Does this ever happen to you?
1. You’re doing some task, one you’ve done plenty of times before. Someone says something like “Why don’t you do it this way?” or “Why don’t you do that?”
2. You find yourself thinking, “That’s clearly a good idea – why on earth DON’T I do it that way?”
3. You do it differently this time.
4. Next time you come to doing the same task, you forget all about this conversation and do it just as you’ve always done.
It just happened to me (not for the first time, of course.) I was brushing my teeth, and my wife said “Why don’t you brush your tongue?” With great relish she pointed out that it gets exposed to all the crap my teeth get etc (I’ll spare you the detail). Why not clean it at the same time? Well, it all makes perfect sense, and I totally agree.
Not knowing and not agreeing often aren’t the reason we don’t do things. Mostly it’s a simple question of habit. We do an awful lot of what we do unconsciously, even if we’re aware of doing it. So while I consciously decide to brush my teeth, and am aware of doing it, the actual brushing is automatic. There are probably improvements I’d make straight away if I did it in a fully conscious way. But it works fine as it is, and hey, who’s got the time?
It’s similar in our lives more generally. We keep on doing things habitually that we know we’d benefit from changing. Habits have ways of really making themselves at home. They can seem hard to change. They can even seem like they’re inevitable, immutable truths. But in fact, they’re just repetitions.
Creating new futures is literally a question of changing habits. Find a habit that doesn’t work for you, drop the habit. Maybe create a new habit that does work for you.
Obviously that could well be easier said than done. But just knowing you’re dealing with a habit rather than a struck-in-marble truth helps you start the process. You’re not fighting the world, you’re just fighting your own repetitive ways of behaving or seeing things.
Posted by marklister 
