Typically, we live through the past.
We exist as a sort of collection of past experiences that have come through our sensory inputs, feeding into biases and memories, which help us to articulate our current environment and reality in some approximate way. A narrative.
Because of the narrative, it’s hard to see things as they actually are.
But still, we can (at times) make our way forward in some sort of fashion.
Sometimes, though we hit a real glitch!
This is a loop, or, an addiction.
In Turning Pro, Steven Pressfield describes an “addiction” as having two qualities:
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They embody repetition without progress
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The produce incapacity as a payoff
Incapacitated, and making no progress…
This reminds me of a looping record or a scratched CD in 2002 or so.
When the CD started looping though, the whole room would stop and stare at the host.
Fix it. Now!
However, when we start looping and creating incapacity, as we stare at our email or repeat the same behavioural loop over and over, making no progress, it’s usually swept under the rug.
In fact, in many cases, doing this shifts us closer to the status quo, or “norm.”
But what happens if the energy going into creating these loops goes into a direction that we want to travel instead?