Three Questions to Identify Old Patterns and Start New Patterns

One of the challenges and blessings of an expat lifestyle is the lack of consistency, especially when compared with life in your home country. This can create stress and confusion, as well as a general confusion about your own mental and emotional well-being.

Just going to the grocery store or driving to a near-by park can create an upswell of anxiety as you start to process the steps required to accomplish your task. Do you know all the words for the items you hope to buy? Do you know how much things should cost? Do you know the words for the backup items if what you need is sold out? What about navigating the traffic? What if you get stopped by the police in a random document check? What about your neighbors who all want to know where you’re going and why on earth would you ever go by yourself?

A mindless errand in your home country can turn into a operation requiring the same level of planning usually only employed by project managers or Navy SEALs.

The point is that stress runs differently and will manifest in abnormal places, and the result is that patterns, or the lack of them are hard to pin down.

However, given some time, and some thoughtfulness, you can start to discern patterns in your life and determine if you want to strengthen, weaken or replace those habits.

The reality is that humans are creatures of habit and there’s not much we can do about that. Some might argue that it’s the flaw in our humanity, but I think that with some intentionality, that flaw can become a real asset.

Question 1: What habits do you see that make a difference in your life, either for good or for bad?

Hint: Someone else is picking them for you, and they’re not picking your best interest.

A lot of our habits don’t matter. Some matter much more than we could imagine. A Netflix habit can easily cost you 250 hours a year. Now you might argue that you weren’t going to get much out of those hours anyway, they happen late at night when your brains already toast, and you need a way to wind down. But imagine if you said that you spent 250 hours last year doing yoga. Or that you spent 250 hours last year reading fiction. Or 250 hours meditating, or doing intentional relaxation or even just watching 250 hours of something educational in a certain field (ex: Roman History, the Civil War, the history of rock and roll). I’d be impressed.

It has been said “the way you do anything is the way you do everything.” There is some truth to that, if you’re sloppy in your time management, I can bet dollars to donuts that you’re bad at managing your finances. And if you’re procrastinating with small stuff, you’re sure as anything going to procrastinate in the hard stuff. You’re practicing all the time for life, whether you realize it or not. When push comes to shove you’ll default to the level of your training and your systems. (Shout-out to James Clear there, and maybe some credit to AsianEfficiency as well.) So what style of life are you subconsciously cultivating? What patterns of interaction? Did you decide intentionally or did this just happen?

Remember, you’re a person, a unique individual, however, to your phone, your laptop, your television and to big corporations your a commodity. And your attention, your affections, your paycheck and your future all all assets to be acquired. So you’re under constant bombardment and encouragement to consume not only what you want, but everything you desire. And if you can’t afford that today, no worries, there’s always credit. Don’t fall for the siren-song of consumerism. It’ll leave you broken and bitter if you let it.

Question 2: What habits do you wish you had?

Hint: Be contrarian. Unusual activities yield disproportionate returns.

If you do what everyone does, you’ll get what everyone gets. So you have to ask yourself, what is “everyone” doing, and do you want that? If you look at societal trends, you’ll see a pretty bleak picture. Depression, social isolation, debt, divorce, conflicts. Investing in a contrarian habit could be the best choice you can make.

Everyone on their phones? Don’t be on yours.
Everyone reading a New York Times Best-Seller? Read something at least 200 years old.
Everyone using Google? Go to a library. Librarians are some of the most intelligent, underutilized people in our society.
Everyone looking for magazines for relationship advice? Talk to someone a generation older than you.
Everyone relying on podcasts or streamed sermons to learn about spirituality? Memorize a passage or a cataclysm. 
Everyone eating processed foods? Eat raw, or at least eat real food.
Everyone trying to master a video game? Master a musical instrument.
Everyone trying to escape? Choose to engage with something hard, even when you don’t have to. 
Everyone caught up in thinking about themselves (aka narcissism)? Intentionally think about someone else and how to serve them and build them up.              

It’s not that there is intrinsic value in just being contrarian, but there is significant opportunity if you learn to think like a contrarian. Contrarianism isn’t so much about just disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing, but it’s about noticing assumptions, and then questioning assumptions. A lot of the time you’ll find that assumptions are based on other assumptions, and when you start to think about what you want in life, and what you’d rather have tomorrow instead of what you’re rather have right now, you find that the long, slow path of contrarian mastery has an attractive air to it. Marching to a different beat may be a bit lonelier, but the quality of companionship is higher.

Questions 3: Do you have the energy to try to change a habit?

Hint: The problem and the solution is your food, your sleep and your drugs.

Most of the time we don’t want to change our habits. It’s too much work. Brains are notoriously lazy, and for good reason – they are so energy intensive they need to find some kind of efficiency mechanism, and habits are a good way to standardize some activities.

But if you want to change a habit, it will take work. It’s certainly not impossible, but we’d be arrogant to just assume we can change our habits like we change a t-shirt. We can vary from the habit if we make the conscious choice, but “the force of habit” demands that we return to old ways, even if those old ways aren’t that productive!

So instead, look at what you’re fueling your body and your mind with – when you’re on a cycle of sugar and processed carbohydrates you will lack the energy required to even care about your habits.

Your brain doesn’t need much sleep, as long as you don’t intend to use it rigorously. But if you listen to interviews with creatives and people functioning in intellectually-intensive work, you’ll often find that they get eight-plus hours of sleep a night. Their brain needs the downtime to repair, refresh and make connections subconsciously that the conscious mind just won’t make. So get some sleep.

Lastly, if you want to change a habit you’ll need to be strategic in your use of “drugs.” Things that spike your dopamine. Chemicals that give you bursts of energy followed by lethargic crashes. For Americans, this means coffee, alcohol and pornography. It’s a brutal cocktail that fries its consumer’s brain, emotional wellbeing, and mental clarity. Coffee is great, but it needs to have an upper limit. Five cups a day for extended periods is not good for anyone. Alcohol needs to be enjoyed in moderation, and in appropriate situations. Porn is just bad for you, mind, body and soul.

If you want to have the capacity to enact change in your life, you’ll need surplus energy. Don’t run your body contrary to the observable design specifications, and then complain when it runs sub-optimally. Humans are fickle, we want to have the ability to take meaningful action in our lives, but would also like to escape the consequences of our decisions when they don’t suit us. We can’t have our cake and eat it too, and the reality is, even if we could, we wouldn’t want it that way.