Friday Reflections - When ants in your pantry = personal growth. 🐜
“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.”
- James Clear, Atomic Habits
I started off this week thinking about this quote and concluded the converse is also true. Every action you take is either a vote for the type of person you wish to become OR a vote against the type of person you wish to become.
Out of curiosity, I decided to do a mini experiment related to this idea.
I outlined a few ways of being I desired to embody this week (e.g., exercise, hydrate, prioritize morning quiet time) and then started tracking my actual behaviors on a scorecard. In one column, I gave myself a point every time I behaved in a way that was aligned with my desired ways of being and in the other column, I gave myself a point for misaligned behaviors.
By the end of the first day, I just barely netted out in favor of alignment.
Later in the week, random things started going awry (this second part of the story will connect back to the first part).
Ants suddenly appeared in our pantry. We noticed a weird bubble in our ceiling (oddly enough, also in our pantry; it was a rough week for the pantry) and a moisture meter indicated it was wet, which means there’s a leak coming from the second floor somewhere. And, a drive belt in my car needed to be replaced.
All relatively small things (well, TBD on how small the leak issue is) but things that needed to be addressed in a timely manner, otherwise they would become bigger issues.
As I sat there annoyed at the inconvenience of having to deal with things I didn’t want to make time for, it got me thinking, why is it that multiple annoying things always seem to happen at once? And, what’s the opportunity there?
What came to mind is that I could continue perceiving these occurrences as annoyances, and engage my typical pattern of avoidance. Or, I could view these occurrences as opportunities to practice my desired way of being, which is to be a person who takes care of problems right away instead of avoiding them until they become unavoidable. The type of person who knows that avoidance further perpetuates the very thing it purports to help with.
Given that there were multiple issues to be resolved, I would have multiple opportunities to practice non-avoidance, which would give me successive data points affirming a new narrative that I am in fact capable of being a non-avoidant person.
In that sense, each of the issues, while still undesirable, offers the gift of new evidence of my new identity. Viewing issues in this way decreases my resistance and increases my willingness to exert the effort and energy required to resolve the issues.
And, incidentally, gives me the opportunity to add another point to the “aligned behaviors” column on my scorecard. 😎
So my invitation to curiosity for you today is:
How aligned are your behaviors with your desired way of being?
What would it look like to create your own mini experiment to collect actual data on your level of alignment?
What problems/challenges/annoyances are you currently experiencing that you could view as opportunities to practice alignment with the person you desire to be?
As always, drop me a line and let me know what comes to mind. I've loved hearing what these reflections have been stirring up.
Stay curious,
Jessica
Click here to subscribe and receive future emails directly and here to read past editions