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For better or worse, our lives are often dictated by our daily routines and patterns.

If these patterns are mostly filled with positive thoughts, emotions, habits, and relationships, then you’ll continue to naturally experience happiness and success in your life.

And if these patterns are mostly filled with negative thoughts, emotions, habits, and relationships, then you’ll continue to naturally experience depression and failure in your life.

The problem is that these routines can be incredibly sticky and really hard to change. So when they are negative, it feels like something we can never climb out of.

We repeat our pattern so often that it becomes wired in our brains – every morning we wake up and our brains boot up the same “neural software” that motivates us to make the same exact choices day-in and day-out.

The truth is a lot of people don’t make many conscious choices throughout their day, they merely follow their current pattern – which doesn’t take any thinking or effort.

To break our current pattern, often times even the smallest of changes can become a catalyst for personal transformation. They teach us that change is possible, even if it’s something relatively small or meaningless.



Try out these simple ways to break your current pattern:



– Brush your teeth with your other hand.



– Have a random person recommend you a movie or song.



– Revisit an activity you haven’t done since childhood.



– Go to a bar or restaurant you’ve never been to before.



– Hang out with a new friend you just met recently.



– Google a topic you’ve always wanted to learn more about.



– Try a new type of food or cuisine than what you are used.



Making these little changes helps bring you out of “automatic mode.” None of them will change your life completely, but they will help empower you to take conscious control over your life again.

Any little change that snaps you out of your current pattern can be healthy. Psychology research shows that “openness to new experiences” can help make individuals more adaptable and flexible in a changing world.

Be willing to try new things, however small or insignificant they may seem at first. Remind yourself that you have some choice over the experiences you have in life.



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