Tag Archives: normality

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Changing Course

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Changing our standard, usual, typical, and expected behavior every once and a while can be refreshing.   That is stepping out of the normal into the new and exciting.

When are behavior change becomes a long term or permanent change, more like the new normal it can be stressful at first.  Changing it up for short periods is exciting and can spice up our lives but forced change for the long term becomes a bit wearing.

The good news is, eventually, the new normal becomes normal, at least until the next shake-up.  However, it does take time to adapt, accept, and transition our behaviors so they become autonomic.

Focus on Better

I visited my dentist a couple of weeks ago for a check-up.  After the exam, we chit-chatted a bit about the covid worldwide pandemic and the impacts on his business.

Unexpectedly he actually positioned the additional anti-disease measures as overdue and his plan is to permanently adopt many of the practices.

Masks, outerwear, frequent cleaning (even more frequent than before) are best practices.  Although they were specifically mandated in many cases to protect against covid, it is of note the transmission of illness is not limited to covid.

These processes make sense in any case.

Embrace/ Enjoy

Resistance to the increased government-mandated health safety measures does not make sense to me.   This is a case where preventing transmission of a potentially deadly disease is common sense.

Ultimately we may develop vaccines for covid or even a cure but the next one is just down the road (perhaps months, years, decades, we just cannot be sure).

The lessons of this pandemic should not be discarded.  Let’s make the new normal actually normal.

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

The New Normal

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The usual or expected whether related to an activity, specific behaviours or standards is perceived to normal.  Although we can be surprised by things this is usually the exception or abnormal.

For the most part we become accustomed and familiar with the routines of our daily lives and expectations around travel, shopping, work etc.  Our expectations of how we do these things are fairly constant and constitute the norm.

Shifting Reality

The norm is not an absolute but if constantly shifting it not a norm.  Shifting norms generally occur gradually over time.  It is unusual for rapid alteration in the “norm” but it can occur.

The reality of how we perceive each other and our life circumstances  will typically need a drastic upheaval for a new normal to arise.

But it does happen, case in point is of course the global pandemic.

Normality Shifts

Our expectations about how we and others should behave do not arise in isolation.  Circumstances are a major driver of our perceptions, and these arise from reality.

Simply put, while we can classify actions or behaviours as normal, based  on our own perception, the determination of what constitutes normal can very much  arise from external forces outside our control.

Accept and Thrive

Adoption to the new norm is critical to our own survival.  Recognizing the need to adapt to changing circumstance is a key behaviour of all living things.

The alternative to adapting to the new norm is typically extinction.  And so as time passes the majority adapts to the needs of the external drivers and ultimately these behaviours become the new norm.