Creatures of Habit

Throughout this blog, I have preached balance, adaptation, analyzing, thorough, and thoughtful care to each and all situations, approaching with an open mind, ear, eye, and heart. A large part of these ideas is the constant state of change, of growing, maturing, evolving, and revolutionizing any or all aspects of your life. Not necessarily because I have all the answers, but again, to challenge people, and myself, to shine a brighter, more intense, invasive, and exposing light on things you might have taken for granted, amongst other things.

That being said, I believe that we are all creatures of habit, and to some extent, doomed to repeat many of the same mistakes over and over. And I, the preacher, am no stranger to falling into the same traps.

I can't even stop this conversation with mistakes, There are more situations in life besides successes and failures. In fact, almost nothing is that black and white. There is always debris, there is always fallout. Not everything is crisp enough to assign a plus or minus sign to. Not all victories are without loss, and vice versa. So considering all of these scenarios, these literally countless occurrences that fall in the middle, the muck, the gray area, all your adventures and relaxations, we continue to repeat what we know, step in our own steps, with something between fear and comfort keeping you inside the lines.

I'd like to say I can offer a way out, but this is something that I struggle with too. I'm thinking of this less in the terms of ordering the same thing every time I go to subway. It applies, but in a different way and for a different post (see future: Breaking the Monotony). I'm thinking bigger things, life things, job, things, relationship things, where even though you are consciously attempting to steer clear of whatever path you had previously carved, it's hard to wiggle free of something that you've already done, whether because it was the best option, the easiest option, the most impressive option, or, for a masochist, the one that offers opportunity for punishment and personal turmoil. The idea of learning from past experiences seems relevant here, but I'm not saying there isn't learning. I might spend an entire week waking up late for work, cursing myself each day for the extra hour in the car during my commute, the being one of the last ones in my group to get to my desk, the staying later in the afternoon to make up time and missing some early evening activities, etc, so I learn, and I promise myself that next week, things will be different. I learned my lesson. I understand the consequences. But sure as shit, next week, the extra 30 minutes of sleep is more important than aaaall the things I just listed. I learned, sure, but I didn't change, because during the summer, I'm a lazy creature of habit.

So maybe this was just a personal kick in the ass. Yes, I got to work at 7:01 this morning, but still, across the board, I want to challenge myself to be observant enough to recognize when I'm treading over my previous tracks. Not because what I did was right or wrong, but touching on an old, super-cliche, if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always gotten' (Tony Robbins). I know, I know, I hate cliches too, but there's something to that. So if you aren't happy with the results, see if you can find the power to break the habit.