Groovy Grooves

Way of the Emotional Warrior

www.kaiehnes.com

Ep51 Groovy Grooves

Hello and Welcome to the Way of the Emotional Warrior Podcast. My name is Kai Ehnes and today we will be answering the question of:

Are grooves good for us?

Here we go. I heard the following statement: Grooves eventually build walls. These walls will box us in.

Let’s dive into this a little deeper. Grooves happen when we develop patterns. At first the patterns serve us because they create a repetitive set of actions and behaviors that allow us to gain control over our environment. Let’s say that you do the same 10 things every morning before you go to work. Not only do you do the same 10 things but you do them in the same order. Again, it helps us to organize. This way we don’t leave our home forgetting phone, wallet or keys. Oh wait…gotta make sure have our coffee mug filled with its great elixir😊

This may work for a while in terms of repetition giving us the idea that we have control over our environment but eventually you probably feel the following. First, you don’t really want the coffee mug every day or maybe for a day you want to just leave your phone behind. But then this little voice jumps in that says you better not change anything because without saying it, it means that you might lose some of that coveted control. This is how superstitions come into play in our lives.

Here comes the problem…we live in a reality where change is the one constant that is ever present. So, creating a system of repetition that does not take into account change is an inappropriate fit. Of course, every person starts with seeking out constancy but novelty or change have to have room to exist otherwise that incompatibility will create issues with one’s mind.

So back to the grooves quote. If we make those grooves bigger and better then they will create walls. Those walls box us in and we get stunted and live unfulfilled lives.

We have between 60 to 70 thousand thoughts per day and over 90% of those thoughts are repeated every day. This repetition serves us for a while but we can’t grow.

Let’s use the analogy of a staircase. Let’s say there are 20 steps then there is a landing, then it takes a turn and there are 20 more steps yielding another landing. For our situation, the landings are where we are making and expanding our grooves. The stairs are our growth and development. Can you see that there are more stairs than landings and therefore we should spend mor time expanding with novelties and less time on the landings creating grooves that eventually blind us to looking for the next set of ascending steps?

When I was younger I firmly believed in the creation of grooves in my life. Repetition let me become ok with overwhelming environments. For a while I believed that was the pinnacle of it all. The perfectly executed set of tasks in a week made for an amazing week. But as with everything in life, I found myself bored. I would wake up and know what I had to do. It was all planned out and made sense. Heck it was my own plan. Why would I be bored with my own plan? Answer, I had no clue how the ways and laws of the universe actually operated. I had studied people who knew how to create and execute amazing plans. I got really good at executing those successful plans. But something was missing. I felt ridiculous about how that played out. I was fortunate to have the plans in place how dare I be bored at some level?

I realized on some plane that life could blow up all my plans rather easily and if did not want things to blow up and disintegrate then I had to make forward moving plans. So, I embraced the fact that there is change. It was quite difficult.

However, with time allowing for change and embracing it gave me new insight into the process. I learned that I could steer some of the change instead of waiting for things to get crazy. This little bit of steering change is lawful and has allowed me to climb some new steps on the never ending staircase. Don’t get me wrong, the landings are good for taking personal inventory but I know how temporary they are.

I stay open to novelty and growth. It happens daily. Certainly not everything but novelty and subtlety are ways of being lawful to universal laws while having some say so in what happens. This small sense of control is what I had wanted from the consistent grooves in the first place. This way I live instead of creating grooves that build walls that box me in.

What is your version of this story? Are you an Emotional Warrior in your own life?

Good luck.

~Peace