One of the classic balances we have to make is between novelty and routine.
Now, so much in the world of self-development is about establishing better habits, better routines.
These are the things we do over and over again, and based on the habits that we repeat every day, it builds who we are in the future.
These are our everyday actions.
So it makes sense to focus on building good routines.
But at the same time, it can just be really boring to simply robotically follow routines.
And it’s possible to get very regimented, but even the most extreme regimented person, you can’t just have your entire life scheduled out as an automatic routine and just sort of walk through it.
There needs to be some kind of novelty, some kind of freshness some kind of feeling like “Wow, today is special.
Today is not like other days.
Today I am living with a new perspective, a new purpose.” And there’s one thing that I like to do to let myself feel this way.
Simple little trick.
In the morning, when I wake up, completely fresh day, sometimes it’s great to just imagine I could do anything in this day.
And it’s true.
Not a fake story we have to tell ourselves.
It’s absolutely true that every day when we wake up, we have a completely fresh day and we could do absolutely anything with it.
So anything you might imagine.
You could decide to completely forget about all the habits, all the expectations, all the routines that you have for that day, and simply do what you want to do.
You could decide “Today I am going to…” One of my favourites to imagine is just imagine I just start walking.
Just go, start walking, and see where I end up.
Or I could go grab a train somewhere, grab a bus, and just like just grab a plane, and just travel somewhere, and I have no idea where.
Just go, you know.
I could, and of course we have the power every day to do terrible things.
We could burn things down, hurt people, cause terrible destruction.
It’s so easy to destroy life, destroy our own lives, and just make a mess of things.
That’s something that is a possible thing to do.
We could start to write a new book.
We could start to maybe just do absolutely nothing.
Maybe just like catatonically lie in a fetal position for the whole day.
We could just sit on the beach.
Maybe look on the bookshelf or at the library and just select a random book and start reading it.
You know, we could- the list goes on and on.
Whatever you can imagine of something that you might possibly do, you can do it.
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And yet, then I think about my regularly scheduled program for the day, you know, do my work, the project that I’d already set aside to myself, advancing the goals I’ve already decided for myself, taking care of my responsibilities that are programmed for the day.
And how about that as an option? And now I’m thinking of it, it’s not that this is automatically “Oh, I simply must do this because that’s my program for the day, so automatically, no choice, no thought, I automatically have to do these responsible, programmed, routine, predictable things” Instead, it is my choice.
I can put that boring, mundane, responsible, everyday, normal, expected, habitual, routine list of things I’m gonna do today, put that on the menu along with all the other wild, extreme things I could imagine doing.
And then I can choose: what do I want to do today? Well, after having that moment of imagining the wild and crazy and extreme things, oh, it’s fun to imagine doing that.
You know, that could be- that would have that wild blast of novelty that “Wow, I’m really doing something different today” and “Wow, I’m really living today.” But, then I can imagine how it will soon fade into “Oh, well, that was not really very helpful, and I would rather go back to my life as it is.” And in fact, the routine, mundane option can start to look pretty good.
And then, by the end of that exercise, I can choose to do my routine, everyday thing, and that becomes my conscious choice, and I want to do it.
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So, the next time you wake up feeling that you don’t want to continue in the same routine that you have for yourself, consider what else might you want? And what could you do if you could do absolutely anything in that day? And then my question for you is: let me know if you’ve done this, and what kind of results do you have? Do you find that you also choose to then choose your routine, expected day, and do it with a greater sense of joy? Or do you regret the feeling, do you even more sharply feel that you’re missing out on life by shutting down the wild, extreme ideas that you brought up? Those wild options: by shutting them down, do you feel even more constrained? Or do you in fact choose one of the wild options, and choose to radically change your life today? Let me know how it goes.