Our comfort zone is a dangerous place. It prevents us from improving, it stops us from achieving all the things we are capable of achieving and it makes us miserable. So, if we decide to bring about a change in our life, we need to shake ourselves out of our comfort zone.

And this starts by asking ourselves some tough questions, questions that we have been refusing to acknowledge. We need to ask them to ourselves and we need to answer them also to ourselves. So, why do we resist? We resist because it makes us uncomfortable.

There could be loads of reasons that we may not achieve what we wish to. We fail. We consider this a setback. Setbacks set us back. The biggest problem with a setback is that it requires more than the previous level of motivation to try again. We tried with a certain level of motivation, but could not succeed. Next time, it requires more self-convincing, more motivation, more efforts, more self-limiting beliefs to unshackle, more doubts and questions to overcome, more emotions to work on...to be able to get back on to our journey of life.

Any change that we desire requires constant learning and the skillful application of what we learn, to adjust our goals, strategies, and behaviors. But the most important learning we need to do involves learning from our own experience. This takes a whole different set of skills than those involved in absorbing what other people can tell us. The ancient Greeks had a word for this– praxis.

Praxis is a four-stage process of:

• Observing our actions and their effects
• Analyzing what we observe
• Strategizing an action plan
• Taking action

Awareness is the state of being conscious of something. More specifically, is the ability to directly know and perceive, to feel, or to be cognizant of events. The concept is often synonymous with consciousness. Awareness of our inner patterns of perception and reaction is the first conscious step towards transformation.

Transformation does not lie in changing the past or controlling our environment. It lies within. What happens to us is not important. What happens in us is important.

Letting go is difficult. We get stuck in the same thought patterns over and over. We cling to and replay the past again and again in our minds. The desperate attempt to hold on to things limits our capability to experience happiness and joy in the present moment. Life is all about continuous change. No matter how hard we try to hold on to things, we will sooner or later be confronted with changes, whether we like it or not. The earlier we cease out attempts to own and control the environment we are living in, the faster we open up ourselves to new possibilities.

Through self-observation, mindfulness automatically streams into our life. The moment we realize we are not being mindful– we are mindful! We are now watching the mind instead of being swept off in its current. Any time we watch thoughts, we are being mindful. The key is– Don't believe your thoughts. Don't take them all seriously. Watch them, question them. In this way, thoughts and conditioned, reactive ways of living and thinking lose their hold over us. We no longer have to play them out.