The Biggest Lessons From Getting Out Of Your Comfort Zone

Foreign what's up guys? Welcome back to the Love Life Podcast. I had some really lovely emails@podcastathuhussey.com in response to the recent reading I did from a newsletter that I had written and I thought I'd do another one. So again, send me feedback. The only way I know what you like and what you don't like about this podcast is when you email us podcasty.com and let us know. I'll keep doing more of the things that you really enjoy. I also think it's fun sometimes to mix up the format. Tell me if you like that, or if you just want it to be the same every time. This one I think is nice because you can just listen to it while you're on the go. It feels more like a story and maybe it's even something that you enjoy listening to while you fall asleep. Here we go. This one was a newsletter I wrote called Handling Painful My solo trip to Mexico a few years ago. Feeling overworked and in need of a break, and simultaneously having just suffered a painful loss in my love life, I decided what I needed in that moment was to get away for a few days. Living in Los Angeles, one of the easiest getaways you can fly to is Cabo, Mexico. So I booked my flights for a four day trip. I remember immediately thinking to myself, I should invite someone. This instinct had long been a part of my life to bring along a friend, a family member or or someone I was interested in romantically to share the experience with so I didn't have to go alone. But this time I resolved to step outside my comfort zone and do it by myself. What I didn't predict was just how uncomfortable this would make me once the departure date came around the week of the trip, I felt a knot in my stomach at the thought of going, and hastily I considered canceling the trip, staying home and working those days instead of I told myself it was pointless to go alone, but this was only my surface level logic. Deep down on an emotional level, something about it scared me. It wasn't the first time I'd felt this. There was this other time when I was invited to give a business keynote speech in Manila in the Philippines. I'd heard the islands in the Philippines were stunningly beautiful, so I considered taking a detour after my speech to go and visit them for a couple of days. But when it was time to make a decision, I thought to myself, go to a quiet island on my own, with no one to share it with. What would be the point? Why spend all that money on a nice hotel just for me. So I left without doing it. This wasn't as simple as a fear of going somewhere by myself. I had done that plenty in my life for the purposes of business. But doing it purely for fun was alien to me. Which is why flying to Mexico by myself, to be with myself, felt so weird. Only this time, I didn't want to let myself off the hook so easily. Instead, I told myself, if my resistance to going alone is this strong, then perhaps I really do need to do it. There must be some growth in this. My discomfort, in other words, became an invitation to explore the feeling. So I went. The first night I arrived in Cabo, I was deposited from my car into the balmy outdoor lobby of my hotel. As it turned out, the common areas of the hotel were all outdoors, as if the whole thing had been designed to be one big, humble brag about how great the weather is in Cabot. It's as though it was saying, oh, you have an inside where you're from. How lovely. Our weather is so great we don't even need one. The whole place lay on a sloping hill leading downward toward the beach. The lobby was breathtaking. Warm, glowing light sculptures threw orange shimmers onto decorative pools of water that snaked around the lobby. Wooden, winding check in desks looked like they belonged in the Museum of Modern Art and assured you that there was no expectation for you to check in anywhere in particular, if at all. Sort of like the way the lack of visible registers at the Apple Store makes one wonder if anything is actually for sale, or if the tables are just a kind of catwalk for laptops and iPhones. You couldn't see the ocean at that hour, but it reminded you it was there, frothing away somewhere nearby each time it kissed the shore. And then there were the stars. Stars in every direction blanketed this tranquil space age lobby. It was sublime. So sublime, in fact, that I felt this immediate and instinctive urge to turn to someone and say, isn't this amazing? Are you seeing this? Aren't we the luckiest people in the world right now? Isn't life just the best? Only there was no one there. The logistics of planes, airport baggage belts and taxis had temporarily distracted me from the fact that I was, in fact, here, alone. Suddenly, my heart felt gripped by sadness and heartbreak. My insides ached, and the beauty of my surroundings made that ache all the more profound. I started wondering how difficult or expensive it would be to change my flight home to an earlier day and whether the hotel would give me a refund for the nights I wouldn't be using to stall any impulsive action. I decided that whatever changes I would make, I should do them in the morning, after a night's sleep. The next day I woke, went down to breakfast with a book and just read as if I had nowhere to be, because I didn't. Then I laid by the pool watching families hanging out and ordering fries and couples floating around. Lunchtime, I hit the gym, took a nap in my room, and got dressed for a dinner with myself. It all felt deeply uncomfortable. At the end of the day, I told myself, let's just do this for one more day. The next day, breakfast felt a little easier, even enjoyable. I located the table I had sat at the day before, knew my way around the various items at the buffet, and got out a newspaper, something I rarely have the time to read when I'm in my normal life. Then, by day three, something small but profound happened. I realized I was enjoying myself. I had a profound realization about how much of my happiness was normally experienced through the eyes of other people, how much my joy and comfort were derived from seeing them have a wonderful time, and how deeply uncomfortable it was for me to simply experience it all firsthand by myself and by having no one I could turn to to say, isn't this wonderful? I had no choice but to simply experience it being wonderful instead. You might read this and be shocked and appalled at how hard I found a sunny trip to Mexico. I get it. But difficult is relative, and for me at that time, doing something for myself solo and confronting the feelings of loneliness and isolation that would come up was my very version of hard. I still remember that trip with deep fondness, a time when I truly bonded with myself, which was only made possible by my not taking the easy way out, a moment where, instead of running from my uncomfortable emotions, I sat with them long enough for them to calm down and even pass. I learned that I could trust myself to feel better on my own and was reminded once again not to always take so seriously my initial thoughts and fears about things, since they typically came from my inner child. And perhaps most importantly, I learned that I did not need someone else to make that child feel safe from the outside, an instinct that in the past had led me to some painful dating choices. I just needed to be with that child for long enough to show them that I could make them feel safe on my own. Key Takeaways we all have the things that we turn to in order to avoid our feelings, like I did when I wanted to find A travel partner for a four day trip. We often justify turning to these things with sound logic. Like in my case, it would be more fun if I went with a friend. But but if the emotional resistance is unnaturally strong, it's probably worth exploring it. When our inner child is screaming, it's an invitation to growth. Don't feel ashamed at the things that scare you. We all have them. Even in situations where we think it's ridiculous or pathetic that we are scared. Like a nice trip to Mexico. This stuff runs deeper than the situation itself. Showing ourselves wonderful experiences can be a way to reconnect us with with ourselves. We realize it is a gift we are giving to us and that is beautiful. In doing so, we send ourselves a message that we are a person worthy of being given this lovely experience to enjoy. And finally, when we sit with our inner child, breathe with them and give them love, we realize we don't need to give in to their reflexive demands, no, nor seek safety outside of ourselves. We can make them feel safe. And when we do, that child can begin to feel safe in situations that were previously scary and our world expands. What about you? Where in your life is your inner child screaming? Taking a trip? Going back to the gym after a long period of being off? Meeting a stranger for a coffee? Instead of running away from the feeling, engage with that activity, being kind to yourself the whole time and showing yourself that you are safe. Take your child by the hand and show them that this thing that scares them can be okay, even enjoyable, and that you have got their back. All right everyone, let me know what you think. Podcasty.com I want to remind everyone that anyone who pre orders a book this month, the Month of February Gets My Happiness After Heartbreak series. This is an incredibly valuable series of conversations I had with amazing experts like Dr. Nicole Apera, Dr. Ramany, David Kessler, Lewis Howes, Glo and Tanmo, Amy Porterfield, Lisa and Tom Bilyeu. It's an incredible assortment of people all giving you practical advice for how to move through any heartbreak in your life. You can go and get that by preordering the book@heartbreak series.com all you have to do is preorder the book from Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Then in your receipt you'll see an order number. Then go back to heartbreakseries.com and put that order number onto that page and you'll be instantly redirected to these wonderful conversations that are healing and will help you find happiness again. And of course in April on the 23rd you will be shipped my brand new book Love Life Again. That link is heartbreak series.com. thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed it and I look forward to making more of them for you. Be well and love Life. Sam.