Well spend 45 minutes cutting up a mango and leave with next to nothing, how the hell are we doing? Fantastic. Splendid. Gorgeous. Garlic. Gag reflex. I’m great, thanks for asking. Shoooobeedoobeedooooo.
I actually am great today, which is pretty neat. I always feel good after I travel, particularly if I’ve just gone somewhere new. I’m doing this customized 75 day challenge thing for myself and one of my goals is to explore somewhere new every week.
Travel is great for a lot of reasons: it gets you out of your comfort zone, you always learn something new or meet someone new, and it helps you figure out how deal with the unexpected. Personally, it helps me a lot with my writing, too. There’s something about being somewhere new that helps generate ideas and inspiration. It’s also just the fact that you’re somewhere out in the world, rather than toiling away at home again.
It’s easy to get stuck in our routines and habits when we go to the same places every day. Our body shifts to autopilot and the cruise control comes on; we wake up in the same bed, eat breakfast in the same kitchen, go to the same job, drive by the same billboard, talk to the same people, and watch a different show on the same TV, breaking the monotony vicariously through a new scene on the screen.
Through comfort and familiarity we relegate ourselves to a life of loops. The same problems plague us for decades, we date different people but have the same relationship issues, we improve until we circle back to the habits we’ve molded into the walls of our safe space. We feel like we’re moving forward but we’re just moving around.
It doesn’t take much. We can expose ourselves to new things a little bit at a time. We can take a different route to work, go to a different café, talk to someone new… any number of these things can trigger something in our brain to help us grow. It’s on us to force ourselves into these new and uncomfortable situations because our society is hell bent on making everything as convenient and comfortable as possible.
The news wants you to stay home every time there’s any threat of danger. And duh, because that’s where they want you, sitting there watching the news. It’s better for the ratings. You can’t watch the news if you’re out living your life, so they don’t want you to live your life. They just want you to watch the news, addicted to the paralyzing fear they feed through the pixels in the screen.
We can get almost anything delivered now. We don’t have to leave the house to get food, clothes, or even furniture. A lot of us work from home. It’s not pertinent to our survival to branch out into the world anymore. We have to do it on our own.
The more we sink into our comfort zone, the harder it gets to break through it. It happens to me all the time. I find myself doing the same things during the day, sinking into the same bean bag chair at night, and once I’m deep in that thing there ain’t no way I’m getting out. I mean that thing is COMFORTABLE.
I have to remind myself how much better I feel and how much more connected I am to my destiny when I’m exploring something new. I find myself sinking in the beans again saying “I don’t want to go out,” but I know if I force myself to do it anyways then the universe will reward me.
If we go too long without exploring something new, we forget the feeling. We’re too far away from remembering the glory of growth to pull us out of our static habits, so we sink.
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