Swati Kameswar Of Activate Your Truth and Power On Your Game On How to Go Beyond Your Comfort Zone To Grow Both Personally and Professionally
An Interview With Maria Angelova
Create safety to dissolve fear and move beyond it: We often resist going out of our comfort zone due to fear of going into the unknown. And it’s important to become unafraid to dive deep into the patterns that hold you back.
It feels most comfortable to stick with what we are familiar with. But anyone who has achieved great success will tell you that true growth comes from pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. What are some ways that influential people have pushed themselves out of their comfort zone to grow both personally and professionally? As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Swati Kameswar.
Swati Kameswar is a Visionary Coach helping individuals in their 30s/40s/50s to transform midlife crisis into midlife awakening by activating the power of their authentic voice.
After 2 decades in the world of engineering and management, she found her calling in midlife to help others express their genius through their voice.
She specializes in helping individuals transform career burnout into passion, uncover hidden skills, embrace their unique ideas, so they can experience growth and recognition in their chosen career and set up the second half of their life for meaningful, authentic & joyful success. You can learn more about her courses and workshops at https://activateyourtruthandpower.com/
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we start, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?
I was born in Mumbai India and lived there for the first 22 years of my life. As a child, I loved to paint, read and be in nature. Both my parents were engineers and very unconventional. They went through a big awakening phase in their 40s, that was catalyzed by challenges in the environment that we lived in. This expanded their minds and opened their hearts. Their awakening had a big impact on how I was raised, and it influenced my own midlife awakening phase in a big way. Being good at science & math meant that I followed the conventional career path and became an engineer myself. I came to the US to pursue higher studies and have lived here since then. The seeds sowed by my parents’ experiences and interest in higher consciousness had a big impact on my own life and eventually paved the way for my career change from engineer to visionary coach/astrologer/artist.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it.” by Martha Graham.
I heard this quote at a time when I was exploring what my unique life purpose was. Two questions came up for me: Why was I born at this time, who was I without all the roles, titles, successes? And what if I reach the end of my life and didn’t do what I came here to do? Now looking back, I realize that I was in pursuit of my unique expression. This quote highlighted that each of us has a unique expression, and it is up to us to find it and let it come through.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
“Dying to be Me” by Anita Moorjani. I read this book during the Spring of 2015. At the time, I was experiencing disillusionment with my then career. Recognizing that I had achieved much and checked off many items on my life’s to-do list. But is this all there is to it?
When I read this book, it jolted me out of the disillusionment and gave me a glimpse of what I was looking for — authentic expression. I recognized that my soul was wanting to expand in a big way in a direction I had not considered, but I had no idea what that was.
This book inspired me a great deal by giving me a perspective of a soul’s journey of growth from a much higher level of consciousness. My life began to change after that as I went on a deep exploration of what it means to be authentic, and I grew beyond my wildest dreams.
Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. Let’s start with a basic definition so that all of us are on the same page. What does “getting outside of your comfort zone” mean?
Getting outside of your comfort zone means to start doing things that are new or unfamiliar to you, that may bring up discomfort. It could mean learning about new things, taking in new information through the mind or allowing yourself to experience new things and places, taking action on things you have not previously done so. It could mean a new career. Basically, it implies being in a state of unfamiliarity and newness.
Can you help articulate a few reasons why it is important to get out of your comfort zone?
Simply put, we cannot grow in our comfort zone.
Comfort zone is a lovely place to be after you’ve learned something new and are in the process of mastering a skill; you’ll need to repeat doing it till you are comfortable with it and have competency with it. You need that place of familiarity to gain mastery.
But if you want to grow in a new area, to get a bigger picture as you expand your expertise, then it becomes necessary to go beyond what you already know.
After a while of being in our comfort zone, if we don’t branch out of what we are used to doing, we risk stagnating. It can get boring to be in the same place for a long time and the soul will naturally lean towards expansion.
Is it possible to grow without leaving your comfort zone? Can you explain what you mean?
It is possible, but it may take a lot longer than one desires. It’s possible to learn new things slowly, over time.
It can be nice to give yourself space and time to grow, at a comfortable pace. And that is okay. It all depends on what you desire.
Can you share some anecdotes from your personal experience? Can you share a story about a time when you stepped out of your comfort zone and how it helped you grow? How does it feel to take those first difficult steps?
One example of stepping out of my comfort zone in a big way has been my career transition from engineering to coaching. This was by far the scariest, because my identity was tied to my education, training, and experience. But the desire to grow and expand into my authentic self was so much greater than the fear. So, I consistently took steps to learn new skills, follow new interests of the heart and created a pathway for myself to transition.
What are your “five ways to push past your comfort zone, to grow both personally and professionally”?
1. Recognize the impulse to grow: This is key to moving out of familiarity. Often when we are meant to grow, we will start to feel disillusioned with what we already have. There may be a sense of dissatisfaction with what you already know, what you’ve already achieved. If you can recognize when that happens, it can prepare you for moving into a growth phase. From my experience, boredom and disillusionment preceded an explosive phase of growth into new areas. The curiosity to learn new things overrode the fear of being in unfamiliar territory. But if we resist this impulse to grow, then stagnation sets in.
2. Create safety to dissolve fear and move beyond it: We often resist going out of our comfort zone due to fear of going into the unknown. And it’s important to become unafraid to dive deep into the patterns that hold you back.
That is because when we consciously want to grow and move into new areas of learning, there may be latent fear that may sabotage the conscious intent. Recognize how the fear shows up for you (eg procrastination). Create space and safety to handle the emotions that come up with the fear. The more you transform and process the emotions, the lesser the fear. Being able to face the self-sabotaging patterns related to fears of all sorts, and lovingly holding space to transform them has been a powerful trait that has supported my own transition into new areas. It’s a beautiful thing to be able to hold unconditional love and support for your own self for that is when you start to find those authentic unique qualities that are true to you. Dissolving the fear leads to trusting your own self which is key to moving out of your comfort zone.
3. Create a safe container for learning the new skills:
Often when we are learning new things, or doing something unfamiliar, especially if you are competent at your current task, you may have judgement of doing thing imperfectly and have unrealistic expectations. Give yourself permission to be a beginner and be mediocre at it. Creating safety to do things imperfectly helps with facing the fear of failure. Self-compassion & courage is needed to move into something new.
I remember when I made my very first video on an important astrology transit, back in 2019. A 5 min video took me more than an hour to make! I was grappling with all sorts of fears then, but mainly fear of being seen as an astrologer. But with patience, I completed that series and shared it with many people who were interested in astrology. The feedback I received from them dissolved the fear and encouraged me to continue making them.
4. Recognize the season of your life when change is inevitable. In my experience, we will all go through phases when change will happen, whether we like it or not. For example, when you go through Pluto transits you are guaranteed to be invited to face fears. Pluto transits are about facing long forgotten patterns that we are afraid of, composting them once and for all, and becoming empowered to move on. But if we are not aware of this or resist this, the transit becomes hard, and this shows up in form of obstacles and challenges. This is what I learned during my midlife transits. Midlife is a time when we are invited to face our fears of growth, and this will inevitably mean getting out of your comfort zone. This is why so many people feel the urge for change during midlife. So, awareness of this, and recognizing that you must face it can help with creating safety for yourself to make the change happen.
5. Give yourself the experience of your new expression:
This is by far the best way to get over fear of doing something new. By creating conditions that allow you to express your new self, allows you to go out of your comfort zone but still have some level of control over it. It can ease the process of change. Get support from your friends and family who understand what you are trying to accomplish. I remember a time when I realized I wanted to become a coach, I gave myself the experience of doing so by inviting a few friends and letting them know that I wanted to share my journey of growth. Before I knew it, I was coaching 20 women over a period of a year. This allowed me to experience myself in a new role, in a new way, and get feedback before I fully committed to the new path.
From your experience or perspective, what are some of the common barriers that keep someone from pushing out of their comfort zone?
Fear is the biggest reason why we may stay in familiar territory. This fear can be due to many different reasons such as:
– Fear of the unknown. We all have a need for safety and the unknown often feels unsafe.
– Fear of failure or making a mistake and losing credibility
– Fear of not feeling safe, of getting hurt, rejected.
– Fear of visibility and of being seen for our true self
– Fear of losing identity: If I don’t do this anymore, who am I? Fear of what others think and how they perceive me? Will I become irrelevant?
– Fear of discomfort — doing something new means that you must put in work to gain mastery at something new. We want to be comfortable!
There is a well-known quote attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt that says, “Do something that scares you every day”. What exactly does this mean to you? Is there inherent value in doing something that pushes you out of your comfort zone, even if it does not relate to personal or professional growth? For example, if one is uncomfortable about walking alone at night should they purposely push themselves to do it often for the sake of going beyond their comfort zone? Can you please explain what you mean?
What it means is that you don’t feel safe walking alone at night. And that similar fear, of lack of safety may be showing up somewhere else in your life.
So, a way to work with this is to ask yourself, where else do you not feel safe? And then create the conditions for safety and expansion in safety.
For example, when I started to study astrology and apply it in my life, I found it incredible as a personal development tool and saw big transformation in myself. Naturally I wanted to share it with others, but I was very hesitant to do this because I was worried about what my friends would think. I was afraid of being made fun of, of losing credibility or outright rejection.
So instead, I chose to share it with a few friends who were open and through that forum of safety, I exercised and built these skills. I’m very grateful to those friends, because their openness allowed me to practice and develop a brand-new skill. That then gave me courage to start my own blog and write about astrological transits. Initially I kept the blog private because I was terrified of others seeing it! Eventually I got comfortable with writing and made it public and now I write a lot every week!
When we do something new, our brain and body need to feel safe to create that new pattern. So, when we create conditions for that safety, it allows our system to get accustomed to the new state. It takes patience and commitment but it’s so worth it because who wants to live life locked up in fear!
So, I think what she means is to create a safe space for yourself to do something different every day.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?
One aspect of personal transformation I am passionate about is to help people transform the inner and outer voice to not express from the wound (which is pain from past experiences, fear, judgement, or the inner critic), but rather express from their higher qualities and wisdom. Our inner voice shapes our outer expression. One realization that helped me to become more comfortable expressing authentically was that the inner critic is a part of you that has not gotten authentic expression. It is not someone outside of you, it is not separate from you, it doesn’t need to be ‘silenced’ or ‘slayed’, because it is a part of you that has been suppressed and over time it has gotten hurt and maybe even angry to be pushed down. When we transform the hurting voice of the inner critic into a fierce discerning voice of truth, your authentic truth and allow that to come through, your higher expression can come through. When this voice of your truth is active and strong within, you trust yourself, and it can help you navigate the unknown with courage and compassion. It makes getting out of your comfort zone into something new and aligned so much easier! That is very powerful!
Is there a person in the world whom you would love to have lunch with, and why? Maybe we can tag them and see what happens!
Susan Magsamen & Ivy Ross. I am fascinated by their book “Your Brain on Art”. As a person who was creative as child and have reclaimed my creativity in adulthood, I knew intuitively how powerful creativity is in facilitating transformation. My Intentional Creativity® Teacher training and experience also showed me how instrumental creativity is in helping to transform the inner critic into the Muse and enable authentic self-expression. Their book shares what happens in the brain when you are exposed to art and creativity. I find it incredibly fascinating how this resonates with my experience and would love to meet them! I appreciate the work that they have done to promote the understanding of the effect of arts on the brain.
How can our readers follow you online?
You can sign up for a free 45-page e-book called “The 12 Paths to Impeccable Personal Power” on my website https://activateyourtruthandpower.com/
On the website you will find lots of content to support the expression of your authentic voice. I have several complimentary offerings that include weekly articles, videos on my YouTube channel and a discovery session called Awaken Your Authentic Voice.
Other services I offer are astrology chart readings and creative workshops to transform the inner critic into your Muse and uncover the playful brilliance within you.
My courses Authentic Voice, and Power of Balance, connect you to your unique superpowers, awakening aliveness & joy that spills into your life & career!
Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!
About The Interviewer: Maria Angelova, MBA is a disruptor, author, motivational speaker, body-mind expert, Pilates teacher and founder and CEO of Rebellious Intl. As a disruptor, Maria is on a mission to change the face of the wellness industry by shifting the self-care mindset for consumers and providers alike. As a mind-body coach, Maria’s superpower is alignment which helps clients create a strong body and a calm mind so they can live a life of freedom, happiness and fulfillment. Prior to founding Rebellious Intl, Maria was a Finance Director and a professional with 17+ years of progressive corporate experience in the Telecommunications, Finance, and Insurance industries. Born in Bulgaria, Maria moved to the United States in 1992. She graduated summa cum laude from both Georgia State University (MBA, Finance) and the University of Georgia (BBA, Finance). Maria’s favorite job is being a mom. Maria enjoys learning, coaching, creating authentic connections, working out, Latin dancing, traveling, and spending time with her tribe. To contact Maria, email her at angelova@rebellious-intl.com. To schedule a free consultation, click here.
Swati Kameswar Of Activate Your Truth and Power On Your Game On How to Go Beyond Your Comfort Zone… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.