Breaking the loops.

We all have a number of loops in our lives, some are avoidable, some aren’t.

Waking up, eating breakfast and drinking coffee is a loop. Happens everyday.

Getting bored and defaulting to social media is a loop.

Loops in essence are the things we do without thinking. Where the mind and habits inevitably drift.

I’m not a religious scholar, and I only know the basics about Buddhism, but someone recently told me that one interpretation of Buddhism and it’s main goal of enlightenment is “to break loops so that one is only walking forward on their journey.”

That seems like an amazing concept. If that’s enlightenment, it certainly makes sense to me. How many times are there interesting things we’d like to do, but we FEEL too busy, when it reality our life is simply full of loops. Social media scrolling, Netflix binging, shopping, news reading, and all sorts of things that actually don’t end up with us where we want to be.

The journey from where we are to where we want to be, isn’t a mindless one, it’s a thoughtful one. I don’t think enlightenment has to be free of all mistakes and backtracks, instead it is consistently choosing the tasks of the day, and certainly not many people would choose to walk in a circle all day long, yet we find ourselves in them metaphorically all day long.

Think about the loops that you get yourself into. How can they be prevented. Can you add additional steps that make you think about what you’re doing prior? Can you change your attention during times where your mind wanders and focus it on something more important?

At the least, it’s worth thinking about.