So you want to change your life? Start embracing the unknown
Often the unknown and the unfamiliar can seem rather scary. You don’t know what’s going to happen. Your mind often drifts towards the ‘worst case scenario’ rather than the possibilities.
But if you’re able to change your mindset and learn to embrace these situations by challenging yourself, it will change your life.
Why we fear the unknown
As I touched upon already, our perception of the unknown is often a negative one. We can’t predict the outcome of something we’ve never experienced before. We’re afraid of being physically or emotionally hurt. It’s scary.
It’s perfectly natural to fear the unknown. It’s a biological survival instinct that has kept our species alive for so long. But in current times, the dangers we face are much less life-threatening than those that our ancestors before us experienced.
“Bran thought about it. ‘Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?’
‘That is the only time a man can be brave,’ his father told him.”
This line from A Game of Thrones by George R R Martin is very poignant when thinking about fear. It will cripple you and damage your personal and professional growth. It takes courage to tackle your fears head-on.
The unknown should begin to excite you
I believe that among all of the unknown experiences and moment waiting for me in the world, the positive ones significantly outnumber the negative. There are so many amazing people I haven’t met, different foods I haven’t tried, cities I haven’t visited and so on. If I chose to fear to speak to new people or travelling to different countries and cities,
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face - Eleanor Roosevelt
However, out there, in the void of unexperienced moments in life, lives a new version of yourself. A more confident and experienced person.
Someone quoted to me once: “Hell is the person you became meeting the person you could have become”. This stuck with me as a reminder to always try to push myself to be the best person I can be.
Find your path into the unknown and follow it
Each person will have different ways to expand and explore their comfort zone. It’s completely up to you how fast and deep you travel along this path, but the important part is that you keep following it. However long it takes. There may not be an end.
Can we ever truly finish expanding our comfort zone?
For me, the first step into the unknown as living abroad for a year. I took a job in Germany, away from the comfort of my long term and well paid position at a good company in order to grow and challenge myself. I moved there with just a suitcase and a rucksack full of things. And guess what? It was a fantastic experience and now I can only say I wish I had done it sooner.
Right now, my next comfort-zone expanding endeavour is to travel the world. Through the less easy to navigate countries in Asia and beyond. If I’ve learned anything from recent experiences, it’s that I’ve built up the challenges to be far more scary than they are in reality.
Perhaps travelling is also something for you. Maybe not. That doesn’t matter. But find a way to challenge yourself, even just a little bit, as often as possible and you’ll soon learn to embrace the unknown.
