Today I learned all about Ron Paul. Initially I was very closed, I didn’t want to learn about him or have to rethink any of my political viewpoints. I heard he was conservative and pro-life, reason enough for me to discount him totally. I like liberal politicians. Certainly I could never support someone who wasn’t pro civil liberties, especially all the liberties I care about. I had already decided, I wanted to support my Alma Mater and go with Hillary. We need more women in power and obviously anyone who went to the best college in the world must be amazing. Why should I even bother listening to a word old Ron has to say?

Pretty soon though, I found myself immersed in the Republican debates on YouTube. I was thinking, what about our current foreign policy? What do I think about radical policy makers, especially a fringe politician with a more-than-just-cult-like internet following?

Well this isn’t a political blog post and I certainly don’t have any answers about who to vote for in 2008. This is instead a post about our comfort zones. My experience with Ron Paul today was the perfect example of expanding a comfort zone. Initial rigidity and negativity with a lot of “I” statements (I don’t like conservatives, He isn’t my type of politician), followed by slow realization of my prejudices and unwillingness to re-examine my ideas. Just about every self-help and popular guru will tell you that breaking out of routines, unconscious habits and our insular comfort zones is one of the best ways to grow (spiritually, intellectually, personally).

As we live we gather up a set of habits, beliefs (or ideologies) and routines. These keep us in our “comfort zone.” However staying in our comfort zone at all times does not provide a fertile medium for growth or reaching our best potentials. These habits and routines become so ingrained in our daily experience that they often fall into our unconscious. Pretty soon they are determining for us what we can or cannot do (or even try!). We’ll be stuck in the “comfort zone” or rut, in a state of mild fear (which is our ego telling us we need to stay in our routine in order to be safe and happy). Stagnation and ruts don’t sound exciting for anyone.

A great way to over come this is to try something new. Even our extremely successful habits and comfort zone routines will lose their use fullness as we change and grow. Continuing to try new things in new circumstances is a great way to expose our routines. If we keep trying new things we’ll eventually adapt. The more things we try the sooner we can let go of old routines and habits that have lost their usefulness.

Life Hack’s article on just this explains further:

Understand the truth about your habits. They always represent past successes. You have formed habitual, automatic behaviors because you once dealt with something successfully, tried the same response next time, and found it worked again. That’s how habits grow and why they feel so useful. To get away from what’s causing your unhappiness and workplace blues, you must give up on many of your most fondly held (and formerly successful) habits. and try new ways of thinking and acting

At first I was totally closed to the idea of learning anything about politicians outside of my “zone”. I didn’t want to hear a thing about them. My mind was made up. Slowly though, a small part of me warned, “What if you’re being willfully ignorant? Can it really hurt you to learn more?” Thankfully, I listened to this little voice. Now I am more informed in general and that doesn’t mean I have to change my mind, just challenge my assumptions. It’s scary to reevaluate, because sometimes we identify so much with our ideas and beliefs that revisiting them seems like we are challenging our very souls. This is merely our scared ego talking. We grow by trying new things, learning about new things and contemplating new concepts.

I’ll leave you with some suggestions from Steve Pavlina about how to expand your comfort zone each and every day:

Routine is important for providing stability and security, but it should only provide the outer shell for tackling novel challenges each day. Push yourself to take in new input, the likes of which you’ve never previously experienced, and you will become smarter. Ideally you’ll want to tackle something new and non-routine at least once a day. Read a new book, listen to a new song, walk around a new location, meet a new person, eat at a new restaurant, play a new game, install new software – do something that provides fresh, new input to your mind.

Over the next several days, begin to consciously recognize how your mind uses invariant representations in everything you do. Notice the labels you assign to people, objects, and activities, such as boss, faucet, and paperwork. Notice what other labels you associatively link to those representations. Pay special attention to those representations that involve your identity. How do you label yourself? Begin to question some of those representations. Are they accurate? Could any of them be holding you back? How can you consciously improve upon those representations?