recreatingreality.com

It’s amazing how well humans adjust to their environments.  Sometimes, it is shocking.  Think of the abused wife who has thoughts of leaving her abusive husband, but creates one excuse after another as to why she should stay.  It’s for the kids.  She has no place to go.  How would she support herself and the kids?  And, on and on and on.

The abused wife was shocked the first time her husband struck her.  Of course, he promised he would never do it again.  She believed him.  He hit her again.  She got a black eye.  She did not leave him.  Instead, she told her friends that she ran into a cabinet door or some other unbelievable lie.  The husband apologized and brought her flowers.  He promised he would never do it again.  Then a few days later, he hit her again.  She thought about leaving but didn’t.  He apologized the next day, swearing to never strike her again.  A pattern developed.  And, the wife stayed with the husband.

Now, you are probably thinking as I have thought, what kind of woman would stay with a man who hit her.  The answer is there are lots of us.  You know someone who is an abused spouse, perhaps better than you will admit.  But, the fact is that if the abused does not leave after the first hit, he/she may never leave… or will wait years to leave.  First of all, he or she will start believing the lies he/she tells other people.

Then a really odd thing takes place.  The abused person and the abuser become comfortable in the situation.  It becomes a habit.  And, habits are hard to break.  The couple has developed a comfort zone.  As outsiders, we may look at the scenario and wonder how in the world anyone… or any couple… could live like that.  As outsiders we are quick to judge.  Many of us have said that we certainly wouldn’t live in those conditions.

Each of us have found a comfort zone.  Whether ours is experiencing overwhelming credit card debt, worrying about how we will pay our monthly bills, or whatever.  We each settle for something in life that when we think about it, if we saw another person in our situation, we would make a judgment call on the other person.

The point is simple.  Each of us get comfortable over time with the best in our lives and the worst in our lives.  We may think about making a change, but we don’t.  We wallow in the comfort of our circumstances, good or bad.  We say we want to change, but we become so accustomed to our lives that we just go through the motions and if change does occur, it is usually by chance.

Each of us have a comfort zone.  One day when the heating and air conditioning repair man was readjusting my thermostat he mentioned that between 68 degrees and 72 degrees was what they call the dead zone.  I looked at him for a moment, not quite understanding his meaning.  He said that most of us, the non-repairman group, call it the comfort zone.  In the industry it is called the dead zone because it is between those temperatures that most of us keep our thermostats and for the greater part of the year it’s the range where we do not use our heaters or air conditioners.

I thought about the repairman’s statement after he left.  The comfort zone we each accept in our lives is really a dead zone.  We just lay down and accept whatever comes our way because to change would take us out of our comfort zones.  We would have to engage in thinking and planning time.  We would have to take action.  We would find ourselves in unfamiliar territory.

Take a look around yourself.  Are you stuck in a comfort zone?  Or, are you in the dead zone?  Have the courage to face the truth.  Don’t start believing the lies you tell other people.  Decide to either accept your reality as it is and stop whining about it or be prepared to start living again by stepping outside your comfort zone.