Stumbling over the same stone, habits and customs

“Man is the only being who trips over the same stone twice” says a phrase that you have surely heard. However, what happens when we get so attached to the stone that we end up falling again?

“I always make the same mistake”, “I don’t know why the same thing happens to me all the time.”, “I promise myself that it will be the last time and I fall into temptation again”. This can be applied in many situations in life, such as forgetfulness, separation or addiction.

Humans We are animals of habit. Perhaps making mistakes has become a habit and that is why you have chosen to pick up the stone from the ground and take it with you wherever you go.

We usually complain about routine and always doing the same things because we get bored… What if we start thinking about what we repeat unconsciously and that makes us suffer or be sad?

If you already said that you were not going to lie again, why did you do it? If you swore that you would not return to your boyfriend after the last fight, why did you run away when he called you asking for forgiveness for the umpteenth time? If at all At the beginning of the year, your goal was to quit smoking. Why did you buy cigarettes again a few days ago?

“I didn’t realize it”, “this time is the final one”, “I have control of the situation”, They are the most frequent excuses. We don’t like to leave our comfort zone, We feel safe even if we are not happy, We know perfectly every inch of our stability and we take refuge in the shadow of the stone that makes us fall again and again.

Maybe, We could imagine that we are in a large cage, with the limitations and lack of freedoms that this implies.but also with enough stability to stay and live there for a long time.

We don’t realize that as long as we are in that place, things will happen again and again. The routine of getting up, having breakfast, going to work, returning home, watching television, bathing, sleeping… is more or less similar to all people. Until at one point, we say “enough.”

Life becomes a succession of similar moments and we do not realize it. The alarm signal appears when we find ourselves in a situation that hurts or makes us uncomfortable. We start to think, hasn’t that happened to me before? It is as if we were a magnet that attracts the same thing over and over again. If only good things were, welcome! But this is not the case in all cases.

Stumbling over the same stone: the imitation that has marked us all our lives

Surely you have gone through more than one situation where you have made mistakes over and over again with the same person, the same activity, the same thought, the same job… why does this happen? A psychological explanation has to do with the education we have received since childhood.

As children they explained to us how to do things by imitating someone else. We have seen our mother brushing her teeth to do the same, we have noticed our older brother learning to ride a bicycle, how the teacher wrote the letters on the blackboard… just as we could have learned not to be affectionate, to shout or cry when we want to achieve something, argue about everything, etc.

Every interaction we have with someone, whether in our intimate environment or not, shapes us into who we are when we grow up. So, We incorporate successive instructions into our minds on how to do each thing without questioning it.

Therefore, becoming attached to the stone that made us fall has to do with two important issues. On the one hand, the fear of leaving the comfort zone where we find ourselves and on the other, the habit of doing things by repetition, as we have been taught in the past.

To break these habits, the first step is to imagine that our life is not delimited by an enclosure like a cage or a fish tank. and then, realizing that there are thousands of different ways to do the same thing, with even better results than what we have achieved so far.

Doing more of the same will not give us different results. We have to change strategy.