The Confessions of a Confused Mind.

I have a new color of nail polish on today. Instead of my usual color, I have used something that will make my feet stand out...literally. And I realized from the clothes I wear to the type of laptop I used to the pens I buy, from the wall hangings in my room to the equipments in the gym I work out on....I am ridiculously comfortable in my comfort zone. So whenever I see something new....I walk towards it observe it....walk away...thinking some other time...lets save. But if I see something old and well used in style many times by me...well I tell myself, life is all about investments isnt it. I do buy it. Ive seen myself do it....8 million times already...and I suspect it will happen another 8 million times, unless I understand the reason behind my own comfort zone and on what grounds is it built...I would probably never be able to feel free.

Ive always looked at people who enjoy their minds freedom with some amount of jealousy. When I started building boundaries around me to keep people out and myself safe, all I ended up doing is fence myself in. I thought it was at the time the best thing to do. Pretend that certain things are not important. That everything has a logic...I just have to put my mind to it. I found my comfort zone, trying to be everybody but me. It was easy to blend in. It was also easy to loose touch with what seemed important and what should ideally be not. I should've learnt to be more of myself by learning the best from others...whilst knowing that what I have is ok too. Comfort Zone makes it difficult to admire yourself. Comfort Zone prevents you from embracing yourself. Is this fear? What part of your past plays a role in this? Because I'm sure it has.


I know a lot of us would've spent a lot of time figuring out where we went wrong. And what did we do to get it right. I know I have. But with each passing year I realize things dont get tough, we just choose to call them tough, and blame the stars. Life is a choice. Everything we do is a choice. While I agree there are many things that are beyond our control, how we react to that is also a choice. I'm on the other side of 25. Fast approaching late 20s. I look back and think, how many times have I chosen to play safe, for many reasons maybe. Maybe the timing wasnt right. Or perhaps I was'nt convinced enough. Now when I look back, half my choices were born out of instinct. And I spent a lot of time, not trusting my instinct. I told myself I'm scared, maybe I was, maybe I was'nt. But even though in my heart I would know, it was the best decision made, because I would'nt feel an iota of regret. But what governed the rest of the course of my life, was the choice I made in my reactions to it. The choice to react. What a powerful statement. The best decisions are made in desperation, did we know that. Forget results. But the best decisions have been in desperation. But our willingness to guide the outcome as desired, is really an outcome of desperation. Because in desperation, we are clear. In desperation, we know what we want. In desperation, we know what we must do in order to achieve it. In desperation.....we can see the roadmap clearly. In desperation...you have no choice, but to hang on to hope and never give up. In desperation, we are more open to risks. So, why was desperation always a bad thing? Maybe it's how we react in desperation, that makes it a bad thing.


Risks. The word going down. In my line of work, Risk Management is a great part of our work. Foresee, Document, Plan, Document, Act, Implement, Monitor, Control, Document and finally despatch the product. The 12 principles of risk in project management are - 1. organizational risk 2. Stakeholder involvement 3. Alignment with Organizational Objectives 4. Risk Analysis 5. Reporting Structure 6. Defining roles and responsibilities 7. Support from Top Management 8. Regular meetings to detect oncoming risks 9. Review 10. Overcoming barriers to risk 11. Culture that acts as enablers 12. Continual Improvement. Bottomline of this piece of gyan is you can do a lot to identify risks, and a whole lot more to reduce it....but you can never eliminate it. So risk is an integral part of our life. Risk and Comfort Zone are inversely proportional to each other. Cost benefit analysis would probably reveal the returns would be much more if you did take a risk, whilst that which you stand to gain from not taking a risk would bind you to your comfort zone forever with serious emotional implications such as regret, wonder, mind numbing escapism, etc. I thought it through. Coming out of my comfort zone is...highly essential. Albeit, once you do, the journey from the risks is to yet another comfort zone, but then, what the heck life is about progress right, and it is better to progress from one comfort zone to another, than to remain at the elementary level and never having the experience.



I did some looking up, and apparently Dr. Phil has something to say about Comfort Zone with a schematic..!! With Happiness on y-axis and Comfort Level on x-axis, I think while being on your comfort zone, Happiness peaks initially, but as you go along comfort zone happiness starts dropping exponentially until infinity. I'd say if I were to quote anyone right now, it would be from "Into The Wild" - Its not necessarily important in life just to be strong, but to feel strong.


In time, we learn, in time, we also learn to unlearn whatever we learnt. And in time, we learn to survive. Perhaps time will teach us how to live. And in this, I hope we are uncomfortable enough so we take a risk and capitalize on that opportunity, and just Live. We owe ourselves just that and nothing less.