AMY HANSEN

Remaining in your comfort zone feels safe.  There is so much discomfort of the unknown.  You think of the worst case scenario from that one time something bad happened when you stepped outside of your comfort zone.  You just want to protect yourself.  Your brain reminds you of previous traumatic events that leave you feeling scared, terrified, and paralyzed to step outside your comfort zone.  But, there is a clear sign of when you’re ready to step outside your comfort zone.

Familiarity

You hold yourself back from the going after your goals and dreams in life.  All because you’re programmed to seek what you already know.  You’re constantly trying to find what you’re most used to.  You’re guided by the comfort of staying close to what feels familiar and safe.  You reject what doesn’t, even if it is possibility better for you in the long run. 

Control

It’s natural to experience...

Setting a goal is outside your normal comfort zone.  A goal pushes you and challenges you to stretch yourself.  You have to do things that you’ve never done before.  Otherwise, you would have achieved this goal already.  All of these new things are scary because it’s outside your comfort zone.  Your comfort zone is meant to keep you safe.  That’s why you keep returning to your comfort zone any time you face a challenge or get scared. 

Fear Of The Unknown

Stepping outside your comfort zone is scary.  There is so much unknown out there.  Your comfort zone is meant to keep you safe.  But, remaining there means you don’t push yourself to fully experience all that life has to offer.  Instead, you’re paralyzed by fear.  Maybe you’ve stepped outside your comfort zone before and you’ve failed, made a mistake, did something embarrassing, etc.  These past experiences don’t...

Your negative inner critic often tells you all the fears, worries, and doubts that keep you paralyzed from taking action towards your goal.  Yet, if you truly want to experience life, you must learn to have the courage to quiet your inner critic and take action anyway.  Your goals and dreams won’t wait forever.  It’s time to overcome that negative inner critic that’s been holding you back so that you can go after your goals and dreams in life!

Finding Balance

You can’t expect to achieve your goals and dreams if you never actually go after what you truly want in life.  The key is to find a balance between consciously thinking something through and following your heart.  In both cases, you have to watch for your inner critic.  Start with a blank piece of paper and draw a line down the middle.  Write down the pros of your goal on one side and the cons on the other side.  If you realize most of the cons are based in...

Your childhood dreams are often vastly different than the dreams you have as an adult.  This is mostly based on how much life experience you’ve had.  As a child, the world is full of possibility and anything can happen.  As an adult, your scope becomes far more limited because of past failures, missteps, or what other people have told you.  You’ve been conditioned to believe that you need to be more realistic with your goals and dreams.  You start to think that you can’t achieve anything you want.  However, this dream has been placed on your heart for a reason.  It’s time to go after your goals and dreams in life rather than keeping each one bottled up inside of you, never to be achieved.  Here is how to avoid limiting your dreams.

Childhood

As a child, you go after your goals and dreams without much fear.  You don’t have previous experiences telling you all the reasons why you shouldn’t. ...

Integrity is a powerful word.  To be in integrity with yourself means you do what you say you’re going to do.  This is especially important when you’re working towards achieving your goal.  If you say you’re going to do something, then do it!  Otherwise, you’ll find yourself feeling down, upset, and not taking action to achieve your goal.  Here is how you can use integrity to achieve your goal.

Committed

Being in integrity helps you to stay committed to your goal.  You consistently take action towards your goal and make accomplishing those tasks a non negotiable.  When you’re in integrity, you’re less likely to be swayed by temptations and distractions that hinder your progress.  You follow through and get the tasks completed no matter what.  Even when you face a challenge or obstacle, you remain committed to your goal.  You keep going and don’t give up.  Being in integrity holds...

Often times when you’re working to achieve your goal you’ll lose motivation.  You’ll quickly lose steam to push forward and keep going.  Motivation comes and goes.  You can’t rely on it to achieve your goal.  But, what you can rely on is discipline.  The discipline within yourself to take the actions necessary to achieve your goal.  Here is how having discipline will help you to achieve your goal.

What Is Discipline?

Discipline is staying committed to your goal no matter what.  When you have discipline, you take the action to achieve your goal anyway.  You do the tough work, even when you don’t want to.  Sure, other things may sound more fun and exciting but you know you have to complete the task to achieve your goal above all else.  Working towards your goal becomes a non negotiable for you when you have discipline.

No Excuses

Having the discipline to achieve your goal is not easy. ...

Sometimes you stop taking action towards your goals, whether that was intentional or unintentional.  Getting yourself back into action can be difficult.  You’ve been on pause for so long, that it’s become easier to do just nothing rather than the tough work to achieve your goal.  But, you’re not making progress towards achieving your goal and it’s really starting to bother you.  Here is how you can get yourself back into action after taking a break from your goal.

Inner Voice

The first step is to notice the signs.  You'll know it’s time to get yourself back into action after taking a break from your goal when you hear your inner voice speak up.  You’ll notice a niggle inside of you saying it’s time to get up and do something to achieve your goal.  But, you’ve been on break so you say not today, maybe tomorrow.  It’s easier to push down that inner voice and quiet it rather than doing...

Sometimes you get discouraged working towards your goal.  Maybe you’re not seeing the progress you had hoped and it’s a slow, arduous process.  It could be that you’ve hit a wall and you just can’t seem to move forward.  Perhaps you’re running on empty and don’t feel like you have the energy or motivation to keep going at this point.  All of these scenarios can lead you to stop taking action towards your goal.  It’s perfectly okay to take a break from working on your goal if your intent is to reflect and recharge with a plan to get back into action.  But, you might be taking too long of a break from your goal.

Taking A Break

Taking breaks is important and necessary to your overall success.  You can’t keep going a million miles an hour without a rest period.  Otherwise, you’ll just collapse and never make it to the finish line of achieving your goal.  You need time to rest and...

Living in the past keeps you focused on looking backwards.  You think about how things were and what happened.  You dwell on certain situations and all the possible scenarios if things would have gone differently.  Perhaps you’d be somewhere else today.  But, you can’t change the past.  You’re here now in the present and you have to learn to look towards the future.  Otherwise, you’ll just remain stuck and never be able to live life to your full potential.

Your Focus

What you focus on becomes your reality.  Maybe you’re focusing on the past because you liked where you were.  Things seemed easier, peaceful, and a less stressful time.  You may not have recognized it in that moment but, looking back, you sure appreciated where you were.  Take those good moments and carry each one forward with you into the future.  Those memories are precious and shouldn’t be forgotten.  It’s...

Sometimes you have a plan and then something unpredictable happens that makes it impossible to stick to.  Think about how you react in these situations.  You may find yourself feeling frustrated, angry, upset, and overwhelmed that things didn’t go as planned.  Plus, now you have to come up with a completely new plan.  This doesn’t make things easy.  But, things aren’t going as planned for a reason.

There’s A Reason

For some reason, the universe has thrown you a detour.  In these moments, you have to pay attention.  Maybe you’ve been stuck on autopilot and you’re just floating through your normal routine.  Instead, be present and look around to see if you’re missing something that’s right in front of you.  Perhaps it’s an experience that’s pushing you out of your comfort zone and you’re going to learn something new.  It could simply be spending time with the...