“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”. I love that quote. I think it’s by Zig Ziglar but have also heard Socrates used it – whoever said it he/she was right!

In many ways it can be useful to keep doing things in the same way if you get a good outcome from it – like paying your bills on time, eating healthily, having fun and enjoying life, and so on. So in some ways, it’s good to follow a pattern of thinking and behaving.

Of course, though, there are times that if we keep doing something in particular way that doesn’t seem to be working we are flogging the proverbial dead horse. I think it was Einstein who said something like “madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. I completely agree with this! If we don’t like the results we need to change what or how we do it.

Each day we wake up a different person from the person who went to sleep the night before. Genetically and physically this is true because our bodies are reproducing new cells all the time and so our bodies are not the same. Actually, if you take it a step further, our bodies are not the same from moment to moment! Further, we have today all the things we experienced from the day before and so we are more than we were yesterday. We can never be less than we are and no one can take that away from us – no matter how you look at it.

So if we’re not the same person we were yesterday, that means we can choose how and what we’d like to be in this moment. If you were feeling down and depressed yesterday, you can in this moment, of this day, choose to feel slightly better than where you were yesterday. If the things you did yesterday didn’t help you to feel better, then today is a good opportunity to try out new things. Then, when tomorrow comes, you will again be more than you are today and can reflect upon what worked for you today and decide whether it helped or not.

In each passing moment we make choices about what will do, think, and feel. Nobody, but nobody, can make you think or feel anything you do not want to. You decide what you will think and what you will feel. If you have been thinking the same thoughts that don’t make you feel good, then use this opportunity, in this moment, to think things that feel better.

Why not break with routines and things you do out of habit and do them slightly differently – especially if you’ve been doing them on automatic pilot. Try something new today and enjoy the opportunities for new experiences, because tomorrow you can choose something different.