Our lives are made up of our habits. Consider those little actions or decisions that you make absent-mindedly each day. Those make up a large percentage of our days. When we start to understand ourselves better, we also notice which patterns don’t work better. Or if what works best for us is simply no pattern at all.
Maybe you are a skilled procrastinator. Every time you go to the library and open up your laptop, you fall back into the habit of online shopping or scrolling on social media. That is your pattern.
The difficulty is seeing how your patterns interfere and affect your relationships with others. It is essential to recognize these because often, they are camouflaged to the human brain, especially when history or feelings are involved.
This is where the saying “Fool me one time, shame on you. Fool me twice, can’t put the blame on you,” comes from. Or maybe it comes from J Cole. Who knows. But can people change? This is a million-dollar question that centuries of human life have had no definitive answer for. However, I firmly believe that people have the ability to change only if their patterns and intentions do.
One example of said toxic patterns is the behavior exhibited between ex’s, when relationships come to an end. This can be a habitual, yet toxic battle of egos. In other words, it becomes a game of who, first, can create an image that they are happier without the other person. The common, unspoken goal is that both people involved want to get the other’s attention as if it’s a competition proving who is thriving better on their own, rather than in that particular relationship.
This game of “back and forth” is won with one of the players luring the other back only to believe in their own mind, they had the last word. These are the toxic patterns I am referring to. Leading you on, just to let you down, time and time again.
The more patterns (like these) are acted upon, the more habitual they become, and the more comfortable they feel, the harder they are to break. It is the same concept as addiction. You are a prisoner to the adrenaline and sensation you get when partaking in these actions.
We become what we repeatedly do.
So beware of your patterns because our most significant potential is not made up by an act but by our habits.
“There are patterns which emerge in one’s life, circling and returning anew, an endless variation of a theme”. – Jacqueline Carey
sent with emphasis 