Habits and Learning - A Joint Process

Last night was the first day of Psalms class, and I found myself in the same classroom that all of my other classes have been in. I got there and sat down in the same seat that I always sit in, then greeted the people who came in that I knew - all of whom sat in their usual seats. We even joked a little about how humans are such creatures of habit.

On the way home, I started thinking about this concept of habits. And I came to a strange conclusion - the part of our brain that makes us habitual creatures is the same part of our brain that allows us to learn - literally! Life really is about .01% book learning and 99.99% trial and error. This includes everything from learning the fastest route to work to learning what foods we like and don't like. And that learning stems directly from our habits. If we make a decision that turns out well, then our brain thinks, "Hey, that worked well, let's do that again!" If our decision doesn't go over well, our brain says, "Yeah, let's try something different next time."

Is that not what a habit is? A habit is repeating an activity that previously yielded good results. Some of those are obvious - such as repeating a study habit that led to a good exam grade. Others are so subconscious as to be simply instinctive - such as using the same stall in the work restroom because… well, it's habit, or going to your familiar seat on the first day of class, because at least you didn't make a fool of yourself in that seat last semester!

What I've realized is that habits are not innately bad. They are the skin that holds our lives in recognizable shapes. The problem is that sometimes we can outgrow that skin, and it's not easy to shed it. I have a leopard gecko that, like all reptiles, sheds his skin periodically. I can tell you that it isn't an easy process and usually, he ends up with pieces along his toes that he can't get off. Shedding your skin is hard. Shedding habits are just as hard.

What's harder is knowing WHEN to shed a habit. I remember hearing Michael Warden's story about when he took an alternate route home from work and found a huge wooded park with trails in his very own neighborhood that he had never known existed, even though he had lived there for years. For the next couple weeks, he went back regularly to explore the trails that had always been there, just off the beaten path. You can hear these stories constantly and you always wonder - why is it that we are so set in our ways that we miss out on these surprises? We begin to see habits as bad or as handicaps, when they aren't. The handicap is when we get too comfortable and aren't willing to go through the discomfort of shedding our habits - or when we don't know the right time and place to do so.

I don't know that I have a real point to this, except that it's something that we have to ask God to help us with - to know when is the right time to step outside of the comfort zone of our habits, and that we should bless Him when things do happen to disturb our safe territory - because that's the only way that we can grow.