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Why Your Comfort Zone Is Sabotaging You – And How To Break Free With Dr. Axa Yox
I am so honored to be joined by Dr. Axa Yox. Dr. Yox, tell us who you are and what you do.
Dr. Yox’s Journey From Scientist To Entrepreneur
Good morning and good afternoon, wherever you are tuning in. Thanks for hosting me. Let’s have fun and let’s learn some lessons here. I’m a human biologist by profession. I also did a PhD in microbiology with genetics, and then I decided because I had twelve inventions that I was ready for real life. I quit science, a very safe place for me, and I started my own business and I failed so badly. It’s very nice because when I heard about your show, I was like, “My story fits so perfectly because I was at my peak in science.” I knew everything. People know me, and who I am. I achieved everything you could wish for in science and then, completely at rock bottom. I couldn’t even see a light at the end of the tunnel and then I started to question everything. What brought me where I was? Why do people fail? Why do people do what they do?
It took me on a journey of three and a half years, and I discovered completely unspoken realities and insights. I shared them in my book, and every time I talk to people, they are like, “That’s interesting. We never saw it that way.” Sometimes the biggest failure that you can have in life might be the beginning of a new journey. Keep going, and you never know that one light that is off might be the one for the other light.
I know in my own life, there are times when have been like, “All of this happening is not good,” and yet, that door closed, and a much better, more wonderful door opened for me. I had no idea, but I do believe that epic does begin with one step forward, and all of us have done epic things. Look at you. You were in science, as you said, a nice, safe place. Science is one of those things. There’s all of that fabulous look. It’s safe. You are doing your research. Your research gives you a yes or a no answer. Sometimes a maybe but generally, a yes or a no, and then you go, “Forget that. Let me go out into the work world, the entrepreneur world.” Tell us a little about the failure because sometimes that’s an interesting story.
It’s very interesting that you said a very safe space in science because when I was at the very beginning of science, I didn’t know anything as well. I was starting from scratch, but whenever you continue whether it’s university or school it feels familiar. You convince yourself that’s something that you were born to do but the journey is, you never know when the next sharp turn is.
You go completely down like you hit rock bottom, and then you skyrocket. You never know what the next step is until you take the next step and there is one thing that I learned, it’s not that when one door closes, another door opens. It’s that when one door closes, you need to keep knocking on doors. Only those people find the next door. Sometimes, it’s only the next door that you need to find.
Some people stay stuck in that place. One door closed, they knocked on another door, it didn’t open, and they are in that bubble, in that time frame, like they are stuck, and they don’t know how to continue. They’re lost. I am one of the examples. I was successful in science. I started from scratch without any idea. I failed miserably, and still, I kept going. I didn’t even know what to expect at the end of the tunnel because I was going through a dark tunnel.
I knew that where I was, I didn’t want to stay there. Sometimes, the sign that you have to continue is if you are in a place where you don’t want to stay and the only answer is keep going. There is no backwardness. You cannot go back. Forward is the only place. Simply, don’t stay stuck. That’s the best advice that I can give to anyone.
The Value of Failure In Life And Business
As you were talking, I was thinking about two similar but distinct things. One is very famous and I’m not quoting directly but it’s Edison’s like, “I failed 100 times before I succeeded.” Here he is, Thomas Edison, trying to invent the light bulb. He’s like, “I have an idea that this is going to work,” and he is trying different filaments and all of this and that is true.
Then there’s a story from, I believe it’s Chicken Soup for the Soul, where this guy’s talking about being in a hotel room, and he sees this fly keep trying to fly into a window. The fly is like, “I want to get out,” and yet, 2 feet to the right is an open door that the fly can go out and get outside, and yet it keeps doing that.
You are exactly right. There are people who see that defeat and keep trying to do the same thing and are like I don’t know, maybe they are not learning from it. Just because you fail at something once doesn’t mean that you don’t try it again but after a couple of times, you’ve got to say, “This isn’t working.” In my book, I talk about failure being part of the journey, and when you fail, there’s a lot of learning there. There’s probably more learning than succeeding, and you learn how not to do something. That’s not how to do that.
I laugh because we are both entrepreneurs. I don’t know about you, but I have spent more money than I want to think about on different tools that are there to help me and it’s not that they are bad tools, they are just not the right tool for me. Be it database management, contact management software to help you transcribe, or whatever. These are all fabulous products, but they may not be the one for you.
It’s a nice thing that you said because I always look at whatever you learn in life even if it is not the right thing at this moment. It doesn’t mean that when you continue your path, you will never need to use it like how to write the word “success.” If you learn only A, B, and C, you will write only parts. There are only two Cs in the word “success,” but you need to continue to learn all the letters. Then you learn to put the letters together in the right sequence. Then you create the word.
The same is the path that you go, but you have to start with A. You cannot go to school and say, “I want to start with S.” Why? It’s because you don’t know what you might need on your path. The ingredients change. Even the recipe, you needed this today, but it might happen that tomorrow morning, you start, and you are like, “I want to have something different for my breakfast.” It doesn’t mean that what you had yesterday was wrong. It’s only a change in perspective or taste. Something that was not the right time yesterday doesn’t mean that it’s not the right time today.
I learned everything in science, and while I was applying the same system in life, the biggest difference was that in science. There is no failure in science. If you try an experiment and it doesn’t work, you still know that it doesn’t work but in business, if you are running out of money or the customer doesn’t like the product, you are out of business, b didn’t know, so I needed to learn. Yet, there is a huge advantage that I learned in science, which you can never learn if you are in business from the very beginning. What? I learned how to research and put the literature together because that’s what you do in science.
You need to put all the existing literature. Learn. First of all how to interpret it and how to know even if it is published, whether it is the correct information or not. Your analytical skills have to be at the top. Plus, you have to put all the literature together and say, “This is not done.” You find a spot, like a niche, which was not researched before, and then you dive in there. That helped me find what has not been spoken of until now, and now I have already applied to do a TEDx talk on something that has not been spoken about. It is the combination of what you learned and what is possible, but it’s how you apply it.
It’s not just what I learned, but how I took everything I learned from science and applied it to business, and I found the right application because I could sit there and be like, “There is nothing that I can take from science because the system is so different.” It’s only the execution but you have to try. Failure can teach you so much more than success. Why? When you succeed and you hit a ceiling, you think, “That’s my maximum.” When you fail, you learn, “That could be the outcome. This is what I shouldn’t do. This is how to do it better.” You start to pivot. You learn how to continue. That’s crucial.
Failure can teach you so much more than success. When you succeed, you hit a ceiling. When you fail, you learn.
Daniel Coyle wrote this awesome book sorry, audience, I cannot remember what it’s called but anyway, what he is talking about is mastery. It’s like 10,000 hours. He starts the book off by talking about this young lady playing the cello, she’s trying to play Blue Danube, and she’s struggling. He is like, “There is so much more learning in making mistakes and struggling to do it.”
He’s talking about how we are building an information superhighway and wrapping a mile around how to do something. It becomes muscle memory. The thing I like to think about is you referenced your ABCs. Think back to when you were starting school. Writing an A took so much effort, and you struggled so hard. You struggled to learn how to make an A, B, C, S, and all of that.
Now there’s no conscious effort in it. Why? It’s because you built this myelin superhighway of “This is how your muscle memory, how to do it.”In business, the things that we start off struggling so hard to do are now easier because we have practiced. Sometimes, people are we are all getting used to a little instant gratification. “What’s that answer? Let me find it right away. Let me go to Google.” There is a lot of goodness in doing your research. The internet is incredible for finding information and synthesizing it, but you still have to use your brain and do it. My question for you is, what do you talk about in your book about success, struggle, and all of that?
The Power of Letting Go Of Limiting Beliefs
Thank you for that question I republished the book and I changed the title. The previous title was STOP CALLING IT A COMFORT ZONE, and every time I would speak about my book, people would ask, “I know what’s inside the book?” I was like, “There’s zero chance that you would know.” As I described in the book while I was going through the darkness I was questioning everything. Why was I making the same mistakes? I was stumbling, and it looked like enough was not enough. I couldn’t let the past go. Every time I watched a motivational speaker, they would normally say, “Let the past go.” I was stuck there, and it would even piss me off every time I heard it. That’s why I even started my journey to find out what was behind it, why I couldn’t let the past go.
I found that there is one promise that we give to ourselves when we are kids, and because our consciousness is not mature enough, it cannot analyze but at that moment, when you are at your highest peak of emotional engagement, this is when the strongest bond in our memory is created. When you have an emotion and an event happens, this is the strongest but still, when it happens, your consciousness is not mature enough. That information is imprinted in your subconscious. Anything imprinted is biochemically imprinted. You cannot change that unless you consciously fix it, and I didn’t know that. I started to dig deeper. Every question is why I do what I do. I didn’t stop for three years. Every single choice and every decision was questioned until I came to one point. I was completely cornered, with no idea how to continue.
My mom was visiting me. I was looking at her, and I was sinking into my memory, layer by layer because I already had this experience of self-analysis for three years. I had already decluttered the layers from my subconscious but there was only one part there that I hadn’t touched. In one second, like the missing piece of a puzzle, it came in, and I completely found what my promise was. One promise shaped my entire life and that was like I let the puzzle go in one second because I knew what I needed to let go of.
For four decades, I was stumbling. I was stuck. When you start to analyze the situation, if somebody gave you coffee and told you, “This is juice,” they cannot convince you because you would say, “This is coffee. You cannot convince me that it’s juice.” Once you go through the explanation of why coffee, let’s say it’s a very bad example but if I explain to you what I give to you, what is behind the word? Then you realize that if I just told you, “That’s coffee, drink it,” you would say, “That’s not.” That’s the same. Once you understand what you need to let go of, it’s easier because then you can make the decision for yourself. Is it beneficial for me? Is it good to continue?
You go through all the answer questions and come to the point of summarizing and saying, “Enough is enough.” Then inside what do you need to let go of if you are stuck? For me, it was a complete discovery. The problem with addiction is not what you are addicted to. Whether it’s drugs, alcohol, nicotine, gambling, or sugar. Food is one of the strongest addictions in the world. Everybody loves it.
I was questioning whether a paycheck is also an addiction because you are not addicted to the paycheck. If it were just a money issue, you would find another way to earn money. It’s the emotional addiction to feel safe and emotional addiction is the strongest. Social media it’s like we are addicted to dopamine through likes. I was going deeper and I was like, “No, I need to crack that.” I realized that the strongest addiction is the addiction to having an addiction.
Whatever it is, you’ll change what you are addicted to. That’s what you have to free yourself from. Whether it is the movie, gambling, or going out. Go out. I’m not telling you don’t go out, don’t watch the movie, but free yourself. Why? It’s because then you free yourself from the outcome, and then you can enjoy the outcome and work with the outcome.
When we are stuck in a particular phase, and you expect, before you break everything, to start to assemble the puzzle per day. Assemble the puzzle per day because every single day is a part of your life. It has the beginning, the morning, then the main action, then the evening, then the night. Every single day, you have the chance to start afresh and to do different colors. Tomorrow, start fresh and do something else, but you need to break free from what keeps you stuck. What is the outcome?
Every single day is a part of your life. It has a beginning, the main action, and the end. Every day you have the chance to start fresh.
Understanding and Overcoming Addiction
I will add to that and say, as a mental health professional, when you are talking about addiction and stuff like that, a lot of that, no matter what it is, is a basic human psychological need. We like structure. Structure makes us feel safe, and ultimately, there’s a biological imperative to feel safe. When we don’t feel safe, it has a profound effect on our physical body but also our mind. When we have an addiction, like anything, “I know this. This is how I do it.” Not necessarily, it’s not an addiction, but when you drive to work, you tend to choose one way to get to work. Even though we rationally know there’s more than one way to get there, we take the same route. I know I did.
I used to work in the corporate world, and I was like, “Here’s how I get to work.” I never entertained that there was more than one way to get there. One day, on the way home, I couldn’t go the two different ways I knew as alternate routes, and I had to go a completely different one. It took probably ten more minutes, but it was infinitely prettier. I was like, “I’m going to incorporate this change for the days where I’m like, ‘I need a little more pretty in my life.’”
Change is hard. I’m sure you would agree with me. Change is hard and it takes time and practice, and it’s scary. You talk about letting go of something. We all have things that we perseverate on. Going around and around the same thing. “I need to have an answer,” but sometimes you are simply not going to have an answer, and you need to have that moment of clarity like you did when your mom was visiting, where you let that go.
All of a sudden, you said that last piece came in, and you let it go. I know in my life, one of those moments, like you, I clearly remember exactly where I was in my car. Several years ago, my older sister was murdered, which was horribly sad, but I remember where I was when I had this momentary thought, which was, “I will never know why this happened.” For months, thinking, “This isn’t fair, and why did this happen?” I’m not going to know that.
I let that go and that was incredibly cathartic and freeing for me to be able to move on. I work with lots of people who’ve experienced loss, and a lot of them are stuck on “Why did this happen?” I keep trying to encourage them. I don’t know that you’ll have that answer, but in business, we fail. No one likes to fail. No one sets out and goes, “I’m going to spend three years and fail horribly at this.” You don’t do that, but here’s the thing, we get scared about, “I’m starting a business. It’s scary. I don’t know how it’s going to end.” Let me make it a lot easier for all of us.
We got up this morning, but we had no idea how our day was going to go, it doesn’t mean that we stay in bed hiding because we don’t have all the answers to every single question that we are going to today. We don’t. Why do we not have fear about getting on with our day and all the unknown that’s going to happen? Then yet when it comes to bigger things like our business, “If I don’t have all the answers, if I don’t know everything that’s going to happen,” that’s not how life is.
We live every single day. Thank you for the line that you said. It’s not always the addiction, and you are completely right. The problem with addiction is that it becomes a problem when we are addicted to anything and you are right. First of all, you need to understand why you are stuck. Are you stuck because you are scared to fail? Once you keep digging deeper, why? Question everything and every answer. You will come to understand. Mostly, it might be a shame because we set some goals that we wanted to hit, and then the bar was too high. Then you failed. Failure is nothing more than missing the goal, but you set the goal, so you can lower the bar a little bit and then try again then you will not miss. One thing to remember forever. If you are failing, it shows that you are growing because the person who doesn’t grow cannot fail. It’s simply impossible, but then they fail in life. With failure, there are only two options. Either you try, fail, learn, then repeat, or you fail in life. What’s your choice?
The only thing that we will fail 100% is the things that we do not try.
That’s the ultimate failure. It’s worse than trying to fail. It might happen that while trying, you will figure out there is something you didn’t know and like, and you’ll find a completely different thing to do. When I was out of science, I published a book, and I didn’t even have any idea that I would ever publish a book, start a podcast, or write a TEDx talk.
If you had told me when I was in the tunnel to keep going because this is at the end, I would have said, “That’s nonsense.” It was not even on the list, but because I was failing, that’s how I even came to realize it. I tried several businesses and it didn’t work. If I had stayed stuck in my head trying to build my business and nurture my ideas in my head, what would have happened? I would have simply failed in life.
Even if you fail, it’s not final if you don’t decide. If you don’t quit, you don’t fail but there is a very huge nuance that we need to keep repeating. If you fail, it doesn’t mean that you need to continue that way. There are particular nuances that we need to understand. Why do you fail? Do you fail because you don’t like it enough? That’s why you don’t put in enough effort. That’s also an option. You don’t fail because you are not skilled. Then go and learn the skills. If you don’t succeed, what’s behind it? If you are determined to get something, the best example is when a person wants to go to the restroom. You don’t have people, I’m sorry for my language, but peeing on themselves all the time. You’ll find a way to go to the restroom. That’s the motivation behind it.
If you want something badly, you’ll find a way to do it. If you don’t, there is something behind it. Either you don’t want it, where you are is better, or something stops you. Before you find and free yourself from that anchor that drags you down, you’ll continue sliding back to your comfort zone. I don’t know why there is a conception that the comfort zone is the area where we live, and you are like, no. That’s an illusion. Everything is in your head. When we say you need to step out of your comfort zone, it doesn’t mean you need to step out. Everything is in your head, decision, failure, success, love, life. Pick your heart.
The ultimate failure is worse than trying and failing. It might happen that while trying, you will figure out something you didn’t know.
Why You Should Embrace Stepping Outside Your Comfort Zone
The way I talk about the comfort zone or whatever is, we have two boats in our life. We have a rowboat on the river of reality and a very comfortable yacht on the river of denial. It’s so much easier to be on the yacht. It’s comfortable, but we have to spend more time in the rowboat. In the rowboat, it’s a lot of work. You have to work hard. You are going to get wet, you may be cold, you may be hot, but when we are in that rowboat, we are making progress in our lives We are moving the boat. The yacht sits there on the river of denial. It’s very comfortable. People are bringing you drinks, you’ve got food, but you are not going anywhere. You are in your comfort zone.
It may be that you spend enough time in the rowboat that it starts to be a little more comfortable because, again, like exercise, when you first start exercising, it’s hard. Let’s say it’s running, but if you keep at it, you find that where you started, running 1 mile was hard. Now running 1 mile is not as hard. Then you go, “I was able to achieve that. I had aches and pains, I ran in the rain, it was dark, but I kept at it.” You feel good. You get lots of other benefits outside of running. You are sleeping better, you may be eating better, and you mentally feel sharper. All of these things. It’s amazing.
When we all go on these epic journeys, we don’t know where they are going to go. We can have an understanding of what destination we think we want to get to, but sometimes where we thought we wanted to go and where we end up are different but the difference is so much better. I agree with you. If you told me in college I was going to write three books, I would have said no. I hate writing. I do. I don’t like writing. I’m a talker, not a typer, but I figured out how to write three books because here’s the important part. We are all incredibly adaptive. We have made it a few million years here as a human race because we are adaptable. We can learn new stuff.
The Impact Of Unfairness And Injustice
I want to touch on two things. With the comfort zone, when we call the zone where we are unhappy, unhealthy, and unfulfilled a comfort zone, first of all, you signal to your brain that being unhappy, unhealthy, and unfulfilled is comfortable for you. That’s why you sabotage yourself because you create conflicting beliefs in your mind that this is comfortable. Then your brain is like, “Why do you want to quit?” You create that conflict in your head, and then you are surprised that you sabotage. Why? We are biologically wired for safety.
This is something that we learn. It’s not natural. It’s my opinion I might be very wrong because the existing opinion is that we are biologically wired to feel safe. I will even say, that for some animals, when they are born, they run right away. They can run because they need to protect themselves. Children are not. If we are not able to move right after we are born, we are not born to survive. We are born to thrive, but we learn survival as a coping mechanism as we grow.
Every time, even from a protective perspective, our parents or peers warn us, “Don’t do that,” and then we hear this innocent sentence, the phrase, “I told you so.” It creates this part in your brain that every time there is a match, you convince yourself that everything you heard before is the truth. Then the parents create the comfort zone around you. It’s not a comfort zone as it is, but a warning zone around you where they alert you all the time if you stop there, this is what will happen.
You already prospect what will happen, and then you keep yourself safe. Unless we warn the kids because when we warn the child or anyone we teach, we teach our experience. The child, let’s be honest, even if the child falls, they never cry. We teach them to cry if it hurts. We teach them that even if there is a tiny scratch, some moms go, “Woo.” and then teach the overreaction to their child. Then they are surprised when the child starts to cry every single time but because you are already biochemically changing and shifting, and when the child is tiny, you need to protect it. Then the child grows up, and you don’t have the time. All the pieces of the puzzle start to assemble, and then you are surprised by the picture that you created for yourself.
There is no destiny. There is a journey. That’s something that we need to break in our heads forever. Every single day is a destiny. You start and you end, and you need to move in the right direction and there is no right and wrong. Everything that you start to anchor yourself to, expect, and see as the outcome limits you because you don’t see the bigger picture. You don’t expect that something else will happen. The same as you said, if you told me that I would write three books, I would be. If you were stuck there and thought, “I’m not going to write the book. I didn’t see that as my destiny,” now we would never share this. Every change might be beneficial.
There is no destiny. There is a journey. Every single day is a destiny; you start and you end, and you need to move in the right direction.
The second thing that I want to mention is unfairness because I’m new in the country I came to the US in my 3rd year, but the 5th year in general. In the very beginning, even though I was in science and very successful, I was insulted in all possible ways. For my accent, though I spent most of my time in Europe, I still didn’t speak all the time because I was doing experiments.
I was insulted by my accent. I wasn’t very fluent in English. I needed to translate everything, then answer, and then translate again. Every time I said, “I’m learning to speak English,” people were like, “But you are fluent in English.” I’m not. I need to break that translation because sometimes it takes me time, and people think that I don’t even understand. I was insulted for my hair color, for my eye color, for everything. What is possible?
If I could sit there and say, “It’s unfair.” Even now, on social media, people write to me like, “How is it to be in America as a non-American?” I’m like, “What is that supposed to be?” That unfairness and injustice brought me to the point where I said, “You are not to tell me who I am. I will tell you who I am, and you have to accept that.”
We should stop letting our surroundings tell us who we are. We need to tell the world who we are. You need to dig deeper and understand that where the injustice in the world ends, that’s where your unfair advantage starts if I had been born in this country, it might have happened that I would never have pushed my limits because I would be too comfortable. As I was in hell I needed to move from there. Sometimes, the best motivation for you is the place where you are and the fact that you don’t want to stay there.
Finding Dr. Yox’s Book And Connecting With Her
Discomfort will get us to make a change even if we don’t want to. Dr. Yox, I want to thank you so much. This has been fascinating. I’m sure you and I could talk for hours on end here, but this has been great. I want to thank you so much. How can people find your book and get a hold of you?
My book is on Amazon, and I also have my page, so they can get the eBook for cheaper. I’m on LinkedIn. I’m very active there, and I teach people how to eat healthier and how to improve their productivity and mindset through the right diet. So they can approach me, and we will continue from there on. Thank you for hosting me.
Thank you so much. I want to remind everyone that if you are ready to begin your epic journey, go to Epic Begins. I also want to remind you that coming soon is my new TV show, Epic Begins with One Step Forward. As always, I want to remind everyone that epic choices lead to the epic life that you want.
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About Dr. Axa Yox
With a profound background in science, a master’s in human biology, a specialty degree in biotechnology, PhD in microbiology with a focus on genetics, won the first prize award, 12 inventions and was nominated as a person of extraordinary ability, Dr. Axa Yox quit science to build her own company and failed dramatically.
Yet, follows her passion for helping people, published a book “One Promise. The Promise that chose you” where she describes an innovative technique about how to rewire links in our brain.