Stumbling Over The Same Stone, Habits And Customs

“Man is the only being who stumbles over the same stone twice” says a phrase that you have surely heard. However, what happens when we become so fond of the stone that we end up falling again?

“I always make the same mistake”, “I don’t know why the same thing happens to me all the time”, “I promise myself that it will be the last time and I will fall into temptation” . This can be applied in many situations in life, such as a forgetfulness, a separation or an addiction.

Human beings are animals of habit. Perhaps making a mistake has become a habit and that is why you have chosen to take the stone from the ground, and take it with you wherever you go.

We usually complain about the routine and always doing the same things because we get bored … what if we start thinking about what we unconsciously repeat and it makes us suffer or be sad?

If you already said that you were not going to lie again, why did you do it? If you swore that you would not return with your boyfriend after the last fight, why did you run away when he called you asking for forgiveness for the umpteenth time? starting the year your goal was to quit smoking, why did you buy cigarettes again a few days ago?

“I did not realize it”, “this time is the final one”, “I am in control of the situation”, are the most frequent excuses. We do not like to leave our comfort zone, we feel safe even if we are not happy, we know perfectly every inch of our stability and we take refuge in the shadow of the stone that makes us fall again and again.

Perhaps, we could imagine that we are in a large cage, with the limitations and lack of freedom that this implies, but also with enough stability to stay there for a long time.

We do not realize that while we are in that place, things will happen again and again. The routine of getting up, having breakfast, going to work, coming home, watching television, bathing, sleeping … is more or less similar to all people. Until in a moment, we say “enough”.

Life becomes a succession of similar moments and we are not aware of it. The alarm signal appears when we are faced with a situation that hurts or bothers us. We start to think, hasn’t that happened to me before? It is as if we were a magnet that attracts the same thing over and over again. If only they were good things, welcome! But this is not the case in all cases.

Stumbling over the same stone: the imitation that has marked us all our lives

Surely you have gone through more than one situation where you have been wrong over and over again with the same person, the same activity, the same thought, the same job … why does this happen? A psychological explanation has to do with the education we have received since childhood.

As children they explained to us how to do things imitating someone else. We have seen our mother brushing her teeth to do the same, we have looked at our older brother to learn to ride a bike, how the teacher wrote the letters on the blackboard … as well as we could have learned not to be affectionate, to screaming or crying when we want to get something, arguing about everything, etc.

Every interaction we have with someone, whether it is from our intimate environment or not, shapes us until we become what we are when we grow up.  Thus, we are incorporating in our mind successive instructions on how to do each thing without question.

Therefore, becoming attached to the stone that made us fall has to do with two important issues. On the one hand, the fear of leaving the comfort zone where we find ourselves and on the other, the habit of doing things by repetition, as we have been taught in the past.

To break these habits, the first step is to imagine that our life is not limited by an enclosure such as a cage or a fish tank and then to realize that there are thousands of different ways to do the same, with even better results than we have achieved so far.

Doing more of the same will not bring us different results. You have to change your strategy.