Mike Dougherty's Blog

Creatures of habit … or laziness?

Change seems to upset many of us. The reason is not always clear, but we often don’t care for venturing outside our comfort zone — and I’m, not talking about the city of Benton’s goofy advertising slogan from a couple of years ago, “Welcome to Your Comfort Zone.”

Just by paying attention to our reactions as we go through a typical day, we can realize how addicted we are to our routine.

If I don’t make a traffic light that I normally breeze through, it throws off my drive to work. If I get to the city parking garage where I normally deposit my vehicle for the day and I encounter more cars than normal for, say, a Monday, it irritates me. My thoughts run something like: “Oh, gosh, I’m going to have to park five spots up from where I normally do.”

I’d like to say I’m exaggerating, but I’m not.

You probably have your own examples.

Maybe it has to do with knowing that you had two granola bars left over from last week, but you get to work and there’s only one left or they’re gone entirely. It’s not a matter of you minding if your buddy in the next cubicle needed something to eat while he was up here over the weekend or even that the janitor forgot to pack a lunch, so they “borrowed” something from your desk drawer. If asked, you would have gladly offered the bars to either.

But because you expected one thing and your reality was another, it throws your day off kilter.

For some, it might be a matter of getting older or “set in your ways,” as they say, but I’m not sure it’s that so much as it is laziness (and I include myself). Maybe we need to just get out more and experience new things. Then we don’t get so unhinged when we experience a little change in our lives.