Every day we are presented with two choices. Change or repeat. What did we pick today? Any life is a life of change. We experience transitions in work and relationships, changes in our physical and mental health, and new events in our environment and our world.
Sometimes we know change will happen, while other times it comes suddenly and unexpectedly. Maybe it’s a disappointment or maybe it’s a wonderful surprise. Many of us spend a great deal of time and energy trying to avoid change, but it will inevitably catch up on us.
If we cannot cope with change, or at least wanting to change, a minor amount of stress can make us feel overwhelmed by life. We might also struggle to set and meet the goals we have for ourselves.
According to Socrates, an unexamined life is not worth living. If we are living through repeated cycles wherein we have already created a negative pattern of just living through life unfazed and uncritical, then we experience being stuck in a rut. A rut full of negativity and wasted opportunities.
When we already see negative patterns in our lives and these have happened far too many times to be a coincidence, we should know something is going on. The pattern will keep repeating until we learn the life lesson associated with it, which breaks the sad loop. Sometimes learning requires repeated lessons. That is true but, there usually comes a time when déjà vu gets to be a little annoying.
Readers, we have to recognize we are in a cycle. We complain with the same intensity with the cycle as if it’s the first time we are encountering it. But it’s not. We have gone through all these because we are allowing ourselves to be stuck. We should not blindly follow our well-worn path. We should recognize and make a conscious break from it. After recognition, the next step to changing anything is to accept responsibility in the situation.
Only when we do this can we make a committed decision to make empowering choices that will make us change. To continually blame something or someone outside of ourselves holds us captive. Nobody has the power to save us. We have to be accountable with all the choices we make.
Remember, we may not be directly responsible for a situation in which we find ourselves, but we are 100 percent responsible for what we choose to do from that point forward.
When we start to evaluate circumstances through lenses of clarity, we can begin to see and therefore, make unfamiliar choices. Those decisions may be uncomfortable, but that willingness to stretch and get away from the cycle will present new outcomes.
Our tomorrows don’t have to look like our yesterdays. With concentrated effort and conscious strife, we can break the spell of repetition. Life is waiting to present us with countless possibilities if we really want to evolve and change. This 2022, let us all liberate ourselves from cycles, ruts, and redundancy.
There is a whole life out there waiting for us to live. Let us not waste it, Readers. Life is too short to not actually live it.
