Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone - Is it all it’s cracked up to be? | Ep. 108

Hello and welcome back to the Holistic Inner Balance Podcast. We are your hosts. I am Happy Healthy Hadlee, and this is Dr. Nicole. And we are here today to talk to you about this thing that It's been coming up a lot for, for me, for my clients, for a lot of people that I see, especially in like the not just the wellness space, but like the personal development space, where a lot of times, you know, people talk about getting out of our comfort zones. And if you know me, you know that I'm all about getting out of our comfort zones. But I find that there is a message that is not that helpful, where it's just like all about pushing and pushing and pushing and forcing ourselves out of our comfort zone. And there's not a whole lot about how we do it in a way that feels resourced and how we do it in a way that doesn't lead us to burnout. Because I hear a lot of times people say like, feel the fear and do it anyway. And while that sounds like— it sounds empowering. It's like, okay, fear doesn't have to control us. It's awesome. And sometimes if we feel the fear and do it anyway and don't have— aren't resourced, we don't have the kind of capacity to actually be able to do it. It's just gonna lead us to burnout. It's just gonna lead us to feeling like we are like completely out of nervous system regulation and we have to recover for a really long time. So wanted to talk about that today. How do you get out of your comfort zone without having a comfort zone hangover? Yep. So that's what we're going to do.

I love that. I'm excited about that. The language that you and I were talking about before jumping on this podcast is the window of tolerance.

Yes. And we've talked about— we've mentioned it briefly on previous episodes. So I'm excited to give this like a full episode.

Yeah. So I'm like really on board with this. And so, Hads, let's like teach us what you got, girl. I'm ready.

OK. So really, I mean, one of the things that I coach my clients in is like how to have a growth mindset and be growth-oriented. When we feel resourced, and when I say resourced, it's like the difference between feeling like everything is happening to us versus feeling like we sort of have some semblance of like autonomy over our lives. Right. So that's kind of the feeling that is evoked when we, when we feel well-resourced. Right. Like we don't have complete control. I mean, we don't really have as much control ever as we think we do, but we feel like we have autonomy over our lives, where we feel like, okay, I can make choices for myself and I can, you know, I can move from that place of self-trust and know, like, being like, I know what I need and I can give myself what I need. That's what feeling resourced or— yeah, that's what being resourced feels like. And so when we're in that place, growth is in stepping out of our comfort zone and wanting to uncover, like, you know, old outdated patterns and beliefs and wanting to to essentially grow in our minds, our bodies, spirit, soul, whatever you want to call it. That feels really good. And that feels like— it feels exciting to uncover resistance. It feels exciting. Like, ooh, there's another outdated belief that I have. Let me, let me like dig deep into this and like actually, you know, get excited about it. It feels like Oh yeah, that pattern keeps coming up. I want to have that conversation with my partner or whatever, and we can delve deep into it and it'll, it'll be exciting to kind of move through that and be there on the other side. Now, if you're listening to this and you're like, that sounds terrible, what are you talking about? It might be that you haven't resourced— you haven't been well-resourced enough to be able to get to that place. And that's totally fine. Like, the thing is about having like a growth mindset and stuff is a lot of times we get taught that if we don't have a growth mindset, then we are doing something bad or wrong or we are bad or wrong. And that's not the case. We just need to get ourselves into a place where we have the capacity to be able to do that if we want to. And I always talk about not assigning morality to things. And so I do want to make that disclaimer of If you are not pursuing health, if you are not pursuing development, if you're not pursuing growth, that doesn't make you a worse person than people who are. And it doesn't make you a better person if you are pursuing those things either. It might— life might feel better and get better if you do pursue those things, but it doesn't make you better or worse if you're not doing it. So wanted to put that out there.

I think that's a really important distinction. It's like distinguishing between who I am as a person versus how I'm tolerating things or what choices I'm making with response to my environment.

Totally. Yes. And I think, again, I mean, we always talk about nuance on this podcast. So I think, I mean, it's really important to get out of our comfort zones if we want to experience a vibrant life. But we want to do it in a way that allows our— allows us to grow our comfort zones rather than— if we think of our comfort zone as like this bubble that surrounds us, I think of it as like this, like shimmery pink bubble. And in order to grow the bubble, we have to kind of like push on the bubble. Maybe we— maybe, you know how like with With those bubbles, like at like children's museums, you can kind of— you can like put your hand through the bubble, but it doesn't pop.

Totally. Yes.

So I'm just coming up with this analogy as we're talking, but we can, we can move our hands out of the bubble and move it back in if we are well-resourced. If we're not and we like stick our hands out the bubble, it could— it can pop and then we don't have a bubble at all. And then we feel totally strung out. We feel like it's like— or maybe that's not the right way of putting it— like burnt out. We feel like it's this— we have to recover for a long time. And that's not what I want for people because I used to do that. I used to just be like, okay, I'm going to like grit my teeth and just do it. It didn't feel good. It didn't feel right. Like there's a difference between things that feel like fear, like we feel some fear, but we also feel like a lot of excitement. At the same time, there's a difference between that versus like, someone told me I need to do this, so I need to do this, and I'm just gonna do it, and here we go. And then we don't have that capacity anymore. It, it goes back to energy management. We don't have any more energy because we've been doing these things that, that are getting us out of our comfort zone, but we've popped the entire bubble of the comfort zone. So

Yeah, I love that. I think that's a really good analogy, a good metaphor for it. And that bubble popping, I think, is huge because bubbles can grow and they can shrink. So it gives us a little bit of that fluidity that can be inherent in our window of tolerance and how much bandwidth that we have or how much space that we have. Other ways of explaining it.

Totally. Yes. And it's interesting. I don't know if I've talked about this before, but there's a word in Sanskrit, which is the language of ancient Ayurveda, And it's spanda, and it basically means the pulsation of life. So it's like if you can't see me unless you're watching this on YouTube, which we post these to YouTube too. So if you want to watch these, you can. But basically, spanda is like this pulsation where we can get out of our comfort zone and then we come back into it and then we get out of it and then we come back into it. And that's how we grow. It's— Spanda also dictates like we need to have— in order for us to get deep or to feel a deep reservoir of energy, we need the amount of rest that we need. But in order for us to get deep rest, we also have to expend a certain amount of energy, right? If you've ever like just been sitting around all day and then you can't fall asleep at night, it's because you haven't expended enough energy throughout the day. It's the same with like hunger and satiation. If you feel hunger, then you're going to feel satiation when you fill your belly with food. But if you don't allow yourself to feel hunger, if you're like constantly putting food in your mouth all day long, you're not going to feel a sense of deep satiation. It's going to just be kind of like this, like bumping up and down of like a little hunger, a little full, a little hunger, a little full. And it doesn't feel as like satiating.

Mm-hmm.

Same with like work and rest. So, you know, if we're thinking about going to, going to work or doing something that feels like work, we also need to have that pulsation of energy with full engagement and then full rest. So that's kind of how I like to look at how to actually expand our comfort zone and do it in a way that doesn't leave us burnt out and trying to recover from a comfort zone hangover.

And we've talked about this in previous episodes about the comfort zone, and we talked about the, the zone of reliable performance.

Yes.

That's when you're within your comfort zone and you kind of know, like, I know what my expectations are. I know I can meet these expectations. I know I can handle this. And then when we get out of that zone just a little bit, we're in the zone of proximal development. And that's when you start to grow. But that's a little bit outside of your window of tolerance. And so there's a differentiation that I think that you're pointing out here, you're kind of hinting towards, is we want to grow outside of our comfort zones.

Absolutely.

But we don't want to stay in the comfort zone only because then we're like stuck, we're stagnant, we're not growing. But once we get out of that comfort zone and we're outside of that, now we're starting to have a conversation about your bandwidth, your window of tolerance, and how does that show up for you? How well can you tolerate that? And then at what point does your ability to tolerate that not match up with you being out of your comfort zone? Meaning, like, it's too much. I can't handle this anymore. Right. Now I need to go back in. And so it's like, What I really love that you're saying, what at least I'm hearing from you, is that we're not making it all or nothing, like, stay in your window of tolerance and here's how to get back in, but rather, like, here are healthy— like, that gesture that you were doing of going in and going out is like, here's how to go outside of my comfort zone and then expand my window of tolerance.

Yes.

Here are the signs that I need to go back in. Am I kind of tracking?

Exactly. Yes. And the interesting thing is that the comfort zone bubble, Sometimes we go out of our comfort zone with something that, you know, that feels scary. That's like, oh my gosh, I'm going to go like, oh, what's a good example? Say like start a business. And, and maybe you're like, okay, I'm going to expand my comfort zone a little bit by going live on Instagram and talking about my business, whatever it is. You know, you probably wouldn't As much as you might think that it would be great if you could just go on Oprah the day after you started your business and talk about your business, you probably wouldn't actually want that because you would feel like a complete burnout after the fact if you hadn't done a lot of public speaking in the past or if you hadn't done any. And the other thing about this is that it can be something that feels scary. It can also be something that feels wildly expansive. So I hear this from people who have gone to like retreats and had peak experiences where they're like, oh my gosh, I feel like I fixed, quote unquote, fixed everything in my life. And then once they come off the high and they go back to their everyday life, they actually feel worse, right? They feel worse. And it's likely because there's 2 things, or maybe 3. I mean, I am not saying that that experience was bad. I want everyone to very much hear that. Like, there is no bad or good here with like the types of experiences that we want to have. Like, retreats are awesome. I love having peak experiences. It's really fun. And this is what we're going to talk about on the podcast today. What can we actually do to ground it so that we feel like we can continue to expand instead of just contracting and you know, becoming a shell of a person for a long time. Right. So first of all, what you learned at that retreat or at that peak experience, that amazing experience that you, that you had, maybe it was like a therapeutic session or something, or maybe you went to like a Tony Robbins event. I hear that all the time where it's like, you know, someone Some big motivational thing, right? What you were learning was not grounded in your nervous system. So that's the first thing. You haven't grounded it into your nervous system. And so then it feels like everything is all over the place and it's not integrated. And then number 2, it might also be because you don't have the habits to actually keep this stuff up afterward and you don't have the habits to resource yourself, to be resourced enough to be able to continue the peak experience or continue the kind of excitement that comes from those kinds of experiences.

Mm-hmm.

So, so those are the two things. It wasn't grounded in your nervous system. It might also be because you don't have the habits to keep it up afterward. The habits. I mean, that's what I do with my clients is that is habits, because the main thing that I love, the main like thing that I love hearing from clients, I mean, like testimonial that I love hearing from clients is like, I went from this place where I just didn't feel like I had capacity. to live my passion or live my purpose or feel fulfilled in my life. And now that I've got my health checked off and my mind-body health like kind of synced up, I've got, I've got the habits down for like circadian rhythm. I'm, I'm in sync with like the nature of my body. It opens up so much capacity. So I see so many people being like, I just need to I just need to push harder. I just need to push harder. I just need to push harder. And I'm like, but you don't have the capacity to push harder. You have to have some of these, these things down to be in, in sync with your body's natural rhythms in order for you to have the capacity and the bandwidth to continue growing and growing and not just have it be like a flash in the pan moment and then you're done.

And I think that has to do again with like that ebbing and flowing in parasympathetic and sympathetic, that like natural rhythm is. It's not just like a one-time thing. And this may be like a little bit of a zebra example, but I kind of want to share like an example of a flash-in-the-pan moment from a science perspective, if that's okay.

Yes, please. Also explain what a zebra is because I only recently learned about what a zebra is.

Besides a cute little mammal friend with stripes that looks like a horse. So we use the term zebra in medicine because people will come in and have, I don't know, they'll have pain in their head and they've been really tense all day, really stressed, and they've been furling their eyebrows and it's just kind of aching in their forehead, and it's most likely a tension headache. A zebra would be like maybe they have a brain bleed. Right. It's something to consider, but way down the line of likelihood. So zebra's Maybe like out in the safari of likelihood.

Right, exactly.

Yeah, I know I use these terms and they're just so ingrained in my existence. It's funny. I'm like, I know.

Don't worry, I'll always ask the question.

Love that. So a zebra, a safari example of a flash in the pan was when I was in medical school, we had someone come in and they were doing education on nasal cranial release, which is a procedure that is used where you stick a balloon up someone's nostril, up into their, their airway cavity, and you can inflate the balloon and it's a way to manipulate and move the cranial bones.

Whoa.

So the bones in your head.

That's so cool. I love that.

I had it done. That's like a whole other podcast. It's like the weirdest thing hearing the bones in your head move.

Oh my God.

I know. Sorry if someone got heebie-jeebies with that.

No, I love that. So what's—

you're, you're like my favorite flavor of nerdiness. It's the best. So what they're finding in the research is that if you apply these procedures, it works really particularly well for people who suffer from Down syndrome in helping with cerebral blood flow and cognitive capacity and facial structure and all sorts of things.

Wow.

And they were analyzing the effectiveness of the treatment when applied in 2 different ways. And one way was doing like a huge inflation of the balloon and then a huge adjustment, a bigger movement, if you will, as opposed to more frequent smaller movements. And what they found, at least according to this presenter, and by the way, this was like a decade ago, so this could be outdated, but I think that the nervous system's response to it still stands. I think we can still see this is true, is that when you do a big adjustment like that, it can send the nervous system into fight, flight, freeze, autonomic arousal, as opposed to if you do little adjustments, you're not going to get as much of an autonomic response to it. And when the body goes into autonomic arousal, it's not going to settle into that change. It's going to fight it because your body is always trying to maintain homeostasis. So if you have a huge flash in the pan moment, like this groundbreaking huge conference that changes your life, but then you go back into your normal life, or you had a balloon shoved up your nose and it moved all your cranial bones in one fell swoop— zebra, I know. But what you're describing, Hadley, feels consistent with the way the body and the nervous system might respond to a physical.

Intervention.

So doing things like gently expanding, like that gesture that you did, that in and out, like a little bit more sympathetic and then going back into the parasympathetic might actually help those changes stick better.

Exactly. Yes. And that brings me to kind of the strategies that I use with my clients, which is these small incremental changes. There's a word in Japanese, kaizen, K-A-I-Z-E-N, and I use this all the time with my clients, and it means small incremental change over time. It was initially used in, I think it was, it was like in the automotive industry in Japan where they weren't doing well. Like one of the, one of the car companies like wasn't doing well and They hired this new CEO and his whole thing was kaizen. Let's have these small— instead of overhauling the entire company, we're going to have these small incremental changes over time. And so that's what we can use for habit change and for growth and for anything that we want to do with our health, because a lot of times we think that we're supposed to overhaul our whole lives and like get healthy, quote unquote. But That's not how change happens. And so we can do these small incremental changes over time. Now, I do want to also say that there are moments where we can experience massive growth and that can move our comfort zone out enough, like move it out, blast it, blast it out, and maybe it doesn't actually pop it. It just like moves it out like a ton more than just those incremental changes over time. But I will say that the, the way that that kind of thing sticks is if we have the habits in place to be able to handle that with our nervous systems. And then also we can support that by doing like nervous system regulation practices, which we've done many, many podcasts about those specific practices that we can do. But getting into a place where we feel our nervous system is regulated can help us to sustain those big, huge changes as well. So we can do a little bit of both and we should do a little bit of both because sometimes small incremental change over time gets boring. And then, but it's probably the most effective for long-term change. And so when we can have some of those like massive growth experiences, those can be really fun. But we want to, we want to support them with the nervous system regulation and the habits and stuff that help us to have that kind of capacity.

I love that. I was wondering, I want to hear your tips and kind of those, those small incremental recommendations over time. And I was wondering if I could just lift up a thought leader in this conversation because I think it's really important, at least for me, the way I think about things, to really acknowledge the giants upon which I'm standing on the shoulders of.

Totally. Let's do it.

So for me, the person that I go to to learn about this is Should I go out of my comfort zone? Is it really all it's cracked up to be? If so, how can I do it wisely? Is I really like to look at the work of Dr. Dan Siegel.

Oh yeah.

And he's the one that coined the term the window of tolerance. And I have kind of an image that I think takes his work and explains it, and I want to describe it to you and we'll see if I can like paint a picture with words. Is that okay?

Yes, please. That sounds wonderful. You're the queen of analogies, so let's do it. Yeah.

So what we're gonna have is we're gonna start in, uh, the comfort zone and imagine that's a, a ball of light in the center, and that's your comfort zone. The zone of reliable performance is where you're just cruising. You're not growing necessarily, you're just rocking and rolling where you are. And then when we get out of our comfort zone, imagine drawing square around that circle. And so outside of your comfort zone, this is where we grow a little bit. And you can grow within your window of tolerance. You're like, okay, this is a little bit hard. I'm a little uncomfortable, but I can manage this. I've got this. Scott Miller talks about how the average person only has about 30 minutes on average of being outside of their comfort zone. But this is where you can ebb and flow. So you can go into a little bit of sympathetic activation, like, ooh, this is a little bit stressful, but I can bring it down.

Mm-hmm.

And so now we have your comfort zone in the center. We have a square around that. That's your window of tolerance. And then outside of that square, you have everything that's outside of your window of tolerance. This is where you are no longer in that window of tolerance. You cannot tolerate it anymore. And then Dan Siegel, he breaks this into 2 spectrums. And so at the top we have sympathetic nervous system activation. This is hyperarousal. So this is when we're in like fight, freeze, flight. Like this is when our nervous system is like blood pressure's high, body temperature's high, heart is racing. So this is arousal. So that's at the top. And then at the bottom underneath of it is hypoarousal. And this is where we go into collapse.

Yes.

And Hadlee and I have another podcast episode about where we get into that. That's in the polyvagal lecture. And so Hadlee described this really beautiful image where you have to go through— you're in alert, and then you go into fight flight, and then you go into freeze, and then you go into collapse. And so that collapse is at the bottom of the image. And so the value of knowing that, the value of knowing if I'm in hyperarousal or hypoarousal, is because the things that work, those hacks, those tips and those tricks may vary a little bit.

Mm-hmm.

And so as you're teaching us about the things that you use with your clients, is I'm going to maybe, if it's okay with you, just sort of insert like, okay, that would be really good for a hypoarousal state. Like, if you feel like I'm shut down or I'm dissociated, or I feel like I'm not quite present, or I'm exhausted. In fact, I just talked to a patient today who was just making a connection between her narcolepsy symptoms and a trauma from when she was 5 years old. And she's like, maybe I don't actually have narcolepsy. Like, maybe this is a part of me that's trying to shut down to protect me from these big, dangerous emotional feelings that I'm having.

Wow. I just got chills all over. That's really—

yeah.

Jeez.

So as Hadlee, as she's teaching us the rest of the tips and tricks and habits, is try to keep that in mind is what is it like for me when I'm in my comfort zone? We talk about that in terms of a stoplight, stoplight strategies, right? So if you're more of a stoplight person, think of your comfort zone as your green zone. And what is that like for you when you're in green? What are your thoughts like? Your thoughts, your feelings, your sensations, your body language, your behaviors. What are those things that make you green and comfortable? What is it like when you're outside of your comfort zone, but you're like ebbing and flowing into like, I can tolerate it and I'm feeling activated and I'm calm? That's maybe like green to yellow. And then what is it like for you when you get into your red zone or you're outta your window of tolerance? Do you go into a hyper-aroused state like that? that activation, or do you go into a more collapsed state? If you go into a collapsed state, is it like polyvagal theory teaches us, which may be like, I get activated and then I freeze and then I collapse? Because that will all give you data on what to do to treat it.

Totally. And that's my tendency, is to collapse.

Really? Yeah.

I have to do a lot of the kind of breathwork that I typically do is like, arousal, like getting me into a sympathetic state because I have to move back through that. That my tendency, because I have a lot of kapha in my constitution, is when I get super stressed, like I recently I went to the doctor's office and I was having this like not a big deal procedure, but I was, you know, it was a stressful experience and I went in and they took my blood pressure, my blood pressure was low and it was because I was in a stressed response. So instead of my blood pressure being high, which most people are when they're in that, that experience, mine gets low. And so I have to move back through the hyper or move back through the arousal state so that I can come back into my like typical nervous system state. So I know all about that.

I love that you incorporated Ayurveda into that conversation because a flop or— so we talk about fight, flight, freeze. Flop is that blood pressure goes down, our ability to detect and sense our surroundings becomes dulled, we get really sleepy. And so you're kind of computing that, like, maybe that's more of a kapha state.

Yes, definitely.

Slowed down state. And so this is interesting that you mentioned breathwork right off the bat because that's something that he talks about. So what is the breathwork that you use when you're in that more hypoarousal fear state?

Yeah, there's breathwork by Samantha Skelly. I don't know if you've heard of her, but Pause Breathwork is like the methodology. And there are 4 different types of breath that she does. But If you do them, I think all of them, if you do all of them quickly, they will bring you into a state of sympathetic nervous system state. And, and then essentially they'll bring you to, to that place and then it ultimately calms your nervous system after the fact. And so that for me is really, really effective to get into that. arouse myself, not sexually, but, but to get into that arousal state is really effective for me to move through stress.

What about the Kundalini breath, which is more like, like a Lamaze breath? Like—

Yes. Yep. That's so that one of the breath patterns— and I'm not a breathwork teacher, so, you know, take this with a grain of salt. Actually, I have a couple of friends who are and they're wonderful. But there's a 3-part breath, which is Breathing in through your stomach, in through your chest, and then out through your— and all of these are in, in your mouth and out your mouth. So nothing is through your nose. So it's— and I actually did a practice this morning which was awesome, like a longer practice. And it gets you into that state of more arousal and it gives you energy while at the same time regulating your nervous system, especially if you have that collapsed state.

And just in case the audio— because Zoom likes to be helpful with the sound. And so in case you didn't hear it, she breathed in 2 breaths to inhale, inhale, and then big exhale.

Yes.

And you had your hand on your chest and on your stomach. And so are you first breathing into your stomach and then your chest, or are they both at the same time?

Yes. First breathing into stomach and then breathing into chest. And then out. Just—

I love that. Got it. Since we're on the breath topic, because I imagine that people may be wondering, so let's say that they're in a hyperarousal. What breath do you find is that you recommend to your clients?

I always recommend that they experiment and see which one they like the most. That one can be pretty intense. So I actually didn't used to really like that one because it Is— it is very intense. The one that I really like is the— I think it's called the pulse breath. And you breathe in through your nose twice and then out through your mouth twice. So kind of like Lamaze, like— I don't know if you can hear that, but

you're— Yeah, you were doing the quick, quick exhale. And so you're elongating the exhale. Which is—

so the exhale is actually out twice. So inhale quick, quick, and then actually it's quick, quick back out, I believe.

Interesting. I'm going to try that because I tend to be more on the hyperarousal side and I'm always wanting to learn more about breathwork. So we got to get— I think we have somebody who's a breathwork guru who's going to be coming on the podcast. So stay tuned. Hopefully that's going to happen.

Yeah.

My favorite breath that helps me because I do this when I'm flying Is I will just straight up extend the exhale because exhale is parasympathetic. So if you're in sympathetic arousal and hyperarousal in particular, if you can extend the exhale, that's, that's where the money is. And so you can breathe in 4 counts, hold your breath at the top for 4 counts, and then exhale for as long as you can, maybe 6 counts. Hold at the bottom for 6 or 4 counts and then repeat that. That can be really good.

Yeah, it's massive. It's one of the few things that science unequivocally knows that you can immediately do to get yourself into a parasympathetic response. It's like, really?

I love it. Awesome. Awesome. Thanks for taking that side trail with me.

Yeah, of course. Yes. Let's regulate our nervous system so we can actually get out of our comfort zones in an effective way.

So good. So what else do you got for us?

So when it comes to like, you know, those small incremental changes over time, I think you had a question about that of like, how do we actually do that? Like, so let me give like a few examples if that sounds good. I mean, we could— we can talk about—

I'm like doing the fist bump. I'm so excited. Yes, please.

So would it be helpful to talk about the habits that I coach my clients in, or would it be helpful to talk about a specific change that you ask your patients to do a lot, or what do you feel like would be the best way to go with this?

I love stories. So if you could maybe tell a story of an example where there was a concern that came up, you employed this habit or the strategy and the positive result, maybe.

Totally. Let's talk about something that's been coming up recently is exercise. And a lot of times people want to exercise more and they think that they need to exercise more and they probably would benefit from exercising more. So that's, you know, my background is in behavior change and that, that facet of psychology. And so, so I will say that I used to hate Exercise. And I like actually hated it so much. Even when I was a kid, I loved when it rained because then we got to have indoor recess and I didn't have to go play outside.

So funny because I see you as like so pitta-y and energized. So this is, this is surprising. I love it. I'm with you. Keep going.

I had a very— I had a Kapha imbalanced childhood for sure. Not that— I mean, my family, none of them were imbalanced. Like, they weren't. They weren't Kapha, just me. But so, so I, I always hated exercise. I also had this like mindset around exercise that I You know, you were supposed to exercise. And any time I would think like, okay, I'm going to do a workout today, it was always like, and I have to do a really hard workout today because if I'm going to exercise, then of course I'm going to do a hard workout. Otherwise, what is even the point? Like, why would I work out if I'm not going to, you know, do it quote unquote right? Do it.

Oh, I see. Okay.

So So I like dreaded exercise, and often I would come up with any excuse under the sun to exercise because I was like, because I didn't actually want to do it because I was doing all these like really intense workouts, which actually, ironically, now I love really intense workouts. So I'll talk about that later. But I Started— well, okay, so I would, I would tell myself, oh, you know, like, I feel like I'm getting a little bit of a sore throat. I probably shouldn't do anything today. Or like, uh, someone asked me to do something after school or after work or whatever, so, you know, of course I can't say no. So like, I'll just, I'll just do my workout later.

I feel really called out right now because this is so me.

Or like, oh, my knee's feeling a little wonky. I don't know, I probably should take it easy, right? Yeah,

yeah.

And so all of these things are valid. They're— they are valid. And we can also become wise to the fact that often they are also our minds kind of playing tricks on us when we Don't want to do something. So, so there are a lot of other reasons that I didn't like exercise. You know, we've talked about how in our society with women, I mean, we're taught that exercise is— we're not supposed to lift weights because then we'll bulk up and then we'll look like a man and then we won't be pretty and then we won't look the way that we want to. And we're also supposed to do a bunch of cardio. We're supposed to run. We're supposed to be runners. Oh my gosh, I hate running. So all of these things, and you don't have to run in order to like be really fit and healthy and have a great life. I don't run. I used to try and I hate it. And so that all brings me to this point where when I started actually learning how to like exercise, it was getting out of that mindset of like, this is the way things should be. So I really want people to start to strip away the shoulds of something, of whatever they're trying to change in their lives, whether it is getting out of your comfort zone of like, you know, the, the example that I gave was like going live on Instagram if you start a business or whatever. But like, instead of making these things into a whole thing in our minds, How can we strip away the shoulds? How can we strip away this being a big deal and we make it not a big deal? We make it curious. We make it like, huh, I wonder what could happen if I did this. So I started by going to— well, I would actually do home workouts. This is so funny. I would do home workouts. I still did like harder workouts at this time, but I would give myself a reward where I would allow myself to watch like whatever TV show I was watching at the time while I was working out at home. And so it was like a time where I actually looked forward to it because I liked watching the show. Or if I went to a class or something, I would allow myself to watch an episode. Basically, like every episode I watched, I would only watch it if I had already worked out that day or if I was currently working out. So it was like a reward system. But then I started going to the gym because I was like, okay, let's take this to the next level. And again, This is slow, incremental change over time. So I went— I started going to the gym, and instead of going to the gym and going on the treadmill and doing running like I had been taught I should do, I started playing around with all of the equipment that was at the gym. And I was like, hmm, what is— what are these like battle ropes where you like, you know, move your arms like you— you— have you ever seen these where like they're these big long ropes and they're attached to something and you like move them up and down?

That's very CrossFit of you.

Oh yeah, definitely. I've gone through— I've gone through CrossFit phases since then. Um, but so I was like, okay, what is that? Oh, what are these? Uh, what's this like ab rollout thing, machine, whatever? Um, and what is the— what is this Like stepping thing? What is this like box? Like, how can I like do these like jumps onto boxes that I've seen people do? So I, I got curious about how I could have fun and I looked at it as like, huh, could this be like a reset? Like, could this be like I'm just playing around with stuff? And I want to also just like caveat, like, Don't injure yourself, please. If there are things, equipment at the gym, you know, ask people how to use them. Ask like professionals how to use them and stuff. Like I asked my sister-in-law who's a personal trainer, and I was like, hey, can you teach me how to deadlift? Because I think I'm definitely going to hurt myself if I try to deadlift because I had, I've, you know, I had back issues from the time I was 20. Haven't in years because of all the habits, but I was, I want— I was wanting to do that in a safe way. So, you know, ask people how to, how to do things in a safe way. But all of that to say that that made it fun and it, it was a small incremental change. It was like, let's just play around here and it doesn't have to be a whole big thing. It doesn't have to be this workout has to be so amazing every single time, right? So same goes for all things that all changes that we want to make in our lives. It doesn't have to be this whole big thing. One of my coaches actually says that in order to be great at anything, we have to become comfortable or we don't even have to become comfortable with it, but we have to get used to mediocrity. We have to become okay with mediocrity. And a lot of the people that I work with have a lot of pitta and they want to achieve like— or they're a 3 on the Enneagram, right? They want to achieve, they want to do stuff and they want to do it. well right away. And in order to get great at anything, we have to be okay with the mediocre at first. And unfortunately, that's the way it goes. And so, so those are examples of the, the Kaizen approach, small incremental change over time. So that's one of the behavior change strategies that I employed there. The other one, the other behavior change strategy is trigger, habit, and reward. Sometimes people call it cues instead of triggers, but it's essentially the trigger was— it was usually it was like the time of day that I was going to work out. The habit was doing my workout. The reward was getting to watch my Netflix show. It became intrinsic over time. That's an extrinsic reward where it's like outside of us. It became intrinsic over time. I don't have to do that anymore. But that's another strategy that you can use is like Cue habit reward.

Can you help me zoom out to make— so we're really zoomed in, and I love this. This is so good, but I want to make sure that I have a zoom out. So I'm dialing in. And so if we go back to the conversation about the comfort zone and habits to expand that window of tolerance, and we've been talking about exercise in particular with small incremental changes over time to accomplish a goal of exercise. Can you help me see that connection between that story and then the comfort zone and the benefits, or maybe not benefits, of expanding that?

Totally. Yeah. So the comfort zone would have been, I mean, for this specific thing, it would have been, okay, the comfort zone is doing these workouts that I'm like, quote unquote, supposed to do or whatever, getting out of that comfort zone and actually starting to learn how to like exercise would be to, you know, doing the— doing those small incremental changes over time and getting to the gym and then experimenting at the gym and then taking another step to like ask my sister-in-law how to do deadlifting and, and doing all of those kinds of things. And so then getting to a place where I actually learned to like exercise. So other examples might be— so comfort zone might be, okay, my comfort zone is that, you know, well, actually the comfort zone actually was that I didn't want to work out at all.

Yeah, I wrote down not doing exercise. Comfort zone is not doing exercise.

Yeah.

Window of tolerance is like, I'm uncomfortable with this, but these are the habits And the rewards and the cues that I'm looking at, those small incremental changes. How am I working out? What workouts am I doing? Kind of experimenting with how you can be outside of your comfort zone into that growth place and then seeing the rewards for that.

Yes. And I'll say that then being outside of the window. So you mentioned that it's like comfort zone and then there's a window of tolerance outside of that and then being outside of the window of tolerance. Tolerance is when we get frazzled and we get our nervous system like burns out. I would say that that is the type of workouts I was trying to do before, was that was outside of my window of tolerance. And so when I would force myself to do these like really intense workouts that I hated to do, that was burning me out. And then I would not want to do them for weeks, and then I would like force myself to do it again, and then I would not want to do it. for weeks because I was burning myself out because it was out of my window of tolerance. Does that make sense?

Got it. That was a really helpful zoom out, zoom in for me. So we're starting with the comfort zone. I don't want to work out. And then there's the shoulds, like, I should do CrossFit 6 days a week,

right? But

when you did that, that was out of your window of tolerance and you were burning out and then you didn't want to do anything. And so it's like, thank vicious circle of where I am now and this idea or the idealized where I want to be versus if you're using the window of tolerance as a place for small incremental changes, then that's how you're going to expand that. And maybe one day that will expand into CrossFit 6 days a week. Maybe not.

Totally. Yeah.

But you're not jumping straight into the—

At least 3 days a week. I don't know about 6 days a week.

Okay, so that's really helpful. So as you're listening to this, Yes. There's a— what I would encourage you to do is to like write down where you are in your comfort zone with different areas of your life. So like, let's say that you're struggling with agoraphobia. You have a hard time leaving the house, and your comfort zone is literally being at home. But there's a part of you that feels FOMO, like you have a fear of missing out, or there's a part of you that wishes that you could go out and socialize more or see places or travel. And so right now where you are is maybe that's outside of your window of tolerance. Like, you try to go, you're like, okay, well, I'm gonna book a flight internationally. That's like way outside of your window of tolerance.

Yes.

And so what we want to do, like you're saying, Hadlee, is let's stay within your window of tolerance and make some small incremental changes. Like, first you're gonna like go and like be in the garden when maybe other people are walking by or during like a busier time of day, and then you can go back in when it becomes too stressful and you start to dysregulate. And then make those small changes. And as your window of tolerance expands, then you can expand beyond. And maybe that means one day you'll buy a ticket. But I like the habit that you're— like, the ideology that you're talking about to get us there.

Yeah. And I like that example of agoraphobia because it specifically is like your house. So it's a really good analogy for all of these things where it's like, okay, my comfort zone is my home. And if I leave, you know, I can leave a little bit and then come back, and then I can leave a little further and then come back, and I can leave a little further. I mean, it's like with a kid, right? It's like at first, like a newborn baby has, you know, has to be with their parents like most of the time. And then they start to walk, or maybe they start to crawl first, and they can like move away from the parents, but they always want to come back, right? I mean, if they're in a healthy attachment situation, which we just did an episode about, but, you know, they want to come back and then they want to leave further. And this is how growth happens as a child, as a baby. It's how growth happens in every area of life.

So as we're finishing up this conversation, I want to make sure we touch on the hyperarousal when we're out outside of our window of tolerance, or we're noticing that we're starting to get more agitated and aroused and we can't tolerate it anymore. So I would love to talk just a little bit more about hyper versus hypoarousal and make sure we touch on those. But before we go there, what else did you want to make sure that you added? Because I know you had, like, a ton of goodies for us. Did we cover it?

I think so. I think I do want to hammer the point home that, like, we do want to get out of our comfort zones. Like, that is, that is for sure. We do want to get out of our comfort zone. If we don't, then we stay, you know, safe and small, but we don't experience as much joy. We don't experience— Because One of my, one of my teachers also says that the opposite of depression isn't happiness. It's feeling like meaning and fulfillment. And we can only feel that if we're actually getting out of our comfort zones and doing, you know, something that feels, that feels like we can feel fulfilled from it, essentially. And that's, that's the only way that we can feel fulfilled is if we're growing.

Oh, I love that because I had made a note here of like, really, why do we care? Why do we want to get out of our comfort zone?

Right, right. Yeah.

And you're saying meaning and fulfillment is a prerequisite for that, is getting out of your comfort zone?

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. We— yeah, we have to. We have to in order to have that fulfillment, um, because Yeah, I can't think of any situation where I have felt fulfilled without getting out of my comfort zone. I have felt gratitude when I've received things, or, you know, I've felt other emotions, but fulfillment really does come from getting out of our comfort zones.

And when we stay in our comfort zone, what we see, at least on a physiological level, is that that will get smaller and smaller and smaller. And if we go back to your early example about fitness, is my body will equilibrate to my activity level. So if every day I go for a 1-mile hike and my comfort zone is 1-mile hike, my body will adapt to that. But if I sit on the couch and I don't exercise at all, anything outside of that will become more difficult. So it shrinks.

Our comfort zone can shrink. Oh my gosh, this is such a good point. Yes, continue.

This is so important. So when we think about just what our body does and what our nervous system does, is that staying in your comfort zone, I think it could be like some people may listen to it and be like, well, I find lots of fulfillment and meaning by being in my comfort zone. But I think it's really important to acknowledge that that's going to shrink if you're not pushing. So, yes, muscles will atrophy if you don't use them.

Exactly. So it's not just that your comfort zone stays the same all the time, it's that it actually shrinks. A good example of this for me is, um, uh, driving. I've never been a huge fan of driving. I like got my driver's license late because I just didn't like driving. I was kind of scared of it. Like, I'm always like a little nervous. But I mean, actually now I'm not as nervous because I drive all the time in San Diego. I used to I used to bike a lot more when I lived in Seattle. It's a lot more of a bikeable city. And so you kind of have to drive a little bit more in Southern California. But so currently, I am totally cool with driving. And I've had these experiences in the past where I've been like totally cool with driving. But then I went and lived in Europe for 8 months a couple of years ago, and I came back and I was like, oh my God, I hate driving. Driving is scary, you know, like all of these things. And it's because my My comfort zone atrophied.

We are the same person, but I haven't like regrown my comfort zone of driving. Is I used to be like actually quite proud of how glorious of a driver I thought I was. And then I married Paul and he drives everywhere. And so I kid you not, I am such an insecure driver now. I drive myself crazy and it atrophied my driving skills because I wasn't, you don't, You don't use it, you lose it. And so now I'm like driving to and from work and I'm like pushing myself out of my comfort zone. I'm still within my window of tolerance. I'm like, okay, I could drive the 6 minutes to work. Yeah, but I don't really like driving, and if there's a lot of traffic, it's like super stressful. So I love that you just said that. That's funny.

Oh, one other thing that I want to say is I want everyone who's listening to get really clear on where do they want their comfort zones to grow. Because like maybe you don't care if your driving comfort zone grows. Maybe you have enough money to hire a car all the time, right? Like, whatever, that's great for you. It doesn't— you don't have to grow your comfort zone in every single area of your life if you don't want to.

So good.

So where do you want to grow your comfort zone? Maybe you are like, yeah, I want to, you know, I want to exercise more. Like, I— like my example, maybe you're like, I really want to— maybe I really want to have my comfort zone grow when it comes to dating, right? Like, maybe I want to have my comfort zone grow when it comes to, like, putting myself out there in social situations, right? Where it's like, I want my comfort zone to grow there because, because I know that I'll be able to have much deeper relationships. I'll enjoy it more, whatever. Maybe you're like, nah, I'm good with that. And you want another thing to, to grow your comfort zone in that area of your life. So like, you get to, you get to decide where growth happens in your life.

I think that's huge. Oh my gosh, that was so good. I almost want to end on that, but we did make a promise about some strategies for hyperarousal and hypoarousal. So I'm going to give a couple of recommendations and I would love for you to add.

Yes, let's do it.

So if you're in hyperarousal, so your pulse is fast, your thoughts are racing, maybe you have diarrhea, maybe your heart is throbbing, like all of those overstimulated signs, right? Those are hyperarousal. The things that can be really useful for that is distress tolerance skills from DBT, dialectical behavioral therapy, are a really good resource for So maybe you would just Google DBT workbook and there's like an awesome book that I have on my shelf behind me here, but that's really nonspecific. It's just like a place to go, but specifically are using vagus nerve hacks, number one, because when you activate vagus nerve, you're activating parasympathetic calming. And so that's like humming, cold on the face, cold around the eyes. Oftentimes when we get aroused, we get more body temperature increases, so cold may be helpful. So anything that you can do to stimulate vagus nerve is good. So that's the first one. The second one is to work on brainstem. So things that are grounding. So going outside in your bare feet, hugging a tree, touching the texture, smelling oils, listening, speaking, tasting, like a pinch of salt on the tongue or ginger in the mouth, like all of those things. So So those are my top favorite hacks for hyperarousal. Do you have anything you want to add to that, Hads?

I have my favorite thing, which is touch, which is just putting your hands on your body and grounding your body down with your hands. So, you know, hand on your shoulder, hand on your heart, hand on your forehead. My favorite one, which is hand behind your neck, uh, and then the other hand on your forehead and lean back. and just cradle your head in your hands. That's— that seems to be everyone's favorite one when I teach them that one.

I love that.

So that one's really good. It's like— it's like cradling your head like a baby.

So that's so good.

Um, so that's my favorite, uh, for arousal. Oh, I also really like the nervous system regulation of just, uh, looking around the room and sensing how far away you are in space from each wall and really Really getting a sense. You can even like take a lap around the room. That's what your dog does when your dog comes into any new situation. It's like takes a lap, sniffs around the entire perimeter of the place, and then plops down and it is relaxed. But they have to kind of do that thing first.

Seriously. And dogs will shake off too.

Yes.

They'll do that chi shake.

Totally. Totally. Yeah. Yeah.

So we should all sniff the perimeter and shake off.

Shake it off, shake it

off. Yeah, I know that song. So, okay, hypoarousal. So this is again like what that kapha response you were talking about. So your blood pressure's low, you may be cool, you may go into flop, you may feel really sleepy, tired, helpless, hopeless. And so some strategies is to change body posture. That may just be one thing. And so if you're in a flop phase is your arms may be up kind of in the fetal position, is if you can extend them. And if your legs are really straight, then you might bend them. So you're sitting in like a Buddha pose, like a meditative pose, because it's breaking up that nervous system pattern of anxiety. And sometimes just straight up changing the scene. So if you're in a flop state, Just like moving rooms or changing the brightness of the lights, maybe doing some phototherapy, which we have a podcast coming out about that. If you haven't seen it yet, that one's going to be really good. And porosity can be really good for that. So it's like activating, it's like adding to the stimuli to the body because the body is starting to shut down.

Right.

And so those are some of my favorite things. What do you want to add to that?

I love it. And these are all things that regulate kapha too, or that pacify kapha as well. So hyperarousal is usually vata and/or pitta, and kapha is more of that hypoarousal where it's like things just feel slower and heavier and duller and all of that. And so breathwork, like I said, it's really wonderful for that. Yeah. And movement.

All the movements.

Yes. I mean, like shaking here is also really wonderful and doing it more vigorously. Things like, yeah, I mean, literally just like going for a run or if you don't, if you're, if you're in such a state where you don't even feel like you can do that, Don't, because again, don't get out of your window of tolerance. But you can go for a walk. You can— I would definitely recommend like moving your body around even more than just walking because like, and like moving your arms in like different positions and stuff too. But movement is going to be so massively helpful for, for this. So as much movement as you can do, as is in your window of tolerance.

I love that. Oh, y'all, this has been such a great conversation. We've been talking about getting out of your comfort zone. And my original question, like, is it really all it's cracked up to be? And it feels like the answer is yes. But what do you think, Hadz?

I think it is. I think it's like so important, and we can do it in a way that doesn't burn us out and fry our nervous system.

I love it. Thank you all for watching the YouTube video if you're here. If you're listening to the podcast, if you don't mind giving us a little love and telling us how much you love it, that would be amazing. And share. We're super grateful that you're here.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And if you want to, like, uh, take a screenshot of your podcast app, whatever you listen to, and post on Instagram, we will be happy to repost. We love hearing from you. Uh, let us know what you think.

Awesome. Thank you, Hadley. You're amazing. So grateful for

you. You're amazing. Thank you.

Bye.

Bye.