April 4, 2026- The loudest and most persistent signals

Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.

~Franklin D Roosevelt

Our bodies and our minds tend to be steered toward the loudest and most persistent signals. We start our days with an alarm from our phones. If we consistently hit snooze, that becomes the persistent signal – that it is time for additional, incomplete sleep cycles that will leave us groggy and make mornings seem unpleasant. On that same phone, we know we have notifications and newsfeeds immediately tugging at our attention. We begin the day with a signal that someone else’s problems or priorities need to be our immediate concern.

We haven’t gotten out of bed yet, and still that loud, repetitive signal has become our truth. It doesn’t need to be. We can choose the quiet voice that tells us to get out of bed and stretch, exercise, journal, express gratitude, get out in the morning sunlight, or do any number of things that could cause our days to start off joyfully.

The fact that things are part of our routine does not make them good for us or right for us. Our routine is what we choose it to be. Our habits are products of the signals we’ve chosen to listen to. We do not need to be slaves to those signals. Like every voice in our lives, we can choose to dismiss them.

What choices would the best version of us make? What voices and signals would we listen to, and which would we dismiss? We have that power. We can engineer the lives we dream of, one choice at a time. We can dismantle our current struggles, one change at a time.