Are you sleepwalking through your life? You know the feeling. You are here; but your mind is elsewhere. You go through the motions; but you don’t remember doing them. Your day looks something like this:
- You wake up and shower, routinely washing your body as you have for decades.
- You get the kids ready for school, yelling at them last minute just like you did yesterday, even though you told yourself you wouldn’t.
- You drive to work and back home, driving the same route you always do.
- You do the same child friendly routine each night: sports/homework/playtime.
- You eat a dinner of the same foods you’ve always eaten.
- You put the kids to bed at their routine bedtime.
- You relax and watch your favorite television programs while you check your e-mails one last time, just like you do each night.
- You go to sleep.
- Lather, rinse, repeat.
This is a routine, stable and consistent life. We derive safety and security from stability. Just ask Maslow and his infamous hierarchy of needs. And children – children thrive on stability. But here’s the downside to stability; routine lulls our brains to sleep.
Routine is a non-stop loop of automated behaviors that require little conscious thought. When we live routine lives, doing the same things the same way, day after day, our brain is on autopilot. We cannot grow, because our brain is not making any new synaptic connections. We are relying on the same neural pathways that have driven our lives for years, maybe even decades.
In order to reach our highest capabilities we have to break our routine. Growth requires our brain to make new connections. In order to make new connections we have to learn and do new things. It doesn’t mean we have to toss out our old familiar routine; it means we have to infuse something new into it daily. Even a small thing, like washing our body in a different order, wakes up our brain and creates the opportunity to grow.