Stumble On The Same Rock: Habits And Customs
“Man is the only being who stumbles twice over the same stone” goes a saying you’ve certainly heard. However, what happens when we get so attached to the rock that we end up falling after tripping?
“I always make the same mistake”, “I don’t know why the same thing happens to me all the time”, “I promise myself it will be the last time and I always fall back into temptation”. This can apply to many situations in life, such as forgetfulness, separation or addiction.
Human beings are animals of habit. Perhaps cheating yourself has become a habit, which is why you chose to pick up the stone from the ground and take it with you wherever you go.
We usually complain about the routine and always doing the same things because they bore us… what if we start thinking about what we unconsciously repeat and what makes us suffer or be sad?
If you already said you wouldn’t lie again, why did you? If you swore you wouldn’t get back together with your boyfriend after the last fight, why did you run away when he called apologizing for the umpteenth time? If at the beginning of the year your goal was to quit smoking, why did you buy cigarettes again a few days ago?
“I didn’t notice”, “This time it’s definitive”, “I’m not in control of the situation” are some of the most frequent excuses. We don’t like to go out of our comfort zone, because in them we feel safe, even if we are not happy. We know every inch of our stability perfectly and we take refuge in the shadow of the rock that makes us fall over and over again.
Perhaps we could imagine that we are in a big cage, with the limitations and lack of freedom that this implies, but also with enough stability to stay and live there for a long time.
And you don’t realize that as long as you’re in this place, things are going to happen over and over again. The routine of waking up, having breakfast, going to work, coming home, watching TV, taking a shower, sleeping… is more or less similar for everyone. Until at some point we say “Enough”.
Life becomes a succession of similar moments and we don’t realize it. The alarm signal appears when we find ourselves facing a situation that hurts or bothers us. And then we think, “Hasn’t this happened to me before?” It’s like we’re a magnet that attracts the same thing over and over again. If they were just good things, wonderful!! But unfortunately this is not the case in all cases.
Stumble on the same rock: the limitation that marks the whole of life
Surely you’ve been through more than one situation where you’ve been repeatedly mistaken with the same person, the same activity, the same thought, the same job… why does this happen? A psychological explanation has to do with the education we received from childhood.
As children they explained to us how to do things imitating others. You saw your mother brushing her teeth to do the same, you looked at an older brother to learn how to ride a bicycle, how the teacher wrote the letters on the blackboard… so we could also have learned not to be affectionate, to scream or cry when we wanted get something, argue for everything, etc.
Every interaction we have with someone, whether from our intimate surroundings or not, molds us until we become what we are when we grow up. Thus, we incorporate in our minds successive instructions on how to do each thing without questioning them.
So, clinging to the rock that made you fall has to do with two important issues. On the one hand, the fear of leaving the comfort zone you are in, and on the other, the habit of doing things by repetition, the way you have been taught in the past.
To break these habits, the first step is to imagine that life is not delimited by an enclosure like a cage or an aquarium. Next, we must realize that there are thousands of different ways to do the same thing, with even better results than those achieved so far.
Doing more of the same will not bring different results. It is necessary to change the strategy.
