What? No Milk? What am I going to do? It’s first thing in the morning and there’s no milk in the house. I’ve ran out of Almond milk and there’s not even any of the wife’s dairy milk. I guess that only means one thing… Black Coffee.
OK, so I can suffer through that but, what am I going to do about breakfast cereal (I was getting hungry)? After opening and closing the fridge several hundred times, hoping something new would appear each time (it didn’t) an idea finally struck me. I dumped cereal into a bowl and proceeded to pour Orange Juice over it!
It was actually quite good. luckily it was just Granola cereal and not something like Fruit Loops (I would’ve probably went into diabetic shock). However, it made me think. What else are we doing in which we are so set in our ways or our expectations that we don’t even know we are in a rut? Once you recognize it, how do you get out of it?
One of the best ways to recognize when you are in a rut is when you are just going through the motions. You may even feel or think that you can’t live without it. When you start to have these beliefs and it is something that is holding back your growth and change, then it may be time to shake things up a bit.
Take a look at the situation and ask yourself how you could do things differently. What could you substitute? What can you replace, change or adjust? Can you do it backwards or in another way? When I run, there are times when the same path becomes boring and not much of a challenge. During those times, it can be motivating and a challenge to simply run the same path but in the opposite direction. This can change things up just enough to give a different perspective.
Trying new things can open you up to a whole world of discovery. Your mind wakes up and starts looking for creative solutions rather than just accepting what is there and producing the same old tired responses. The more you shake up your known world, the more creative you will become. But it does more than that, it allows you to see with new eyes and experience new things. It can take a so called normal boring day and give it a shot of adrenaline.
Once you begin to change just one thing, you may find that making changes aren’t so bad and can actually lead to new growth and adventures. But it also reinforces the fact that if you can make this one small, unusual change then, what else can you change? It is an easy way to accept and welcome change instead of being fearful of it and rejecting it.
So maybe next time, I will try it with Fruit Loops.
What has become repetitive for you?
How have you changed it?
In what ways did you recognize it?