How I Adapted This Habit in My New Home

I recently moved from one house to another in the same building community. Because of that, a lot of things such as light switches, door handles, etc are the same. One of these items is a medicine cabinet in the bathroom that looks like this:

Original Mirror

Dealing With Change

It’s been nearly two weeks and I’m now finally getting used to the new situation. But for the first days, I kept reaching out with my right hand to open the mirror. The very first time, I thought it had a super-powerful magnet but then I realized the hinges were on the other side!

Flipped mirror

It’s shocking how reluctant my brain was to change as I kept trying to open it with my right hand! So I started ‘practicing’. I would open the mirror with my left hand and close it again. Then, I would immediately try again with the same hand to make it easier to remember next time.

This is something that I read from Steven Pavlina’s post “How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off”. He encourages you to practice waking up by lying in bed in the middle of the day and getting up a few seconds later just to automate the motion.

In the case of my mirror, I would have eventually picked up the habit but I feel practicing with my left hand helped me to speed up the change.

This technique can be used in other parts of your life where change is more resistant. Next time, try practicing change and see if it works for you.