The human mind loves patterns. We search for them in the things we see, our ears listen for them in music and the rhythm of waves on the beach. The mind itself generates them through our behaviour. Have you ever noticed that when life throws you a familiar situation you tend to repeat actions from your past?
Some of these behaviours play a vital role in getting us through our day. My young Australian mind had the road safety mantra “look left, look right, look left again” drummed in at an early age, and I still do it instinctively before I step out to cross the road. But in the wrong circumstances – such as Rome, Hanoi or downtown LA – this helpful structure suddenly becomes a life-threatening liability.
Some of our mind’s patterns seem purpose built to lead us astray. Once in the dim and distant past I backpacked around Ireland with a boy who swore that an overdue bus could be summoned by lighting a cigarette. Three times out of four he was right. Did his lungs thank him? No. Would the bus have come anyway? Quite possibly.
Last year I attended a talk by Petrea King of the Quest for Life Foundation, who summed this whole mental pattern-making problem up in a simple phrase: “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”. Since then I’ve been using this sentence as a personal mantra and it’s turned up some surprising results.
Changing our behavioural patterns is not easily achieved, but when we manage to do so there’s a better than even chance that the outcomes in our life will be different.
So, next time you find yourself in a similar situation and you find yourself thinking, “I know where this is going” try watching your behaviour more closely. When you find yourself beginning to repeat those habitual old actions, take a step back and think “how could I do this differently?” Who knows where you’ll find yourself going?
5 responses so far ↓
1 Cath // Dec 4, 2009 at 2:30 pm
I think the whole idea of people looking at their own behaviour is way to foreign to the general public. Everyone is in such a rush, and very seldom do we look back at our own behaviours in order to see if we could have done something better, or if there is a better way to go about dealing with a certain situation. People in general are too concerned with blaming someone or something, and rarely take ownership of their own behaviour. I will have to work on incorporating your mantra into my meditation!
2 Caroline // Dec 5, 2009 at 1:40 am
I agree Cath that there are many who lack the self awareness, yet there are too those who are completely aware but are afraid of making the change. They seem to be addicted to the pain & suffering of their present habitual behaviour and are fully aware that if they continue with these unhealthy habits so too will the suffering persist. Yet the suffering is like that familiar yet unhealthy boyfriend in the disfunctional relationship, who if you give them another chance they will stop inflicting pain and grow to be that loving compassionate man you always knew they would potenitally become. But the focus is then on the external change and not on the internal change. So you put off changing your behaviour and prefer to hope & wait for the change to occur outside. Like Gandhi said “Be the change you want to see in the world”. Only by taking the courage to break an unhealthy cycle will you allow the universe to cooperate in a creation of miracles (spiritual break throughs!). Learning how to detach from the sensations of pleasure and pain , knowing that one will always lead to the other is the key to creating miracles. Stepping outside of the loop to create a positive shift in behaviour is like lifting the old record player needle of the stuck LP track and changing the tune/mantra. So by changing the patterns of the mind you´re able to break the attachment to overplayed and out of tune habits! And how to do this??? YOGA, YOGA, YOGA!!! OM NAMAH SHIVAYA!
3 Helen // Dec 19, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Caroline, I couldn’t agree more. Fear is a paralysing emotion that keeps us in a holding pattern. And, it is often easier to live with the known, even though we’re aware of our habitual behavioural patterns, than it is to change and enter the unknown.
One way to more from the known to the unknown is to focus on making small changes. It’s the sum total of all the little things we do and say differently that help steer us in a different direction: focus on changing the now rather than the what-ifs 6months in the future.
4 Kathleen // Jan 15, 2010 at 1:14 pm
I see friends (and sometimes myself!) with awareness but not the will or courage to make those little (or big!) changes. And the fear of ‘things not working’ can be overwhelming. Yet any time I have taken a leap of faith, made a choice that seemed risky (I’m not talking bungy-jumping here!), it has ALWAYS worked out and has often led to amazing changes in my exterior and interior worlds and to growth. Sometimes I try to do things differently ‘just for a change’ and it is amusing to see how people react. Luckily I have many friends who support change, but people can drag you down sometimes if you try to make changes. That can be hard. Sometimes making a change involves walking away from a person or whole group of people. I remember what Stuart Wilde once said: “People won’t thank you for leaving them”. He was not just referring to the leaving part, but to the whole process of change and people’s investments in you ‘staying the same’. That’s always stuck with me. I find it useful to remember if I am feeling alone on my path when changes occur.
5 Helen // Feb 11, 2010 at 11:58 am
Kathleen, thanks for your wonderful words. Trying change out – seeing what will happen if we do something differently is a wonderful way to approach life. It brings back some of the playfulness we had as children. Children are constantly testing things, observing the results and then adapting their behaviour: unlike adults they don’t carry the same excess baggage of success, and/or failure.
Taking a leaf out of a child’s book we’d “just try it and see”. Success would then be measured on how well we’d learnt our lesson – do we continue to do things that same way over and over again, or do we adapt and improve?
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