I know that there is a real power in doing things consistently on a daily basis such as running a mile, or ten minutes of meditation, my latest positive powerful daily habit.
In a way they are like the spiritual practices that are taught in most major religions.
But I sometimes get caught in a rut of doing it exactly the same every day.
For example when I run, one of the things I do each morning is go through the things I'm grateful for, which I know helps me to give my life some perspective and see how lucky I am, no matter how positive or negative I might feel at the time.
But it can get stale and I can find myself listing the same things that I'm grateful for in exactly the same way each day. It can become a tick list of the things that I must remember to be grateful for.
When I do this I can get caught up in the thought that this is just another run, the same as yesterday, the day before that and so on. And my gratitude list can become a list to get through as quickly as possible.
It's a bit like learning something because I have to, not because it's important to me.
When this happens, it usually takes me doing it for a while the same way until one day I realise that this doesn't feel right any more.
When I question it, it becomes obvious why it doesn't feel as much fun and why it just feels like another run. The same old same old.
When this happens I still do my gratitude ritual, but I make myself find something that's specific to this morning or something that happened yesterday.
That keeps my gratitude exercise real, alive and fresh. It also does the same for my run.
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