cut new groove

 

[grooves]

[mental grooves]

John Hargrave, Mind hacking : how to change your mind for good in 21 days, 2016 

p.149

Repetition is key.  Also, repetition is key. 

   One of the best parts about living in Boston, besides the wealth of technology talent, is sledding in the winter, It's a thrill seeker's dream, because you can sled as long as you want, as often as you want, and, unlike roller coasters or hallucinogens, it's totally free. 

   I live near Wellesley College, the renowed all-women's college that has produced notable alumni like Nora Ephron and Hillary Clinton.  Wellesley has a sledding hill that is just phenomenally dangerous.  It has (what feels like) an 85-degree incline, where you attain (what feels like) speeds of up to 75 miles per hour.  On one side of the hill, a fifteen-foot oak branch spreads out across the snow, like a giant, deadly limbo stick.  If you don't press your body flat into the sled, you will be decapitated by the tree.  It's insane that they allow sledding on the hill at all, but even more insane is that the women of Wellesley college sled down the hill on plastic trays from the dining hall. (It's funnier if you picture Hillary Clinton on a tray.)

   As any sledding enthusiast knows, if you get to the hill after a fresh snow, it's just clean powder.  Then, as people sled down the hill, it creates grooves, or tracks, in the snow.  After a few days the Wellesley students have built snow ramps and moguls at the bottom, so that the sledding down one of these tracks will launch you into orbit. 

   A few days after a snow, you'll find one set of snow tracks that take you kunder the Oak tree of death, and another set that will shoot you off the Ramps into hyperspace.  Even if you start your sled on another area of the hill, you end up locking into one of those two tracks.

   Our minds are like that hill.  The constant repetition of our negative loops cuts deep mental grooves, and it's natural for our minds to “lock into” those grooves, even when the negative loops are self-destructive. 

p.150

   The good news is, through repetition, you can cut new groove.  When I take my kids sledding at the hill, we often have to cut a new track, packing down the snow where we want it to go, then physically slowing and redirecting ourselves to the new tracks.  The sled “wants” to lock into the existing groove, but by patiently working the new path we can eventually get the sled to lock into the new one instead. 

   ( Mind hacking : how to change your mind for good in 21 days / Sir John Hargrave., 1. thought and thinking., 2. change (psychology)., BF441.H313  2016

158.1--dc23, 2016, )

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