The benefit of disruptions
Disturbances to our routines are opportunities to notice our habits. And change them.
My family and I returned home after being abroad for a couple of months. Before we left, we moved out of one house and when we returned we moved into a different house in the same suburb.
We settled in smoothly (thank goodness for furnished rentals) and prepared to start the familiar routine of school, work, and life.
My first day back started simply: Get the kids to school, get home, start my work day.
But I immediately noticed some small and innocuous micro-decisions I was making that confused me.
For instance:
I got into my car and went straight to the podcast app and hit play.
But why am I listening to this podcast? Am I even paying attention to it? Does it change me in any way? Inspire me? Educate me? Challenge me? Entertain me? Nope none of those things.
Then I saw my dirty car and without skipping a beat I called the carwash to make an appointment.
And what else could I be doing besides taking my car in for a wash? Do I really value having a clean car above so many other options? Such as going on a nature walk? Or writing in my blog?
Then I dropped my kids off at school and immediately headed towards town as I tried to figure out what errand I needed to run.
How is running an errand in town such a regular part of my day? Why was my brain trying to figure out an errand that didn’t really exist? Was I seeking a feeling of productivity and looked to errands to fulfill that?
What was going on?
It took me a moment before I realized what these were. These were habits.
In the book Atomic Habits, James Clear shares a powerful message: Habits run our life. If you don’t deliberately override a habit it will automatically run when triggered.
This isn’t entirely a bad thing. Habits allow us to operate in our lives more efficiently. We don’t have to do so much thinking when we are following a habit.
Returning to my life in the midwest was chocked full of all the cues my brain had already built habits around. But because it was a little different and because I had taken such long break from it, I had to go about my first days with more thinking and more awareness than usual. It was a different house, a different garage door, a different car, etc. I wasn’t fully on autopilot.
It allowed me to see the habits. Both the wanted ones and the unwanted ones.
I had been telling myself that my summer of adventure was fun but disruptive. It was disruptive to our family life and disruptive to my coaching business.
But I am grateful. Because it has also returned me to my life with an opportunity to improve it.
Because once you can see your the habits, you can lean into the ones you want and you can change the ones you don’t.
And like James Clear says,
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Your system is the collection of daily habits that will get you there.”
My summer was indeed disruptive. And as a result, it was also incredibly beneficial.
Hello, I’m Serena. I am a life coach. I help highly successful people live their life purpose without giving anything up. If you would like to receive thought-provoking content, join my email list. If you are interested in 1:1 coaching, get in touch with me here.
