RealTalkAJ

What does it mean to be stuck in your ways?

Being stuck in your ways means mistaking appearance, labels, and familiar patterns for real growth.

Mistaking Appearance, Labels, Familiar Patterns

These are what I consider indicators that possibly communicates change. They don’t necessarily guarantee that they’re going to be experienced, but they’re variables in what I believe can influence perspective on different methods. I’ve had these filters play significant roles in my experience with this topic all throughout my life, up to this point.

What are the three types of indicators?

• Appearances
• Labels
• Familiar Patterns

Appearances

Appearances are one of my indicators because I’m a very visual person aesthetically speaking.

I’ve grown to where I’ll have specific expectations of people, places, and things when the look of them are a certain. Maybe that’s an overly complicated way of saying I enforce stereotypes, but that’s the best way for me to put it.

Labels

Labels are yet another way that I’ll occasionally fall into the trap of getting stuck. There might be a fancy title or something that I’ll come across and automatically assume prestige. I’m in a generation that still heavily valued specific credentials that individuals would have. Because of what some of them would be, it would lead to special treatment. It would work the other way too, where if you had a less than favorable label, you would automatically get ostracized.

Familiar Patterns

Here we go with another popular method that reasonably leads to a continued trail of results. It shows in the same routes I would take to certain places. I’d even argue school conditioned me for such an attitude. Don’t they say familiarity breeds contempt?

Final thoughts

The sad part out of all this is that in many cases it leads to a refusal of seeing beyond what you already decides is true.