When I was maybe 7 or 8 years old, my parents let me take Tae Kwon Do lessons. It was the 80s, and I was fairly obsessed with all the martial arts movies of the period.
In Tae Kwon Do classes, you are taught “forms”, which are a standardized series of movements meant to help you develop your skills and techniques. They are linear sequences that are memorized and practiced often as a means of helping you create proficiency.
In the recovery world, we have 12 steps. Each step builds on the previous steps, which, if practiced as a way of life, can enable the sufferer to recover from addiction or alcoholism.
At the d.school, where I teach executive education workshops, we teach design thinking in a linear fashion as well. Starting with gaining empathy for a user and ending with testing and iterating a prototype for that user.
But as we gain mastery in any area of our lives we almost always diverge from the way we were taught and operate in a more organic and non-sequential way.
I was only in Tae Kwon Do classes for maybe 6 months before I got bored and moved on to skateboarding. But I can assure you that I would never try to use a “form” in a self-defense situation.
I no longer practice the 12 steps in a linear fashion when dealing with a tough life situation. And when using design thinking, I rarely even use all of the “steps” I was originally taught.
But sometimes in life, we can get stuck in the rut of only practicing something in the way we first learned it.
Meditation has been one of these areas for me. Early on, I learned the very common concentration practice of watching my breath—maintaining awareness of the in and out breaths over and over for ~30 minutes a day. And there’s nothing wrong with this practice! It has served me well for several years.
But recently, I’ve been practicing more of an open awareness meditation that I find to be incredibly helpful and peaceful.
And I’m not here to convert anyone’s meditation practice, but I do think it’s worth pausing every now and then and taking a look at the ways in which we practice things to explore if there might be a better, more helpful way of approaching them.
This could be true for your meditation practice, your diet, your morning routine, the way you handle finances, your spiritual life, or any number of things!
We can all get in ruts, which are classic examples of “good enough” being the enemy of greatness.
So what is the thing in your life that you continue to practice in the same way you learned it? And could there be a new evolution for that part of your life?
Take 5-10 minutes today to think about areas of your life where you might be stuck in a well-worn groove and consider how you might break out of that groove and live in a new, more evolved, fresher way.