Leveling Up: A Magic Trick

I mentioned some magic in my last post.

I’ve always been one to believe magic was real. I grew up in a religious household and the church always made it seem like magic was happening every day, all around us. I read the entire Narnia series of seven books about 100 times each. I wanted to be transported to fantastical realms with talking animals. I tried all the methods mentioned in the books, and it never happened, except in my dreams at night. 

But, I do think magic happens every day. Both in the sense that I think we don’t have the science yet to explain certain phenomenon so it seems like magic, but also in the sense of the very mundane causing entire reality shifts that you never saw coming. I have a shirt that I wear all the time that I found in one of my local consignment shops–maybe you’ve seen me wearing it on my Instagram posts haha. It says “Kindness is Magic.” If you stop to consider that your kind deed, word or smile might shift someone’s entire day and make them see there is still humanity in the world, that’s kinda magic, right?

Let’s go back to the free weights from my previous post. Maybe you did it once and it wasn’t the right time or that’s not the habit for you. But…maybe you do stick with it! You dutifully do your new free weights routine twice a week, like the CDC says you should. And you are just going along, faithfully lifting and sweating and being sore the next day. And then, one day, something amazing happens. You go to pick something up that was always too heavy for you, and you lift it without thinking. Or if your new habit was leg lifts, after a few weeks you climb up a tall stair and your hips don’t hurt. Or you don’t shake, or your balance is spot on and your core doesn’t feel like jello. 

When you realize what you’ve done, it sure can feel like magic. When I was working with a personal trainer a couple years ago, my moment came when I lifted the entire stack of dishes off our open shelving to get to a dish on the bottom, and I felt strong and in control and not afraid of dropping anything. I had always asked my husband to do that, or I’d taken the stack off a few at a time. But this time I lifted the entire stack. I felt like SheRa! I was so proud and pleased with myself, and just amazed that I had gotten to this point. I felt the magic.

I am really interested in quantum physics and the implications of that scientific framework–it bleeds into so much, including extrapolating the concepts to this scenario. If you don’t know much about quantum physics, the basic properties are that things are quantized (on or off), and that matter and energy go through state changes where they are one thing and then they are another. In school, we learn that an atom has electrons in varying orbital distances from the nucleus. When that atom’s charge changes, those electrons “jump” to a new orbital sphere, rearranging themselves into the most stable allowable orbit. They don’t gradually slide to the new orbit–it’s all of a sudden different, or quantized. 

This same phenomenon is what seems to happen when we work at a habit regularly for a period of time, and I like to call it a bodily quantum state change. Every day you have flipped the “on” button on your routine. On on on on on, day after day. When you have done that enough times, imagine a larger switch flips that relies on all those “ons,” and you jump to the next state of a larger framework. It’s quantized. That larger state is off until you’ve done enough “ons” to turn it on. 

That new “on” state is EXHILERATING. It feels like magic in the moment, but you know that magic has been born of weeks of your hard work (your “ons”). It’s heady and exciting and just exponentially increases your motivation even more. 

Another example is if you started meditating regularly. You faithfully do your meditation practice for a few weeks, and then you are faced with a disagreement with your spouse. In that moment, maybe you have the patience you never had before to fully listen to them. And it comes without effort, you just do it, naturally. You’ve quantum state changed into a more patient person, because of your faithful practice.

Obviously, I am philosophizing here, rather than quoting scientific experiments. This is how I like to think of positive changes, and it helps me understand and see the need for those daily practices to really see a difference in whatever aspect of my life that I am dealing with. It helps me feel inspired, and I hope it does the same for you!

To come full circle from my last post about analysis paralysis and thinking about whether you continue with a habit or decide it’s not for you, if you look at it from both sides you are benefiting either way.  If you aren’t sticking to something you tried, you are learning what you don’t like, you are learning what doesn’t motivate you, you are learning that you can try things. Basically, you are gathering information. And if you find something you can stick to, you are making magic every day that you do it, until that magic results in that quantum leap in strength (or endurance, or energy, or mindfulness – it all depends on the habit you are working on). You “level up” so to speak. So, when we are experimenting with new habits we are either learning or leveling. You kinda can’t go wrong.