brain dump: patterns
There's this idea rattling around in my head about breaking out of patterns. I want to have it all sorted out into a brilliant essay before posting, but if I go for that I'll never say anything at all. I'm never sure which direction I want to go with describing it, or how to make it clear how profound this little idea is for me...so I'm just going to babble and hope there's English in there somewhere.
It's one of those obvious things which is maybe not so emotionally/viscerally obvious. (like something is better than nothing.) Today's big new idea is..."Do something different." By that I mean a bunch of very different things, but I think it's mostly about changing thought patterns and reactions rather than trying new flavors or whatever (though that kind of thing can be important). None of this is a new concept, and yet I feel like the idea in my head is new, and having a mantra to go with it helps me own it and actually use it (it's the economy, Stupid!). So far it's been about noticing little things that lead to things I don't like, and hoping that doing something different enough times will lead to somewhere else. In a way it's related to the above-mentioned earlier epiphany, in that I'm not getting bogged down in trying to figure out what the "right" thing is, because that's a distraction from just trying something *else*. If I notice I'm doing a non-useful thing, or that I'm doing something not obviously wrong which nevertheless puts me on a path to something I'd rather change, I just want to do something new instead of getting caught up in analysis. Not that I won't endlessly think about the implications later...but in the moment, do something different. The important thing for me is that I'm not expecting any particular outcome by doing x instead of y, other than perhaps not ending up where I always end up.
I've been kind of avoiding examples because I don't want to attach this only to specific things, but...ok, ignore that "but", because I just deleted several paragraphs of examples and digressions. Maybe I can come up with useful examples later.
It's one of those obvious things which is maybe not so emotionally/viscerally obvious. (like something is better than nothing.) Today's big new idea is..."Do something different." By that I mean a bunch of very different things, but I think it's mostly about changing thought patterns and reactions rather than trying new flavors or whatever (though that kind of thing can be important). None of this is a new concept, and yet I feel like the idea in my head is new, and having a mantra to go with it helps me own it and actually use it (it's the economy, Stupid!). So far it's been about noticing little things that lead to things I don't like, and hoping that doing something different enough times will lead to somewhere else. In a way it's related to the above-mentioned earlier epiphany, in that I'm not getting bogged down in trying to figure out what the "right" thing is, because that's a distraction from just trying something *else*. If I notice I'm doing a non-useful thing, or that I'm doing something not obviously wrong which nevertheless puts me on a path to something I'd rather change, I just want to do something new instead of getting caught up in analysis. Not that I won't endlessly think about the implications later...but in the moment, do something different. The important thing for me is that I'm not expecting any particular outcome by doing x instead of y, other than perhaps not ending up where I always end up.
I've been kind of avoiding examples because I don't want to attach this only to specific things, but...ok, ignore that "but", because I just deleted several paragraphs of examples and digressions. Maybe I can come up with useful examples later.