Good morning! Yup. I am still here. Still breathing. Still fighting every morning to change my course in life. I completely failed this morning. Tried to run a bunch of sprints (someone told me this was a good idea). I now hate that person. I did not complete them and I found something that I am not good at. Anyway I realized that the reason that my sprinting attempt failed is because I have fallen into a very predictable pattern with my running in the mornings. This leads me to a concept that I have been grappling with for several months – that of pattern recognition.
We all go through patterns in life. I dare say that we are more predictable then we realize. You do things the same way more often then you do not. Even people that think they have hectic lives, are very consistent about how they make their lives consistent. Do you feel stressed out and overwhelmed? Ask someone who knows you well why and they will probably easily identify the consistent and repeatable pattern you are falling into that causes your misery. When they tell you, you will just dismiss the notion – because patterns becomes so part of who you are – you cannot accept that they could be wrong.
Outsiders see it all the time. I was really impressed on Monday when one of my executives talked about a personal process they went through to get outside feedback and an assessment done of how they are doing. He was very candid in sharing those results. He indicated a couple of patterns he was falling into that he was not going to work on improving. This is why we should always accept and appreciate outsider opinion of what is holding us back. We are just not capable of separating the patterns we have put into our lives from what is right. You have an inherit bias built into your entire being – the patterns you have learned are correct. That is the lie we all tell ourselves everyday when we repeat them without fail.
Patterns will lead you to destruction but they can also lead you to greatness. The key factor is your willingness to be deliberate in establishing new and more productive patterns. The absolute key concept in this effort is building long lasting habits. Self discipline is ONLY possible by changing your patterns, by creating deliberate habit. Getting a habit is hard work – about 90 days of hell. However, once you have a habit it becomes easy. Even when it is hard it is easy. Because the habit takes over, the pattern becomes established and you no longer fight it. It is now part of you and you now believe it to be correct.
Just like the bad habits that you have now, you believe them to be correct. Even if you know they are wrong, you believe them to be correct. It is a weird psychosis, but there is more then one research study that has demonstrated the truth behind this. Your patterns are creating the result that you have NOT any one thing you do. You may wake up one morning and say, I am going to eat better. Great. However, that one or two days of eating better will pale in comparison to the 363 days of not eating better and following that predictable pattern of coffee, loaded with sugar and cream followed by an old fashioned donut chaser.
What you DO everyday produces the result you get. What you DO is the patterns that you follow. What you want to do is followed by an occasional effort once and awhile. What you actually do is ONLY the pattern you establish. If you were in sports growing up, you already know this. I was never in sports. I did things like play chess. However, chess followed the same concept. You got better by playing more chess everyday. There is NO substitute. You get better at an instrument by practicing everyday and it becomes your habit. There is no way around it. You want to sell more? Talk to more people. Everyday. If your pattern is producing a ton of email, computer, and desk time then your pattern is NOT going to produce sales. You pattern will produce efficiency at sitting at your desk not talking to people about what they want to buy.
It is 100% about patterns. The question is, do we recognize them? That is the hard part. The illusive part. I figured out a big hint however. Look at your results! Do you like the results that you are getting?? Then look at your daily pattern. Keep it up! If you do NOT like the results – then your pattern is jacked up. Establish new habits and fix it! Hurry! I looked at myself in the mirror and I did not like the outcome. Besides ALL the thinking about it and the good intentions – the results sucked. I had to look at my patterns. They just were not good. I could not escape that reality. Bad patterns. Bad results. End of Story.
Guy Reams (446)
365 Alumni
67 Days Left to 1st Marathon
