Where you find yourself...

I never thought I'd admit this, but I feel at this time in my life that it has finally become time. If I hadn't been raised in the Snoqualmie Valley, I would never have really gotten to know myself. I know myself now because I spent many days in the summer sun or the fall rain with a cup of coffee and thought. I thought a lot. Not just the whimsical things, but the truly deep and poignant things. Often those thought processes started with questions. Deeply theological or psychological questions at that...

Anyways, I found myself there, but today over lunch with a friend I found another part of myself. I always knew there was a reason for why I care so much. That reason is stability. I had so much of it growing up, but a lot of people don't. I have a mom, and a dad. I have a mom and a dad who just celebrated twenty four years of marriage. I have a brother who loves me. I have a brother who is my whole world. I have never moved around. I have always had a really great close friend circle. I've been provided for. I've been loved continually. I've been so blessed...

Back to the point. People need stability as much as they need water I believe. It's part of the human structure. We need a certain level of stability in order to, well, maintain order. Without a little routine and a little steady pace, stress occurs, or the opposite occurs, laziness. The problem with society today is we're heavily programmed to be spontaneous and extremely flexible with the world around us. While that's just fine on a basic level (like making last minute Friday night plans), I think it's difficult to be expected to live on everyone else's schedules. That said, we all do that. We are all trying to be flexible all while the people around us are doing that same thing. Eventually the flexibility becomes stressful because there's no routine, there's no structure.

I am a firm believer in routine because it provides a core. It defines where and how we function at our best. That way we can take experiences that fall outside of that routine and see how they stack up with our best self, or our best effort. There's always a learning process...

Where do you need routine? Where do you need structure? Where are you lacking in follow through? What's keeping you from maintaining good habits?

Answer those questions and you might be surprised where you find yourself. I definitely was.