SDS 078: Breaking patterns

I’d like to start today’s episode with a recent story of something I did in my life. And that is at the start of June, I took all my things and I either sold them or threw them away or gave them away to charity. Except for 3 bags. I packed a backpack and two bags, I moved out of my apartment, and I went to Europe. And why did I do that? Right now I’m in Europe, so right now I’m in Portugal. Why did I do that?

Well, the reason is that sometimes in life, I get this interesting feeling that I don’t notice how the years are passing by. So what I mean is that I look onto some event and I don’t remember whether it was last year, or the year before, or was 3 years ago. And to me, that means that I have become so comfortable in a certain place, or probably “comfortable” is not the right word. I’ve developed such a routine in my life, and things have become so similar day in, day out, month in, month out, that I don’t recognise how my life is flying by. And it’s always like a red flag for me, it means that if I can’t recognise if something happened like a year ago, or 3 years ago, well, that means that I’m just going to wake up in a few days and I’ll be 30 years older than I am now, and same thing happens. All of this life flew by.

By the way, there’s a really interesting movie, it’s called La Vida Notre, it’s a French movie, The Life of Another. Probably it’s been translated into English. I watched it at a French film festival, which was very interesting, a couple of years ago, about a similar concept. But it’s got a love story to it, and things like that of course. But nevertheless, that’s how I feel sometimes in life, and whenever that happens, I try to change things. And I try to break patterns. Hence the title of today’s episode. So these patterns that I get into – and as humans, we have evolved to recognised patterns, and we’re good at following patterns, we’re very good at like, when you wake up, once you have a habit, you follow that habit. You brush your teeth, you have breakfast, and things like that.

And sometimes habits are powerful. Habits are powerful tools for us to put parts of our life on autopilot in order to prosper in other parts. But when your whole life, or a big part of your life, or the majority of your life, is on autopilot, that becomes scary. That becomes – not just scary, but it becomes a shame that your life is just passing by and you’re not noticing how it is.

And so since that happened, I decided, “ok, cool, time to pack my stuff and change the pattern. Break the pattern.” And that’s why I’m here. And the other thing is that I don’t know what I’m going to do, and I like that, I like the uncertainty of when I get back, or – I’m probably going to get back to Australia – where do I live, where am I going to get stuff, like I don’t even have a fridge, I don’t have a washing machine, where do I get all that stuff, what do I do, or where do I go instead of Australia, and things like that. So that is more for me, it’s like you feel life more when you have these kinds of challenges, these decisions, and so on. And so that’s kind of the story.

And what I wanted to share with you from here is the point of breaking patterns, or the concept of breaking patterns, maybe some time this weekend, if you have a few minutes, think about have you fallen into certain patterns that are not just habits that are useful, but are just patterns that are kind of like putting your whole life, or a big chunk of your life, on autopilot. And what part of your life is on autopilot, and you’re doing the same thing, or very similar things, all the time, and what part of your life is the actual exciting, living, unknown, interesting part that’s changing that’s making you feel alive?

Maybe for different people it’s different. Maybe you won’t feel the same way as me, and maybe most of your life is very exciting and interesting, and in that case, I’m extremely happy for you. But if you do feel that there are parts of your life that are the same – for instance, I’ll give you a good example. Like if you go to the store to buy groceries, and you buy the same thing always, or you probably have a shopping list if you’ve gone to the same grocery store for a couple of years. You have a shopping list, even in your head, that’s pretty much more or less settled and you buy similar things all the time. And then you eat those similar things after you cook dinner. So that’s a pattern.

But imagine now you go to a different country. And they don’t have the products that you used to buy in your store. They just don’t. Then you’re going to have to look for other products. And you’re going to, whether you like it or not, you’re going to experience other things. You’re going to experience the taste of an exotic fruit, or the texture of a certain type of fish, or a different grain-sourced bread, or something like that. And a combination of flavours, and the cuisine. And so that’s going to break a pattern that you have. But you don’t have to move to a new country to do that. You can just decide to buy different products the next time you go to the store. So that’s just one of the examples. And you can discover something you didn’t even know you would like because you had never tasted it before. So that’s just one of the examples.

And I encourage you to think about that. What are the patterns in your life that you’d like to keep, and what are the patterns in your life that you would like to break and experience something new? And I hope that’s some inspiration for you for this weekend. I look forward to seeing you next time. Until then, happy analyzing.