Coming back to my hometown after another school year in Brazil, I started to notice how automatic some things are. For example, arriving to my grandpa's house, albeit 45 minutes away, I could have sworn that I just blinked my eyes. Or playing soccer with my brother, I noticed how the motions to trap and kick a ball were automatic. Playing the piano came back with more difficulty but after some searching I was playing the same tunes I learned back when I was taking lessons. Finally, the one that surprised me most, as someone very interested in languages, I turned on the radio to the Southern California Spanish radio and found myself singing the songs automatically in Spanish. This is big because I thought I had replaced all of my Spanish vocabulary with Portuguese, having lived in Brazil for a majority of the past two years. I was in awe at these examples of muscle memory, just by being back in the context and cuing the activity, my muscles responded.
Of course, all of my readers have experienced this, even if it was just writing, but it got me to thinking about what things we are training our body and mind to do. How important it is to input good stuff! By setting a good foundation, we can then trust our muscle memory to perform accordingly in the future. What actions do you want to be habitual or natural? Positivity, helpfulness, humility, honesty, chastity. You pick, but you need to start and continue to form that muscle memory.
As I was out to lunch with my grandpa who will turn 100 in a few days, I realize that he himself has been practicing this for quite some time. Some information he repeats enough so that his brain muscle responds when needed. Not saying anything bad about anyone is also a practice; going to daily mass is a practice. These things he wanted to do, and at some point he must have decided to begin these practices. Of course, he would say that these things are only by God's grace! Indeed we can all learn a bit from focusing on how we would like to form our muscle memory. Thanks, Grandpa, for an excellent example in how to feed our auto-pilot.
Of course, all of my readers have experienced this, even if it was just writing, but it got me to thinking about what things we are training our body and mind to do. How important it is to input good stuff! By setting a good foundation, we can then trust our muscle memory to perform accordingly in the future. What actions do you want to be habitual or natural? Positivity, helpfulness, humility, honesty, chastity. You pick, but you need to start and continue to form that muscle memory.
As I was out to lunch with my grandpa who will turn 100 in a few days, I realize that he himself has been practicing this for quite some time. Some information he repeats enough so that his brain muscle responds when needed. Not saying anything bad about anyone is also a practice; going to daily mass is a practice. These things he wanted to do, and at some point he must have decided to begin these practices. Of course, he would say that these things are only by God's grace! Indeed we can all learn a bit from focusing on how we would like to form our muscle memory. Thanks, Grandpa, for an excellent example in how to feed our auto-pilot.
YOUR GRANDPA IS AMAZING
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