Routine is Killing you!
Variety is the spice of life.
Routine is killing you! It is a fact that when you do something as a matter of routine you cannot take any excitement in life anymore.
When you stand in the morning to brush you teeth and you take the toothbrush from it’s same spot, put the toothpaste on the bristles in the same way and start brushing by brushing the lower right outside teeth and move around in a clockwise motion it is a routine.
Nothing wrong with it, just that it is a routine. Now the reason routines are good is for our own benefit, we are doing what we need to do. The teeth are being brushed from lower right all the way round to top left and we are not missing anything and a brush of the tongue to finish!
I will add that routines are to assist in our methodical approach to activities, but routines can be adapted and made to be creative.
When in a familiar you go to your autopilot and switch off. For brushing your teeth, that is approximately 2 minutes every morning and 2 minutes in the evening that you have lost that day on autopilot. Then there is the drive into work! How many times have you been on auto pilot and you didn’t even remember getting there or returning.
The worst part about the whole business of routine is not that you have massive chunks of missing time, but that you have told you brain to stop being creative and to stop living in the moment. The precious moments you have throughout the day where you could be more alive because you know what you are doing!
The more different the situation, the more we find the time means more to us. A holiday seems to go so fast because of all the new experiences we are having. Our brains feel like they are on the go all the time. When we return home, life slows right back down again. Yet nothing is really changing. Time is moving constantly, it is only us that perceive it differently.
You are probably more busy at home than on holiday, yet the time drags at home. The idea that we live in our own heads is never more true. It is this realisation that should be giving us the alarm bells we need, to shock us into doing something DIFFERENT!
Take the building in the photo. They are normal buildings you would have on any street. They house people, have kitchens and toilets yet the outside looks different. It stands out and our brain takes notice. That is exactly what is happening when we try new things. It is learning, and filing new data into new parts of the brain. Routine stops that. It acts like a robot. You lose sense of time and you loose sense of being connected to the things you are doing.
This is how we can become so easily detached from certain activities. When watching the TV becomes a routine, more and more is accepted by us as the viewer because we are not using our full senses. We tell ourselves, “It is something happening elsewhere, not near us.” Yet, if we were to be in the situation that we were watching, smell the pungent odour of waste, and hear the real cries of a helpless child or victim, wouldn’t we feel different? Wouldn’t we act differently?
It is time to become part of the real world again. Live in this moment and take from it all that you can! It may be unpleasant, but know that it is unpleasant and look forward to the pleasant. Spend your moments in life living it now.
Children are examples of this reality. Constantly connected to the moment they keep asking why, they keep wandering off to look at something and even eating a simple meal becomes a challenge all in itself. Each time though, it is different!
So Tonight…
Mix it up a little. Instead of brushing your teeth in the normal way, try standing on one foot to brush your teeth, or use your other hand to brush, taking a different route to and from work. Leaving earlier or later. Play music playlists you chose instead of listening to the radio.
Variety is the spice of life!
Don’t settle for the mundane, think and experience all that life has to offer even if it is just a different way to brush you teeth in the morning!
When you do, why not let me know how you got on! Where did your new experiences take you?
Act Anyway for today is what you have!
