On cultivating habits, patterns and ways of being that align with your future self.

For most of us, what is familiar and habitual becomes more familiar, comfortable and habitual. There is an efficiency to our daily rhythm that requires less thought and often times, less presence to minimize the stress felt in the body and mind when we interrupt ingrained patterns. If you reflect on how you respond when the main route you take on your way home from work is closed or what happens in your day when you miss a part of your morning routine (i.e. coffee, meditation, emptying the dishwasher). If you are like most people, there is a disruption in the nervous system when our usual patterns are interrupted. For some it can manifest as agitation, for others it may be a decrease in ability to focus or even fatigue.

We can build resiliency in the nervous system when we consciously interrupt our habits and patterns: to make that which is unfamiliar, familiar. As we experience more opportunities to change and interrupt our habits, the brain no longer senses the same level of “threat” when there are big or small changes in our life. As the brain experiences graded exposure to unfamiliar thoughts, beliefs, habits, patterns and ways of being, it decreases the stress response we feel during these interruptions.

While there are many ways to create this pattern interrupt, knowing yourself and what life areas for you are the easiest and most tangible to create small, simple changes is a great place to start. For example, if you have a consistent morning coffee routine, can you change an aspect of this— the type of coffee, what you drink it in, who you are with when you enjoy it, or change the time of when you drink it. If you typically follow an audio recording to meditate, can you be in silence during your meditation or outside in nature? If you empty the bottom of a dishwasher first, can you start with the top? Small, daily changes help create new pathways in the brain and help us feel more confident to make larger changes in the future.

As a sensitive, empathic person, I have survived social situations by placing other’s needs and feelings above my own. I would often shift the energy in a room by being a goof or helping so that I was more comfortable. I am practicing interrupting my pattern of focusing on other’s needs and feelings first and placing them above my own by identifying and caring for my own needs at the beginning of the day and at regularly scheduled intervals throughout my day. While for others, this may seem trivial and as common sense, for me, it requires a more focused effort to show-up in a different way. There is some unease that I feel in my body as I interrupt this pattern that is now a familiar unease that accompanies times when I interrupt old patterns that are not a part of my future.

What habits, patterns and/or ways of being in your daily life feel aligned with your future?

Can you identify any habits, patterns or ways of being that need to be released to create space for the vastness that you are?