Mike Mantic Of Pathfinders Co On How to Go Beyond Your Comfort Zone to Grow Both Personally and Professionally
An Interview With Maria Angelova
Develop a set of choices — things you choose for your life every day and focus on these choices every morning before you start your day.
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 Mike Mantic.
With 25+ years of experience, Mike Mantic is a contemporary Shaman, Intuitive and Facilitator of Expanded Consciousness Experiences. He works with people dedicated to discovering the true mission of their souls. The ultimate spirit of his work connects people to their soul’s essence in ways that allow them to experience themselves as a divine spiritual being (rather than a body), freeing them from the deepest rooted fears holding them back and gifting them the ability, tools, and skills to live and access truth directly from their own highest source and greatest gifts…
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?
For the most part, I had a reasonably idyllic childhood. Growing up in New Zealand near the beach I was afforded a huge amount of freedom. I was raised by a father who was a Yogananda devotee, and a mother who was a publisher that in later years went on to publish many spiritual new age and channelled books. It was a fairly basic upbringing until the age of 13 when I was hit by a car while crossing the road and had a near-death experience which changed everything for me. At 14 I began meditating and trying to understand why I was here, and why I felt so out of place. That one mission has let me down many strange and varied paths eventually leading me here to do the work that I’m doing with people.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Live with death over your shoulder and the muse at your elbow.” I don’t know where this originally came from but it was one of the central tenants of a 10-year shamanic apprenticeship I undertook. In the beginning, I read this to mean “ to live life on the edge, live it to its fullest”. Basically, I read it like a motivational poster inspiring me to take risks and to “live fast and die young”. However, as I’ve got older I have come to see it in a different light. It’s come to mean more about living fully in the moment. Living with your ancestors, and the spirit world a fraction of a millimeter away and supporting you with all the knowledge, wisdom and love you need to complete your mission. To live fully connected to all that you are. I’ve come to see death as a constant companion that for some will hold them back from living a life aligned with their soul’s calling, and for others, a sacred gift that inspires and ignites deep internal connected wisdom to creates powerfully inspired and creative genius work in the world.
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?
Two books spring to mind, the first is Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins (which I read out loud to my wife early in our relationship) which is a fictional tale of a thousand-year-old man who truly follows his own heart through life. The second book is Mind Games by Jean Houston and Robert Masters which got me exploring my consciousness and capabilities in new and creative ways that led me to some very profound awakenings. It has to be said that I did not dabble in this — I went through every single exercise in the book in 16 days starting at 6 am and going sometimes till 11 pm. By the time the 16 days were over, I was a radically different person in many ways: freed from many of the shackles of my upbringing and social programming. A highly valuable book.
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?
For me, getting out of your comfort zone is bringing enough awareness to your behavior so that the robotized, automated reactions, thoughts, behaviors and patterns programmed into you your entire life cease to be an influence on the actions you are taking. What that usually looks like is going through an intuitive process to uncover the exact steps you need to take to fulfil the vision that you have. For many people, the information received from this process will be highly uncomfortable because it will require your behaviors and actions that you may never have taken before. What this means is that following intuitive guidance can leave you very uncomfortable in the unknown for most of your waking hours. In many cases you will find yourself being asked to take action without understanding why that action needs to be taken, requiring you to simply trust that your intuition and your higher consciousness have your back and will lead you closer to your vision.
Can you help articulate a few reasons why it is important to get out of your comfort zone?
We all have programs within us that are designed to achieve one thing and one thing only, and that is to maintain our worldview or our picture of how the world is. That worldview is structured on what we came to believe we need to be viable. Those patterns of behavior will have us doing and living the same patterns for the rest of our lives. For me, regardless of how well you seem to be doing, or how successful you are, there will always be patterns that do not serve us; if we do not break out of these patterns we are essentially living a robotized life without the spontaneity, stretch and exploration required to grow.
On a higher level we are here as spiritual beings having a human experience and while we may justify our successes and predilections, if we are not growing at that higher level then we are wasting this life. This is work that needs to be done no matter how successful or happy you are in the life you’ve created. At the core of these patterns are beliefs that we are safe only if we remain within our comfort zone. Remain in the place where we ‘know’ how the world is. Breaking out of this comfort zone shows up when we are in the unknown. The more we can exist in ‘the mystery’ or the unknown and be ok with that, the more we learn to live in the moment and trust the inner knowing and intuition that we all have. It is following this intuition at the moment that allows us to become more of who we truly are and let go of more and more of the programming that has us living small.
Is it possible to grow without leaving your comfort zone? Can you explain what you mean?
The very nature of being in your comfort zone means that you are identified with your egoic personality (who you think you are from the perspective of your mind and beliefs). Generally speaking, as long as you continue believing that this is who you are, you will never truly grow. The very nature of that identity is to keep you within your comfort zone — even if that comfort zone is highly uncomfortable by nature. I have seen growth within the comfort zone, but that usually happens because the comfort zone itself is highly uncomfortable. Those seeking change will eventually reach a point where it is less painful to move forward and out of their comfort zone than it is to stay there. However, this is a path to very slow growth. The moment you make peace with being uncomfortable, being in the mystery, and being in a space where you don’t know how to proceed, except to trust your intuition and fly by the seat of your pants; At that moment you put yourself on the path of rapid and profound change.
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?
I remember when it was a thing people were asking “if you could have any 3 people over for dinner who would they be and why?” At the time I was fully focused on learning Internet marketing, and one of the people that I had on this list was a well-known Internet marketer at the time. 2 years later an Internet marketing conference came to town and I volunteer to help as I knew one of the organizers. One of the people who came to that conference to speak on stage was the internet marketing expert who was on my list of dinner invites. While he was talking I had an idea for a product, and rather than keep it to myself I approached this guy asking if he had 10 minutes to talk. He loved my idea so much that we ended up collaborating on it together. That product was sold for over a decade, and while I took care of the initial creation of the product, he took care of the sales and sent me monthly checks for years. Not long after the initial product was created, I also approached him about a second, short-term potential joint venture that I wanted to set up because I was about to get married I needed extra money for the wedding and honeymoon. By this stage, we had such a great relationship that he went out of his way to help me promote my idea which completely paid for the wedding, the after-party and the honeymoon. None of this would have been possible without me taking that initial step of proposing a simple idea to somebody who is far ahead of where I was in the business world. I remember feeling very nervous at the time to ask the initial question but quickly found that he was just another human being looking for opportunities to make an impact in this world, and my idea helped him as much as it helped me. It also set up many years of other products for me that would not have come if I hadn’t taken that one single step at the moment that the idea came.
Here is the central question of our discussion. What are your “five ways to push past your comfort zone, to grow both personally and professionally”?
- Meditate.
Meditation is the very foundation of coming to know yourself. Learning to still the mind and sit in that silence is critical to being able to hear the quiet inner voice of your intuition and to be able to witness what’s going on inside. Until you can learn to be the witness, then you will forever capitulate to every egoic thoughts and negative beliefs you unconsciously carry with you. Those unconscious beliefs will have their way with you and negatively impact your life without you ever realizing that they’re in operation. The most powerful perspective you can come from is to claim that you create everything in your life. From this perspective, we will always tend toward bringing our witness to bear on the happenings of our life with simple questions like “Why did I create that?”. If you don’t live from this powerful perspective, then your negative beliefs and patterns of behaviour will create situations in your life that set you up to be a victim of outside circumstances. From this victim perspective, we can never gain the wisdom or Insight we need to be able to navigate those negative patterns, choose a vision generated from the higher perspective of your soul or life purpose and then proceed with that insight to create a life that we love.
2. Carry a notebook and jot down every idea.
Employers in the creative industry love to think that employees can switch on creativity at 8:30 a.m. and switch it off at 5:30 p.m. but that’s just not the case. The best ideas can come at any point in the day or night, and we need to be present enough in our thoughts, feelings and intuition to be able to capture those fleeting thoughts at a moment’s notice. To that end, I always suggest carrying a notebook (yes you can use your phone) and jotting down every single idea that comes to you at any point in the day or night. Some of these ideas will linger once captured and can be explored further, many ideas if not captured will be lost in the millions of thoughts we have in a single day.
If you find an idea that seems to have a high level of energy or potency to it, and you keep returning to it time and again, it’s a really good idea to set your intention and allow your subconscious mind to work on the problem over time.
There have been times that I have worked on a single idea for months or even years before it fully came to fruition, but without having the awareness to make that original note and set out to explore it none of that information would have come to light.
3. Develop and hone your intuition (this is a process that you can learn — but get guidance!).
For most people, intuition is a vague ethereal thing that, like the touch of a butterfly, feels incredibly special when it comes, but there is no way to replicate it when you need it. However, intuition can be developed as a skill that can be refined and mastered so that it can be called upon any time it’s needed.
For those that have not been trained, intuition is an idea, a glimpse or a notion which is fleeting and gone. For those that are trained, it can be developed so that you can intuitively tap into information about any subject and get as much information as you would like. Personally, I’ve done intuitive readings on people and their lives, ideas and situations that have gone on for as long as 90 minutes, with a lot more information waiting in the wings we didn’t get time to tap into. This is a constant stream of rich, detailed and often hidden information that can bring awareness to a wellspring of opportunities and potentials to be explored, for personal development, wealth creation, relationships and connection to your higher purpose.
4. Develop a set of choices — things you choose for your life every day and focus on these choices every morning before you start your day.
Develop a set of high-value outcomes that you would love to create in your life, and then go through those outcomes every morning and get into the emotional feeling of each. There are two important caveats to this: The first is that you need to be able to tune in to what it is that your heart wants to create in the world, regardless of whether it makes sense, whether you have the skills right now or whether it is viable financially. That which makes us happy may not be something that can be turned into an income stream and may not be compatible with the way you currently live your life. It’s important to honor what you get as this can form the foundation of a life of deep and profound purpose. The second thing is to be able to put aside all the things you think you want or have been programmed by your family or society to want. These desires are nothing more than the distractions of the unconscious identity and may lead you to success in life, but massive failure for your heart and soul. Ironically, I have found that those that follow their true calling and purpose often have great success because the energy they put into their lives comes from a very different place and has a naturally attractive quality to it.
5. Learn to expand your consciousness.
There’s a well-known notion out there that the conscious mind can process around 2000 bits of information per second, whereas the unconscious mind processes up to 400 billion bits of information per second. As long as we stay in everyday waking consciousness, and never train our minds to go beyond what we see in everyday waking life then our creative process is essentially limited to that conscious mind 2000 bits of information. As we learn to meditate, as we hone and master intuition, as we learn to expand our consciousness into realms beyond ordinary waking awareness we avail ourselves of the opportunity to tap into all the information our subconscious mind processes. From that information, we can filter the higher-level, high-value information we need to think creatively and outside of the box to bring to the world things that have never before been seen.
Spirituality, awareness and expanded consciousness were once a thing reserved for monks, priests and shamans, but those on the creative bleeding edge of commerce, business, invention and social change are realizing that there are huge benefits, not only out in the world but also internally and personally. Learning to expand your consciousness to reveal the truth of who you are and to dive into that information to uncover the genius ideas that you are here to offer is essential for those wishing to create a greater impact and generational change on the planet.
From your experience or perspective, what are some of the common barriers that keep someone from pushing out of their comfort zone?
I often teach a set of 12 core beliefs which demonstrate not only the core belief people take on but also the infantile conclusions that we came to that define our behavior for the rest of our life. For each of these beliefs, there is a primary or core fear that we are unconsciously expecting to happen if we don’t behave in a very specific way. This is the essence of the primary fears. Interestingly, however all of these core fears can be paired down to one single issue, and that is, if we don’t behave in the particular way that we believe we need to, we will die. The body has an inbuilt, hardwired survival mechanism that keeps us focused on staying alive at all times. When somebody comes along who has a different idea of the world from us it is common for people to defend their ideas as though their life depended on it. What that ultimately boils down to is that our beliefs have just as much of a survival mechanism triggering effect as would a tiger running at us. We stay in our comfort zones because those comfort zones have been designed to maintain our worldview and not challenge us to think outside of that closed circle. From my perspective, the greatest thing that stops people from pushing out of their comfort zone is the unconscious hardwired fear of death. This in a way, brings me full circle back to point 1, where learning to meditate is the foundational skill that allows us to bring witness to our actions. This allows us to acknowledge that we have a fear of death in operation and then just take a step outside the circle of our comfort zone and into the unknown.
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?
On the surface, the practice of stepping outside your comfort zone seems like a good idea. If nothing else, it will have the valuable effect of helping us acclimate and become more comfortable in the unknown. However, I would add a caveat to this. Stepping outside the comfort zone just for the sake of it will ultimately achieve very little if the actions you are taking are more about trying to challenge your fears. Yes, you may become more comfortable with your fears, and you may also risk getting hurt, or even killed depending on what you are doing. My caveat is that the things you do every day to get you out of your comfort zone need to be informed by the intuition that comes when you contemplate and embody the choices and goals you have divined by tuning into your heart and soul. This simple redirection will take the notion of doing something that scares you and allow it to be guided by a higher calling and purpose. That might be something simple like reaching out to someone you admire or speaking to someone that you are called to share something. It might be to create a video revealing your innermost insights, or to start a business, paint a painting and share it with others… etc… These examples may not seem like scary things but every person will have things that cause them to fear. Things that fly in the face of who they believe they need to be in the world. And, as we’ve discussed, those things will directly trigger the fear of death, but also may show up as the very thing you need to do to realize those choices and goals into reality. Breaking out of your comfort zone for the sake of it, to me means nothing, but breaking out of it to expand your worldview and create a life of deep meaning and purpose has an essential inherent power that can change things for you in ways unimaginable right now.
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?
I would inspire a movement that got people exploring expanded consciousness to remember the magnificence of who they really are at a soul, spiritual and multidimensional level. If even a fraction of the political, business, creative and social leaders truly remembered who they were at that level, the world would be a radically and fundamentally different place within a decade. I foresee that war, greed, famine, ecological degradation, stress, declining mental health, and many, many other things would become a thing of the past and we, as a species, would begin to joyfully collaborate in ways that would radically improve the lives of everybody on this planet.
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!
Russel Brand
How can our readers follow you online?
My website is https://www.pathfinders.co/.
You can follow me on https://www.linkedin.com/company/pathfinders-co/ and @manticmike on other socials.
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.
Mike Mantic On How to Go Beyond Your Comfort Zone to Grow Both Personally and Prof was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.