When Repetition Feels Right
BY ELIZABETH GOODMAN ARTIS
Whenever I leave my house on foot to go somewhere, I never take the same route. Ever. I step out of my door, think about where I need to end up, and then ask myself which way I want to go, and more importantly, what street I last walked down. Then I choose a different street.
In other words, I hate repetition. I get bored, I feel glum doing the same thing every day. When I worked in an office, I would figure out a different building entry and exit every morning and afternoon (since I worked in downtown Manhattan and my offices were housed in a bigger complex, I could do that). I don’t eat the same breakfast every day. I don’t follow the same grooming rituals. I don’t start working at the same time. All these things get done, but differently, and not in any particular order.
Clearly, my brain craves novelty. That certainly doesn’t make me unique. In fact, it’s apparently an instinct—there’s extensive research that suggests novelty is so powerful because, in evolutionary terms, we pay attention to what's new to determine whether it's a threat. Still, there are personality types who crave ritual and routine. My husband is one. He has the same breakfast every day (toast with peanut butter and an apple). There’s comfort in that, which I get, and to a certain degree, safety. Plus, the brawnier, more robust cousin of the word “repetition” is consistency, and consistency is how you make progress, in anything.
Photo by Annie Spratt
Lately, I’ve been doing (wait for it) yoga, and a lot of it, typically 5 days a week. Like many people I ramped up during the pandemic because it’s soothing, and it’s easily done at home with a Zoom class.
As a physical discipline, though, it’s pretty much the exact opposite of the novelty I typically crave. Sure, the sequences change, and there are myriad poses to master, but so many of the shapes are the same, and right now, it’s exactly what I want or, more accurately, need. In this case, doing the same thing, over and over, is helping me find and appreciate a different kind of novelty—realizing that I could go further in a pose, open up more space in my body, see the same move in a new light. While I’ll always be someone who likes the “new”, I’m trying to balance that with finding surprise in the familiar. Because even though it’s the same street, there’s always something new to see if you’re open to it.
But I still take a different subway route to yoga class. Every time.
-Elizabeth Goodman Artis, Director of Content
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