Expand Your Comfort Zone + Let Love Guide You

Growing up I was quite shy, only comfortable being myself around those with whom I was closest. Put me in a new situation around new people, and I immediately clammed up, faded into the background, hid under the radar…anything to keep from having the attention put on me.

I hated being in these situations, so much that I did what I could to prevent them. Like sticking to what and who I was comfortable with…

Put me on a horse flying (okay running) full speed ahead to turn a barrel or weave between some poles and I was a-okay.

Send me to the river to hang with a few of my best girlfriends and I’d laugh and joke all day long.

Sit me at the lunch table with my “high-school gang” and I’d ask any question that entered my mind without fear of rebuke (and I asked a lot of questions!).

I had a locked-down comfort zone with little to no interest in pushing against it. It served me well (or so I thought) until I started to seriously ask myself what I wanted to experience in life. Before giving myself permission to explore in this manner, my MO was to push desires that lie outside of my comfort zone away.

In college, I remember being moved by a Peace Corps volunteer recounting his experience as a way of encouraging others to volunteer. I thought it sounded exciting and adventurous, but with the same speed that the desire arose, I squelched it, telling myself “that’s just not me.”

Looking back, I can hardly believe I was once that person. But I was for the first two decades of my life. For many, it’s these same years that set the tone for how the rest of their lives will be lived. Patterns become set and without being challenged, they remain in place, leaving them caged within their own self-imposed limits.

I started to challenge my self-imposed limits in my early twenties. It started with a simple “Be, Do, Have” exercise. I wrote down 50 things (or qualities) that I wanted to “be”…50 that I wanted to “do”…and 50 that I wanted to “have” (yes, 50 in each category!).

This exercise serves to free up energy that has become stuck in old thought-patterns by giving yourself permission to explore being, having, or doing things differently than you previously conceived possible for yourself.

Doing this showed me that I was no longer satisfied with living in the cocoon of comfort that I had set for myself. I wanted to travel in a foreign country speaking their language….

A few years later, I was being dropped off at my first home stay family in Costa Rica with little more than the ability to say “Hola, como estas?” Talk about pushing my comfort zone!

But the most awesome thing about comfort zones is that once you take a step in a new direction, your entire comfort zone expands exponentially (not just with the step you took)…

A few years later those initial comfort-zone-busting two months in Costa Rica turned into living in Guatemala for nearly one year, where I lived with another home stay family and volunteered as a teacher in a nearby indigenous community teaching in Spanish!

Once you do something in one form, you open yourself to doing the same thing in the multitude of other forms that it could take. It just takes getting the stagnant energy to start flowing. That’s why the “Be, Do, Have” exercise is so important.

For me, it’s not about using the exercise to create a list of life goals. It was at first, but today, it’s not. In fact, today the “Be, Do, Have” exercise has shifted to asking “What do I truly want? What do I truly desire?” with the intention of separating desires of ego from those of God. The “I” in these questions refers to your eternal connection to God, not ego.

The intention of the exercise is to bring about all desires without judging them…again, it’s to get the energy moving and flowing first, and then, to separate the “wheat from the chaff” as it’s referred to in The Way of Mastery.

The chaff is our belief in smallness (ego) and the wheat is the food that gives life, because it’s filled with the Love of God.

The goal of the exercise is to find and connect to the life force of energy that is always flowing through you as you, before it becomes entangled in the thought-patterns of ego. It moves through you as love.

When you harness the ability to connect to it, simply let it flow through you in the way in which it wants to be extended into the world, without regard for the outcome (the point at which it typically becomes entangled in ego).

Ego is always concerned with perpetuating itself, which is why it’s consumed with focusing on results. When the results are good, it feels as if something can be added to itself and when they’re not good, it feels as if something has been subtracted from itself.

This is why I advocate the “Be, Do, Have” exercise as a method for freeing up energy to flow and not as a list of life goals to accomplish to feel that you have become something that you previously weren’t.

You are love. You have always been love. Nothing that you “become, do, or have” will change that. The objective is to become conscious to the love that you are and to allow it to express through you in the ways that it desires, without attaching to it. A tough pattern to crack, for sure, but when this happens, true joy and inner peace is known.

Back to the business of separating the “wheat from the chaff” (as described in Lesson 4 in The Way of Mastery):

Step 1: Close your eyes and begin to calm your mind by taking a few deep breaths using the “so hum” pattern…on the inhale mentally say “so” and on the exhale mentally say “hum”.

Step 2: After two or three breaths (or when you feel ready), begin to ask yourself, “What do I truly desire?” Spend about two minutes allowing what wants to arise to come to your mind. It can be anything from wanting an ice cream (or a mocha!) to wanting to only teach love.

One objective of this exercise is to avoid suppression, so do your best to refrain from judging what comes up. Plus, just because something comes up, doesn’t mean you have to act on it. Mastery is allowing everything that wants to arise in your awareness to arise with the ability to know what to and what not to act on.

Step 3: Just free flow for a minute or so, writing down as much as you can remember in a journal.

Step 4: Repeat the exercise seven times for one session and commit to doing this for seven days in a row.

Step 5: Look back over your seven days (be sure to wait until you have finished all seven days!) and begin to see what patterns emerge. What seems to be repeating itself? What is based in love? What is based in fear? Trace the pattern to love—to the point right before it becomes entangled in ego desires—and begin to focus your energy and attention there. What inner work and healing needs to occur to disentangle the energy from becoming enmeshed in the egoic thought-pattern?

Love is trying to be expressed but, at some point, it’s becoming hijacked by ego’s own desires for wholeness and fulfillment. Work to unknot those desires so that love can flow freely through you. Keep at it until the process becomes second nature. Your life will change tremendously.

Freeing up those stuck energy patterns has led to some of the most amazing experiences in my life, many of which were unexpected, like writing A Call to the Heart! A book was produced through this energy! How incredible is that?

Open yourself to being a conduit for love’s expression. Commit to meeting love at the very moment that it is trying to birth itself through you and allow it to flow freely through you into the world, in the manner in which it wants to be expressed.

I don’t know where or how you’ll be guided to express love, but I can guarantee that it will lead to the most honest expression of truth. Only love is real. Let it guide you.

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To expanding our comfort zones + being conduits of love,

Shanna