Worrying and Reflecting Aren’t the Same

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” — Author unknown, often attributed to Albert Einstein

We’ve all heard it, said it mid vent, nodded at it, and then gone right back to whatever we were doing. The quote about repeating patterns has become its own pattern, we agree with it, change nothing, and a few months later we’re nodding again like it’s new.

Worrying and reflecting aren’t the same. One replays the feeling, the other changes the cause. Worrying is the argument looping at 11 p.m. while we lie in bed, same lines, same ending, and reflecting asks the question the loop avoids, what did we do that put us there in the first place?

We keep ending up in the same situations, a different relationship with the same shape, an old argument wearing a new name. Some of us call it bad luck, others call it coincidence, something outside our control. I call it a cycle.

An old mistake can define who we think we are just as easily as tomorrow’s worry can erase who we’re being right now. We analyze the past, plan the future, and mistake that thinking for progress. For a moment, it even feels like we’ve done something.

The present is where it happens, the conversation we’ve been avoiding, the apology we owe, the boundary we finally hold, the promise we actually keep. It’s the only place we get to become a little better than we were yesterday.

Yesterday can teach us, tomorrow can motivate us, but only today can change us. So this week, let’s identify the pattern, not the situation, not the other person, the one thing that was the same every time. Then let’s come back to today, because today is the only place we can interrupt the cycle, including this one, the moment where we read something true and decide whether we nod and move on, or where the cycle finally breaks.

Let’s make it a great week!

#MotivationMonday