This week, I have written about stepping out of your comfort zone and today I wanted to equip you with a tangible tool to help make that happen. As I promised in yesterday’s blog entry, here is a self-hypnosis process to help make it easier to start taking action and get out of your comfort zone.

If you’ve not read the previous days articles, it is important to do so, read the following:

1. Important Reasons to Step Out Of Your Comfortable Zone.
2. 7 Steps To Leave Your Comfortable Zone.

Prior to starting the self-hypnosis process, there is a little bit of preparation to complete:

Firstly, do the audit in the previous blog entry. Make sure you are aware of what your comfort zone is; that is, understanding what makes you comfortable and what makes you uncomfortable.

Secondly, answer these rather unusual questions; if your comfort had a colour, what colour is it? If it had a sound, what sound is that? If your comfort zone had a feeling, what is that feeling?

Thirdly, think of a positive affirmation, self-suggestion, positive cognition that you can say to yourself later on within this session. Something positive, motivating, upbeat, encouraging, phrased in the present tense, and fairly simple, such as these, for example:

“I enjoy being out of my comfort zone”
“I feel so alive”
“I love the positive change this creates in my life”

Diligently equipped with all that information, you can move on to the self-hypnosis process.

Step One: Induce hypnosis.

You can do so by any means you desire or know of. You can use the process in my Science of self-hypnosis book, use the free audio we give away on this website to practice or have a look at the following articles as and when you need them; they are basic processes to help you simply open the door of your mind:

Heavy Arm Self-Hypnosis Induction Method
Using Eye Fixation for Self-Hypnosis
The Chiasson Self-Hypnosis Method
Hand to Face Self-Hypnosis Induction
Using Magnetic Hands for Self-Hypnosis
The Coin Drop Self-Hypnosis Induction

Once you have induced hypnosis, move on to step two.

Step Two: Imagination deepener.

Imagine being in your comfort zone. Imagine being in a safe environment of your life. This may be a room, doing a particular behaviour or anything at all that symbolically or realistically represents your comfort zone in your mind. You might like to recall and think back to the information you wrote down following your comfort zone audit.

Imagine there is a tint and a hue of the colour of your comfort zone. Think of the colour.  Hear the sound that assures you of your comfort zone. Think of the sound. Notice the feelings flowing through your body that let you know you are in your comfort zone. Safe, secure, comfortable. Think of the feelings as you feel them.

Really create your comfort zone and just be in it, let every thought, every feeling, every sound, and every aspect of this take you deeper into hypnosis. Then with your comfort zone firmly established in your imagination, going deeper into hypnosis, move on to step three.

Step Three: Goal focus.

Start to think about one of your goals that is out of your comfort zone. A goal that perhaps makes you a little nervous, or that you have avoided before. A goal that is ultimately very rewarding and will enrich your life greatly, but is out of your comfort zone.

Imagine and create an image of you doing the actions required to complete that goal. Whilst sat in your comfort zone, just imagine and create an image of yourself doing what is required to be done in order for you to achieve that goal that is outside of your comfort zone.

With that in your mind, move on to the next step.

Step Four: Stepping out of your comfort zone.

Imagine stepping out of the colour, sound and feeling of your comfort zone and stepping into the shoes of the image of yourself doing that goal. Step into those shoes, see through those eyes, hear through those ears, feel with that heart. Become that version of you. Notice how you hold your body, notice the thoughts you are thinking, hear the sounds around you, see the sights, and feel the feelings of taking this action.


Notice different colours, notice different sounds, notice different feelings. Start to notice how enjoyable these are. You have stepped out of your comfort zone. Enjoy it and start to engage in the actions required to achieve this goal.

When you have spent a good period of time really engaging with this, then move on to the next step.

Step Five: Using your cognitions.

While remaining here in this scene, taking action, outside of your comfort zone, start to say your positive cognition to yourself. Say it like you truly mean it, like it feels true at an emotional level. Convince yourself of it when you say it to yourself, invest your belief in it. Use your own words, phrase it in the present tense, and repeat it to yourself several times (8-10 min) until it starts to have an effect on how you feel. For example (as suggested previously):

“I enjoy being out of my comfort zone”
“I feel so alive”
“I love the positive change this creates in my life”

Once you have done that, move on to the next step.

Step Six: Reflection.

Reflect upon the benefits to you and your life of truly taking this particular step outside of your comfort zone. Start to consider all the positive ramifications to you that this has. When you are out there, engaging in activities, achieving goals that have an impact on your life, start to recognise how enjoyable life is.

Reflect and feel good about what you are doing, then move on to the next step.

Step Seven: Symbolic imagery.

Outside of your comfort zone, in this place you are imagining in your mind, start to see, hear and feel a change happening. See boundaries being expanded. See horizons being widened. Interpret it in whatever way is right for you, but start to see your boundaries and horizons growing, expanding and developing, representing the ongoing change you are creating.


Step Eight: Relaxation & desensitisation.

The aim here is to spread relaxation into various parts of your body. As you do this, you’ll desensitise any worry, stress or anxious thoughts you used to have about stepping out of your comfort zone. Here are some ideas of how to do this:

a) Use your internal dialogue and simply tell yourself that each part of your body is relaxing. For example “my toes are relaxing deeper… and now my ankles… moving into my lower legs…” and so on.

b) As you work your way through your body, you may like to use a colour or light or imagined warming sensation and spread that through the muscles and imagine the colour (ideally one you associate with relaxing) spreading through the muscles as you reach each part of your body.

c) Additional cognitions. Richard Bandler uses the word “soften” as he relaxes parts of the body. He focuses on each muscle and then says “soften” as he works through, you might like to do the same.

d) You may imagine a relaxing sound moving through your body.

e) You may imagine the muscles limp, loose, dormant; maybe like a loose rubber band, or a rag doll, or whatever else you can imagine to indicate the relaxation spreading. i learned a great technique from Terrence Watts who suggested imagining the body as a candle and as the candle softened and got warm and liquid-like, so the muscles of the body got warm and softened and so on.

Ideally, use a combination of these elements. Bask in the relaxation you create, enjoy it and enjoy this time as well spent. You may like to repeat this step a couple of times to make sure you develop the progressive relaxation as much as possible.

Once you have done so, move on to the next step.

Step Nine: Action plan.

Start to think about the actions you can take this very day to make that change and step out of your comfort zone. What are you going to do next? How are you going to make this happen? Where is your comfort zone and how are you going to step out of it today?

With that firmly in your mind, assured of that action, proceed to the final step.

Step Ten: Exit hypnosis.

If you use my own protocol as shown in my science of self-hypnosis book, count yourself up and out from one through to five. Otherwise, open your eyes, wiggle your toes and get oriented to the place you are in.

Once you have run through this a few times, you should start to develop an internal culture with yourself of doing things differently, of stepping out of your comfort zone and of really enriching your experience of life. Go enjoy it!

If you’d like to learn more or if this has resonated with you in some way, then visit these pages:

1. Has safety-seeking behaviour held you back and is it still doing so now? Do you need to believe in yourself more and step out of your comfort zone?
Coaching with Adam Eason Or Hypnotherapy with Adam Eason
2. Would you like a satisfying and meaningful career as a hypnotherapist helping others step out of their comfort zone?
Adam Eason’s Anglo European training college.
3. Are you a hypnotherapist for whom self-doubt is negatively effecting the success of your business? Do you need to step out of your comfort zone to grow your business?
Hypnotherapist Mentoring with Adam Eason.

Likewise, if you’d like to learn more about self-hypnosis, understand the evidence based principles of it from a scientific perspective and learn how to apply it to many areas of your life while having fun and in a safe environment and have the opportunity to test everything you learn, then come and join me for my one day seminar which does all that and more, have a read here: The Science of Self-Hypnosis Seminar.

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