Cafe con leche. Cafe au lait. Cappuccino. Caffe Latte. For me, any combination of coffee, milk, and sugar will do… It’s a great way to start the day and definitely part of my morning routine.
Our routines help us shortcut our daily tasks and rely in part on our muscle memory or habit brain to take care of daily things – like sorting the mail, doing laundry, packing a gym bag, or managing our finances. All are things that have to get done, but don’t necessarily capture our imagination or attention.
Routine becomes problematic when we’ve gotten so invested seeing life the way it is here and now that we can’t see it differently.
I hope that I wouldn’t let my routine trump an opportunity to see violin virtuoso who regularly sells out expensive concert halls when he’s playing inarguably beautiful music on a weekday morning in a Metro station. Would you stop to listen? Or, would you be thinking about your 10 am meeting?
Resistance to Change
The change that’s happened at work has shown me just how resistant most people are to change. It was announced weeks ago that some lay offs were expected. When two companies merge, there are often two employees filling the same role. It’s a sad reality that everyone knew would happen.
The people who have been most surprised or upset when it was their turn are the ones who seem most invested in their daily routines. They’re the people whose jobs entail following a set of rules or doing what they’re told. From my perspective, their surprise has been tough to see especially when it could have been clear a while ago that their role was redundant. If a company needs your role to transact business on a daily basis, then an acquiring company probably already has your job handled because they needed it too.
I’ve become even more convinced that we shouldn’t get invested in a particular way of doing things because change will come. We can rely on that!
Seek Out the New & Different
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. – Clarence Darrow, commonly but wrongly attributed to Charles Darwin
Part of being prepared for change and responsive to new things and ideas is keeping an open mind on a daily basis. Regularly stretching your mind even in small ways will help keep you fresh and nimble so you can see many ways of doing things. So seek out the new and different in easy and fun ways today. Start small and have fun.
I challenge you to…
1. Take your coffee differently. Try it black if you like it with milk (like me), or drink tea instead.
2. Give the tiresome, endless thinking a rest for a little while. Thinking is overrated. Probably new or different for most of us!
3. Try homemade boullion that doesn’t come in a freeze dried cube from a box at the supermarket.
4. Eat your greens differently… Try baking them into chips or even dusting them over your popcorn for a salty and nutritious snack.
5. Ladies, don’t accept pain to look good; create your own heels that don’t hurt.
6. See 19th & 20th century poems in a new light as they’re set to music by Natalie Merchant in her new album Leave Your Sleep. I promise it will move and inspire you. It’s well worth the time spent watching it.
What are some other ways to see out the new and different in our daily lives? I’d love to hear about them in the comments…
