“I keep to [my] routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.”
Haruki Murakami, via MoveMe Quotes
Not all routines help you reach deeper states of mind. Some routines lead to mind-numbing, rut-inducing, counter-productive states of mind. The ones that you might find yourself in when you’re waking up late, to do work you don’t want to do, to pay for things you don’t really need, surrounded by people you don’t really like, only to go to bed late to do it all over again the next day. A person in a routine like this may actually be mesmerized to avoid deeper states of mind altogether.
Take heed; for all routines mesmerize.
And I think most of us are, in fact, mesmerized whether we realize it or not. Do you spend time every night plotting out exactly what you’re going to do each morning or do you automatically just do what you do? Do you consciously map out your route to work or does routine navigate the roads for you? When you get home at night do you arbitrarily pick out evening activities or do you subconsciously flow through them?
When you take a close enough look, you might be surprised at how much of your day is actually routinized versus how much you think is spontaneous.
The bottom line: routine can be your greatest enemy or your best friend. It can mesmerize you to reach deeper states of mind or it can do precisely the opposite. It can get you working out without so much as a single thought of resistance or it can fill your head with only thoughts of resistance. It can habitualize reading and writing or it can habitualize binging and gaming.
If your going to be mesmerized by a routine, make sure it’s with a routine that you’d be happy waking up from in 5, 10, 20 years. Because sometimes, that’s how long these states of hypnosis can last. And it goes without saying that not everybody who wakes up from prolonged hypnosis is happy with how all of their time was spent.
Don’t be that person. Wake up and rework your routine. Practice an upgraded routine daily and without variation. Hypnotize yourself deliberately; not accidentally. Take control of the subconscious actions of your life—and you’ll take control of your life.