Metanoia

A human personality is the total pattern of accumulated limitations and potential. These idiosyncrasies are determined by our habits, compulsions, consistencies and channelled drives, they are what may you an individual. Each unique makeup navigates hypotheticals, with our brain being one of the most complex association machines in the known universe, we are motivated with goals contingent on all these character determinants. Yet each of our lives is also a finite series of events which tend to become rigid, repetitious and necessary. How do we generate a way of being, in the hope of becoming more than we are?

New places and new roles can nudge anyone to acture awareness of these idiosyncrasies. When we are embedded in our comfort zones, wearing appropriate personas that don’t overstep the socially-prescribed Overton Window an individual integrates within their habitats, ideally for an advantage. In these mindsets, we are normally unaware of the subtleties of our character. It is only when we break a conventional pattern that awareness is stimulated. Yet, breaking an established pattern for some is threatening. Our deeply ingrained selves cherry-pick comforting knowns; reliable coffee orders, comfort movies or the usual suspects we enjoin on a night out. We rarely direct our conscious towards unusual knowns, unusual since the whole instinct of human behaviour is to find environments congenial to placating our nerves. For ease of mind, this works for most, though conventionally monotony rears its ugly head as variation is the norm. Static living can become a personal hell.

Every week I combat static thinking with a simple soul search every Monday morning. I canolize the most essential elements that support any success; as simple as daily walks, eating well, regular exercise, creative outlets and any means to avoid turning into a shut-in troglodyte. Before the daily clutter loads up (chores, bills, etc.) there is a precious window of clarity and perspective. I use this time to drill down through the layered accumulations of convention, cliche, fear, neglect, buried dreams and forgotten desires; what am I missing? Am I able to take on a new different? Why am I unable to break an established pattern? How can I invite variation into my life?

Against all restraints of satiated reason and mundanity, I decide to try, make, or travel beyond ordinary environments and discover something usual with miraculous consequences. Recently it has been a culinary odyssey of the Meditteranean, replication of regional dishes across the Greek Isles, I kindled a usual past-time of collaging political zeitgeists and bouldering, and more recently I embarked on a solo trip across the German Alps. By forcing these usual environments on myself, I created new thoughts, a cognitive accelerant for growth and character.

If you are ever blocked in some line of development; socially, financially, physically, or any of the ‘ly’s; the simple truth is to break your convention patterns. Don’t be the person who comforts themselves not with what they achieve but with what they dream of achieving.

Do more. Know more. Be more.