…That sometimes you just need to mix it up?
There is nothing wrong with breaking from tradition or simply taking that dreaded contrary action.
To be completely honest I would have to say that if I do not change routines, step out of patterns, deviate from the norm and adventure into unknown territory from time to time THAT will be the reason that I find myself in need of the surrender I have been speaking about so much lately.
There is something to say for a chance to see different places, people and to do things that you either have not done previously or, perhaps, just have not considered in awhile. In the “life is short so live it” department I find myself looking for places to travel and reasons to look forward to each of the days that I am living. One by one and one at a time. Granted, we are in situations that would lend to routine. School, work… even relationships can be prisons IF we allow them to be. Even within these (and any other routine), however, we can look for and eventually find some way to look at or even DO what it is we are doing to spice it up.
Sounds like couples therapy, doesn’t it?
I am not above admitting that I am coming out of a rut. I worked too much and participated in the same routines endlessly when I was both in and out of the job. Being in a rut does NOT mean that I am in a bad situation. It isn’t about the job or the relationships. It means that I am not paying attention or embracing the challenges within the situations. It means that I am doing too much of one thing and not enough of some others. Nobody should be too busy that they cannot find a part of each day to celebrate the life they are living and the people that they are living it with. That’s healthy. That’s absolutely necessary or we will become short-sighted in the point of it all.
But then, naturally, there is always surrender.
Travel is my favorite sort of change. It takes me completely out of the patterns of a daily routine. It takes me to places I have not seen or have not seen in awhile. It allows me new experiences, new relationships, new adventures, new pictures, new words and new energy.
But even when I am not traveling I am looking for ways to show myself new patterns and to break up the need to feel regulated and obliged to do certain things in certain ways at all times. I am not skirting responsibility by any means… but I am also taking a lot of the “edge” off of the need to feel tied to every order around me as if it was going to be the loss of a cure for cancer if not done in right away.
This weekend I am entertaining my 16-going-on-17 nephew in town from Washington D.C. It is something that I look forward to because it is so out of the realm of normal for me. I am going to do what he wants and offer my own suggestions. In days gone by I would have looked at this differently. I would have enjoyed the experience… but only to a point. I would have also discovered myself in a resentment because I could NOT do the things that I would normally do in my weekend routine. That character did not work…. he wasn’t as happy a person as he could be as a result. I, on the other hand, realize (through learning) that the adventures of change and difference offers us that wider range of experience and a larger playing field for the better offer of results to fill the pages of however it is we desire to document it all.
More experience, more things to write about, take pictures of, film and talk about at the water cooler. If you still have a water cooler, that is.
This weekend change something you are doing. Drive a different route. Go to a new restaurant. Hike a different trail. Go to a new meeting. See a new city. Visit an old friend. I can almost guarantee that you will start off your new week in a much better place. It might even to encourage you to take the adventure concept there as well.
Be Happy. Be Well. Be.