Break These Three Cycles

To get a clear assessment of your life, you will need to break a cycle or three.

We all fall into daily, monthly and yearly patterns.

It’s quite normal.

And generally speaking, patterns are healthy for us. We function best having some measure of stability in at least telling ourselves that tomorrow will be mostly like today.

But, here’s the thing.

If you have gotten to a point of boredom, dissatisfaction, depression, melancholy, or spiritual fogginess, you need break your cycles. Your brain simply won’t cooperate with you until you make your body do something new.

There are three cycles to break to get to a place where you can honestly assess your own life:

1. Break a daily cycle. There is something you do everyday that you can do differently. There have been some studies done on simple things, like brushing your teeth with your opposite hand, that show that even that can change your brainwaves for an entire day. I’d suggest something like getting up 15 minutes earlier and using that time to meditate, read or exercise. Or if you normally eat lunch at work or at home, pack yourself a lunch to eat outdoors tomorrow. I know these sound simple, but your body will feel that you are making a change. And your brain will start to think of other, more important, things that could be in need of changing.

2. Break a long-term cycle. Granted, we are not all in a position to take a luxurious vacation. (But if you are, go for it.) That said, time off from work — or from relationships that can feel like work — has a near-instant positive affect on us. A few days away from the grind, preferably in a new location, will free you up to see that the world is bigger than you had made it. You know when your boss comes back from vacation with a million new ideas? This is why. But you aren’t looking for ideas to give to others. You are taking the time away to see what ideas you have been holding back from yourself. You are breaking a cycle so that you can assess the patterns you have fallen into over years, so that you can change some of them if needed.

3. Break relational cycles. This can work two ways. There may be some toxic relationships in your life that you need to distance yourself from. If these relationships are foundational to you, like a life partner, parent, child, sibling, etc. then a distancing is a major decision and should be weighed accordingly. Don’t read this article and immediately go disown someone you love deeply. But, many of us tolerate toxic relationships that, if we are honest, don’t matter all that much to us anyway. It’s the “friend” or neighbor or workmate or client who monopolizes your emotional capacity. Bye, Felicia. “Let them go, let them go,” to misquote Elsa. The second way to break a relational cycle is to purposely schedule time with people who you know are good for you. These are family members and friends with whom you feel truly at home. It only takes a text to set up a time to meet or a zoom call or a visit to them. Putting good people in your schedule will only help you become a better person yourself.

If you can start breaking these cycles, you will see the fog start to lift.

It doesn’t make the work of changing any easier, but it does make the assessment of what needs to be changed more obvious.

And “knowing is half the battle,” to correctly quote G.I. Joe