Breaking Cycles

We all have cycles.


Wake up, go to school, come home, watch TV, eat dinner with your family, do homework, sleep, repeat. Wake up, drive to work, come home, play with your kids, eat dinner, sleep, repeat. There are general variations to everyone's cycles, but the overall framework is relatively similar across the board. Save for major life changes or times of unclarity, you can more often than not say with confidence "Today was a lot like yesterday." I'm telling you now that you should strive to never saying that again.


People need to practice breaking their cycles. Have you ever heard a friend complain about an element of monotony in their life that they wish didn't exist? The only thing I ever want to say to people who bring that up is "Well, change it." We are the masters of our own destinies, and we make our own fun and luck in this world. I've said it before, but people need to go out and find things on their own, not wait around for someone or something interesting to come along to fix things for them. If you're feeling bored, it's time to break a cycle - don't spend the day at home doing whatever the whole day, find something new. Schedule an appointment for something in which you would normally never be interested. Hang out with someone that you don't hang out with as much. Break the cycle.


Many people are afraid of breaking the wrong cycle, which is exactly why so many cycles go unbroken. It only takes one really bad confrontation with a new person to make someone not want to do anything with them again. We then put up a barrier, associating hanging out with new people as a direct route to a bad outcome. Therefore, no more cycle breaking. It's important to just deal with cycles that lead to something negative in order to prevent ourselves from never breaking that cycle again. It might have been no fun being with that person for the day, but after a while your cycle is going to get old and stale again, and it will need breaking. Just because you have a history of bad outcomes with your new people cycle doesn't mean you shouldn't break any other cycles again. You broke the wrong cycle - s'okay, try another one.


I remember growing up, I was always skeptical in eating new foods. My parents would tell me "You should try new things, you might like them!" Truer words have never been spoken. You'll never know until you try. I was under the impression that other people were in control of bringing new things into my life, i.e. my mom's cooking. But that is not the case. We control things for ourselves. We are all at liberty to introduce variety to our lives, whenever we want. That should be a well developed skill in all of us.


So eat random new foods, talk to total strangers, and go to different places. And if it doesn't work out in the end, don't worry - a broken cycle doesn't stay broken forever.