Blog 14 – AAAAANNNNNNDDDD IT’S MAY.
Well, here we are… May. And just as they said, “April pandemics bring May pandemics.” Or something like that. And for the foreseeable future we are probably on repeat. While the cycle continues on a weekly and monthly basis, we also are getting into habits in our daily routine (some good, some that aren’t your favorite). It’s kind of our thing as humans. As long as it doesn’t kill us, and it’s relatively simple, we kind of just keep doing it. And we keep doing it. And then all of a sudden it’s engrained, then one day you say, “What the f*ck am I doing?” OR we might not even know we’re doing it and some one else might say, “What the f*ck are you doing?” We are creatures of habit. And we’re really good at it.
As far as an introduction to a blog though, that’s not very helpful. I haven’t given much direction, just kind of babbled – I know, one of MY habits and talents. At this point, you’re either freaking out that you feel seen or you’re frantically searching for some habitual action that everyone else thinks is blatantly obvious or you’re just in denial. Again, we all have habits. Some great. Some kind of suck. But to the point…
How do we break these habits? Well, I’d say it’s more about starting new one’s and the kind of bullshit ones just get left behind. There are only 24 hours in a day after all. Now you’re saying, “OK, so how do you start new habits?” By introducing something new in the cycle. Really shock the system. You know, like one pandemic decided to.
Now I’ll grant you that we can’t just go throwing pandemics in throughout the day all willy-nilly, but we can give ourselves a little buzz. “HOW DYLAN?!” Well the easiest way would be to try something new AND giving yourself permission to be a beginner, to be bad at something, to even fail, and then to keep moving forward, keep trying, and keep showing up. Remember earlier, in the ramble, I said we like relatively simple things? Wanna guess what we don’t like? Hard things. When we experience a challenge, by nature, we return to what we feel is safety. But lucky us, we are highly evolved beings that can make the choice to show up again.
So what to try? It doesn’t really matter. It could literally be anything you want. Our goal here is to break our patterns and to change our perspective, not be an expert. So by introducing a new perspective we will automatically apply new thinking to the way we approach things. Now it might not show up immediately (hell, you might not even notice it happening), but you didn’t smash the back squat on your first day either. It takes time and diligence. Slowly, but surely you will start looking at things differently and filling your time differently. The cherry-on-top of it all is that you get a whole point in the weekly challenge just by trying.
In summary, when we try something new, we broaden our perspective. When we broaden our perspective, we learn something. When we learn something, we get smarter. When we get smarter, we start seeing things in new ways. When we start seeing things in new ways, we can no longer exist as we were. When we no longer exist as we were, we break our habits AND we get a whole point in our weekly challenge!!! … And yes When You Give a Mouse a Cookie is one of my favorite books.