You don’t feel stuck because nothing is happening.

You feel stuck because you’re having the same inner experiences again and again.

When we wake up, before the day has started, we can already have a sense of how it’s going to unfold.  We mostly know our range of reactions and feelings. It’s the same old us in it.

Think about someone close. There was a time you viewed them fresh: small changes and expressions, things you hadn’t seen before, leapt out. Now, much of the time, you don’t really look because you feel like you already know them. You respond the way you usually do, and they respond the way they usually do. Something that once felt alive now can feel flat.

Let’s take something simple. A place you enjoy—a cottage, a beach or a restaurant that used to inspire and refresh you. At the beginning, it felt new and exciting. Now, you still go and enjoy it, but you arrive already knowing what it will be like.  The inner experience is the same. It’s no longer sparkly new; it’s become familiar.

Inside of us is a system that forms patterns. They make life easier and give stability. But the more they’re used, the stronger they become. Over time, without realizing it, they can start to decide how we feel and what we see.

You start seeing the same things, reacting and feeling in the same ways. Before you know it, you’re living inside patterns that are hard to step outside of.

It’s comfortable, sure, but at the same time it can feel predictable and stifling.

So you try to change things up by traveling, buying new clothes or looking for something new. And for a while, it works. It feels fresh again. It satisfies you for a time, then you’re back in your status quo.

 

It’s not just that things repeat. It’s that nothing new is forming in you, and without that, you have nowhere new to go.

How much of your life are you really living, and how much of it is patterns playing you?

Is there an antidote?