Pattern Interrupted

Recently, I have heard many experts touting the benefits of forming routines. Having the routine of making your bed can be a great way to add structure to your mornings and give you a sense of control and accomplishment to start your day, and it’s nice to pull down the sheets and crawl into bed at the end of the day. Routines can help you stay organized, be more productive, and relieve stress. Breaking a routine, however, can be even more important.

A routine is simply a sequence of actions that you follow. The more you follow a routine, the more automatic it becomes. For example, I started meditating almost four years ago and have never missed a day since I began. To build the routine of meditating daily, I scheduled my meditation on my calendar at the same time every day and committed to never missing a practice time. After the first 30 days, I didn’t need to look at my calendar to remember to meditate, because I had established a routine. After 60 days, I was drawn to my meditation practice because of how good I felt as a result.  After 90 days, my meditation practice became as important as breathing is to me. That’s the power of routines.

Routines are patterns that your mind creates to make what you do easier and less stressful. What would it be like if you had to stop and think about how to open a door every time you encountered a doorknob, or what if you had to think of every individual movement involved in a handshake as you reached your hand out? How mentally exhausted would you be by the end of every day if your mind did not run patterns?

But consider this… Suppose you want to begin going to the gym a few times a week. You even visit a gym and become a member. You promise yourself that you’re going to go to the gym on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. You set your alarm for Monday morning to allow time for you to workout before you tackle the rest of the day. When the alarm goes off, your mind floods your thoughts with… “You went to bed late and you need more sleep, and the bed is so warm and cozy. You can always start working out on Wednesday. You can make it a point to get to bed earlier on Tuesday night. It’s only two more days.” Then Wednesday morning rolls around, and your mind offers you even better justifications for staying in bed.

This is not a pattern you want, but you’ve fallen under its control. This pattern must be broken.

But how? Before we get to the how, allow me to give you another scenario.

You and your significant other (or best friend, business partner, sister, brother, mom, dad… you pick) have a pattern that goes something like this… You find yourself in an uncomfortable conversation with them. As the pattern plays itself out, the conversation turns into a heated debate. You begin to raise your voice because that’s what happened growing up in your family when a heated debate really got going, and you all yelled until things were worked out. Your significant other, however, grew up in a home where everyone went their separate ways when a heated debate began to brew. After everyone had calmed down, they would all meet to have a civil discussion about the matter.

You and your significant other have very different patterns of dealing with the same situation. You begin raising your voice to settle things and your significant other leaves and locks themselves in the bedroom.

In both cases, going to the gym and the heated debate, you are running an automatic pattern that controls your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.

What’s needed is a pattern interrupt, a technique to change your thought, emotion, or behavior pattern. Pattern interrupts take you out of your normal routine and point your mind in a new direction.

This doesn’t mean that you promise yourself to go to the gym on Friday or to never raise your voice. Let’s get real… you’ve made promises to yourself before and they simply don’t work. Your pattern takes over, and you’re back to doing what you don’t want to do.

A pattern interrupt involves confidence (even bravery), full commitment on your part, taking the risk that you aren’t sure what’s going to happen next, and creativity.

Pattern interrupts require an element of surprise and shock, but be ready. When you interrupt a pattern, your mind or the mind of the human you are communicating with instantly enters a trance. In everyday terms, it’s similar to when you’re having a conversation with someone and a third human walks up to you and asks you a question. After answering their question, you turn back to the human you were initially speaking with and your mind goes blank. You end up asking something like, “What were we talking about?”

The more outrageous you can make an interrupt, the more profoundly the pattern will be broken.

In the gym example, suppose you set every alarm in your home at the same time and have a friend call you to make sure you’re awake and getting to the gym. You would be running around the house turning off the alarms and answering your phone. Because you’re already out of bed, you have a better chance of just going to the gym.

In the example with you and your significant other, what if you simply began to undress until you were naked when the conversation began to get a bit heated? You and your significant other simply have to make the agreement to do this if the conversation begins to go south.

I ran across an amazing example of a pattern interrupt while scrolling through Twitter. It read, “You can de-escalate any situation by simply asking, ‘Are we about to kiss?’” This is brilliant, and I want to give it a try soon.

A pattern interrupt can be as simple as putting on your favorite music and singing your heart out when you feel depressed.

I use pattern interrupts on myself and others. When I’m communicating with a human either in a casual interaction or in the therapy room, I initiate a pattern interrupt to jolt them out of negative patterns. For example, when someone begins crying uncontrollably in the therapy room, I often say, “We can talk about that as soon as you stop urinating from your eyes.”

A while back, I was in a bookstore. I often stop in just to see what new books are on the shelf on the subject of influence, sales, speaking, et cetera.

The section where these books are located just happens to be near the self-help, put-your-marriage-back-together section; and it never fails… there’s always a couple standing in the aisle trying to agree on which book is best.

The inability to agree and compromise is what brings humans to this section in the first place thinking that they can agree and compromise on the best book to buy to fix their problems. Instead, they find themselves acting out in a public place.

On this day, there was a particularly annoying couple who needed a lot more than a book to help their marriage. The bookstore was fairly large, yet humans from the other end of the store were watching how the situation was unfolding. The conversation quickly went from, “You never respect my input,” to “I bet you have the time to listen to your girlfriend when she says something!”

I had nowhere to go, however, because these two numbskulls were arguing in my aisle. I intervened.

I took two business cards out of my pocket, I walked up to the couple, and I said, “You can stand here and argue about what book will fix your problems or about who left the toilet seat up or who left the clothes on the bedroom floor or who slept with who, or you can begin to think about how good it feels to be naked with each other... now.”

An instant trance was developed in both of them as they stood there and just stared at me for at least ten seconds.

Start interrupting some patterns and make your life and the lives of your clients, friends, and family better.