Lord, I love my routines!

I eat at the same place almost every morning. The people there know me and greet me like family. Don’t even have to order. Just start right in reading my Wall Street Journal, and my eggs and home fries show up, nice and crisp, just the way I like them. Life on autopilot.

Yet, I also know I need to experiment every now and again, bring some new experiences into my life to keep the juices flowing. A bit of turnover to keep the soul alive, aerate the mental soil.

We tend to create what we expect. We tend to repeat our norms. When I started this post by writing “Lord, I love my routines!” I just engaged in some self hypnosis/self definition/self molding. My subconscious hears every word I say, every thought I think, and will attempt to deliver to me what I expect, what I ask. Our subconscious is like a small child. It is a literal mind and soaks up everything we say and think like a sponge.

So I have this mental mantra: One Thing Boldly Different Every Day.

Okay, I freely admit it is mainly observed in the absence. But it does kick in often enough to motivate a bit of experimentation, an occasional romp of following a binge of curiosity down a new path.

When I do something different, I often write it down in my journal to commemorate it, to reinforce it, to remind myself I am capable of breaking out of my mold, of creating new behaviors, new routines. After all, you never know how far you can go until you go too far!

This is a classic from the NSC Blog archive, originally posted July 3, 2008.