Practice Makes Permanent

Most of us are taught that practice makes perfect. When I was in high school my choir teacher always told us something that undid that prevailing wisdom. He said that practice makes permanent.

When we are trying to achieve something in life or in business, we tend to charge forward and hope for the best. We go in with a plan (most of the time), but usually end up doing the same thing over and over again. Indeed, as Einstein posited, this is insanity. If this sounds familiar, consider the following.

There are many reasons for this propensity for repetition: fear, assumptions, complacency, and many more. Any of these can lead you to keep doing things the same way every time. Habits are had to break and they become more deeply set the more we repeat them. What would it look like, though, if you were to pause instead and consider each step instead of the big picture?

Everything operates in causal relationship. We tend to look at the goal in the future then repeat the same steps toward that goal. What we rarely consider is that each decision, when acted on, creates a new set of possibilities that unfold. Then, when the next decision is made and acted on, there are more decisions. You get the drift.

How about this? At each juncture, instead of repeating the same steps along the way, pause and take a deep breath. Ask yourself which choice before you most reflects your own or your organization's most authentic self. Then, act on that best choice and notice how the options that unfold before you are different than the ones you had before just because you chose differently. It's kind of like an alternate endings game in the real game of life.

Since it takes practice to undo habits (because practice makes permanent), try this method in all facets of your life. If you tend to eat the same foods or go places by the same route or have the same rhythyms of daily life, try to pause, ponder, and act between choices/actions and see what happens.