not on how well we learn anymore, but on how well we can unlearn. ~ Alan Kay

Moving Forward Expanding Your Mind

Expansion of who you are means you’re consciously choosing to move out of your comfort zone and have a growth mindset. One area that will help you expand more quickly is to change your self-talk.  You need to speak encouraging words to yourself instead of allowing the egoic mind to chatter negatively.

When you are your own cheerleader, you’re more likely to succeed as you step into exciting new adventures.  And even if you make a misstep, you will be quick to see the lesson you are to learn. 

The extent to which your consciousness is limited or expanded is the extent to which you experience being divided or divine. ~ Erin Fal Haskell

Do you need to learn how to expand your mind? Do you need help to find ways to help you have a growth mindset or better self-talk? If so, please reach out to me at TerriKozlowski.com, and we can put together an action plan for you to create the life you desire.

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Why You Should Consciously Choose To Expand Your Mind Each Day

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Do you wonder about ways to expand your mind? Expanding out of your comfort zone is how you grow and live the life of your dreams.

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Terri Kozlowski

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Kozmic Soul Solutions LLC

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