Have you ever met a true champion? Well, meet me. I am one.
So, what have I been the best at? Well, I have been the world champion of staying in my comfort zone. How come? I was “smart” about staying there. After all, I have an engineering degree. I’m supposed to be smart right? No comment. My professors taught me how important engineers are to the world. I learned to think, reason, explore and design logically all day every day. I also learned about “factors of safety” when designing, all day every day. After all, that’s an integral part of what engineers do: create safe designs to prevent future disasters. They keep buildings from collapsing, bridges from crumbling, engines, and machinery from blowing up and hurting people. As engineers, we learned to make things extra extra safe and strong by adding numerous safety nets, just in case this happens, or just in case that happens … just in case, just in case, just in case…
We know that the conscious mind does the thinking, but what my professors did not tell me is that the subconscious mind does not think. It simply accepts what the conscious mind tells it. It’s a great big database that stores whatever your eyes, ears, sensors, and conscious mind give it. And then, softly, sub-consciously, in the silent background, it applies that information to your everyday life. In my case, my subconscious was keeping me “extra safe”, and in a great big comfort zone.
You see, the subconscious mind does not know right from wrong. It doesn’t know good from bad, or smart from dumb. It’s simply a storage of data and programs. Well, with the lack of perspective then, my instinct for personal safety was reinforced by my engineering field of study and professors for my entire life. Proof? You decide… I’ve never been married, even though I’ve known some of the most wonderful women and potential partners in the world. Why? “Marriage is not safe (emotionally) because the future is too unknown … what if this .. what if that …”. How about this one: even though I didn’t enjoy engineering very much, I stayed in it for a very long time. Consequently, I didn’t do very well at it. But it was too risky to change. Engineering was safe. The point is, I never took any risks, small or big. My life was boring and going nowhere. At one point, it started to feel like I was going backward, which became hard to live with. It caused tremendous anxiety and depression.
Since misery loves company, one day all the walls came tumbling down BOOM!! Boy, I still remember it well. It was no fun, no fun at all. At some point I remember thinking, “I really need professional help. Or else, I don’t know what will happen to me.” After trying therapists, counselors, and psychologists to no avail, the next “logical” thing on the list was something I had heard about called Discovery Programs.
Looking back, all I can say is THANK YOU, GOD!! Discovery changed everything. It would take pages to tell you all the things Discovery did for me, but the biggest was to teach me to stretch, which means to get out of my comfort zone …. continuously. This was huge, because don’t forget, I was the world champion of the comfort zone. Today my motto is: if I’m not uncomfortable, I’m not growing.
Thanks to Discovery, my life today is totally different in a positive way. Today I can report that every area of my life has changed for the better… mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, romantically, professionally, and financially. This makes sense because we know that every part of our lives is connected.
I have one last thing to say about Discovery, something that’s hard for me to believe I would ever say: the Discovery intention, design, set-up, process, and results make so much logical sense from an engineering perspective… it is the best engineered process I’ve ever seen. Can you believe I just said that? I can’t, but I did!
- Mike Reeder