So here we go…on to a new year.
January is one of my favorite months. The feeling of renewal and rebirth that this season brings can be life-changing for so many. For others, especially as we get older, <em>we get stuck back in our grooves</em>.
Why do people as they seem to get older find it tougher to reinvent themselves? To get out-of –the-groove so to speak? Why are the people that are able to reinvent themselves seem to be geniuses that change the world? Ghandi, Nelson Mandela, Muhammad Ali, Madonna, and even Tony Robbins seem to keep themselves relevant through the times when the “norm” is to have “your time, your glory days” and move on.
Steve Jobs had a theory that as people get older, they become more and more engrained in patterns, and these patterns cause them to start to limit their ability to think creatively. The range of their thinking would become smaller and smaller.
These patterns become our groove, they are comfortable and safe, <em>at least we feel their safe</em>. But are they? Is it safe to get grooved in a career, your role in a business, a business model, a certain kind of product or even an economy?
I love working in technology because the very nature of it forces you to turnover old grooves and think in different paradigms almost every day. You can’t get in a groove in this industry. If you do, the world just passes you by…which is pretty much the way it works anyway, right?
What I mean is, are you stuck in an old job groove? an old economy groove? an old business groove? an old relationship groove? or a even an attitude groove?
A new year is not just a new way to date your checks (if you are still stuck in the groove of writing checks, that is). It is the chance to commit to throw yourself into something new. You are not a train, you are built to create, to solve problems, to produce.
You are designed for greatness by your creator. If you are not making the impact of Mother Teresa or M and M, it’s because you are playing a smaller-than image of which you were created. A groove to deep could be your grave or worse yet, the death of your dreams.
Let this New Year bring the rebirth of your dreams, the creation of a new life, of designing the health, wealth and abundance that you and your family deserve. Here is why I think the older we get, the more we get caught in the groove: it comes down to our ego.
Our ego holds us back and here is why: <strong>the history of us according to us becomes our reality.</strong> We use our reality to create the reasons for <strong>who we are</strong> and why <strong>we are in a particular station in our life</strong>. Good and Bad. We get our ego tied deeply into this perception that we become rigid and defensive of our perception of who we are.
And thus the groove, <strong>the more hurt we have recovered from</strong>, the deeper the groove…<strong>the more pain we have suffered</strong>, the deeper the groove…<strong>the more we have been attacked</strong>, the deeper the groove.
Look, I am not saying there are no positive grooves, ones of success and of love and abundance, I am saying we that more than not, our grooves cause us to be more and more inelastic in our ability to reinvent ourselves to become bigger than our situation.
So dance to the groove rather than get stuck in it.
