Shi:
Alright, up next in this segment, we want to talk about another really interesting macro concept that shapes who you are, and this one is pervasive and yet sneaky, and it’s been called by all kinds of different things. You probably best understand it as the rhythms of life, the rhythms of nature, the cyclical nature of the way things go. All things have a season, all things move within nature, which is an incredible concept. Our favorite conceptualization of this concept comes from the author of “Think and Grow Rich” Napoleon Hill, who calls this driving force “the cosmic habit force.”
Kay:
Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo! I feel like this has to have some kind of theme song with it. We need jackets made. If this isn’t some kind of Star Trek logoed show situation, the cosmic habit force is on the case.
Shi:
I love it and I love the way that Napoleon Hill describes this. The cosmic habit force is that momentum and energy that flows through. Energy always has to be in motion. It’s got to be moving and so this is the pathway that it naturally takes. And for most creatures they just have to follow it blindly. For us humans, we get the beauty of free will and getting to choose how it is that we engage with this cosmic habit force. But so many of us end up defaulting to programming that either society gave us, or our family slash primary group gave us that doesn’t always serve us or help us and when we do that in that kind of blind way, Hill calls this “hypnotic rhythm.” This is a concept we first heard in his incredible work called “Outwitting the Devil.” We would definitely recommend. A fascinating book, a great read, and really interesting. I know, Kay, when we first encountered the idea of the hypnotic rhythm, it was something pretty mind-blowing for both of us.
Kay:
Well, let’s just think about this in a physical perspective. Now, if you’ve ever been around a mom with young children, you’ve likely experienced something that many of us like to call the mom sway. Now there’s a group of women standing in a circle, and one of those women is holding a baby and swaying that baby back and forth. Most of the time the rest of the women in that circle also end up swaying back and forth alongside that mom even though they are not holding babies. Now, this is a good physical example of kind of the hypnotic rhythm at play. There’s one person doing something, and other people start to follow along. Well, if we think about this from maybe a macro perspective, let’s say that maybe your family, like our family, has a history of alcoholism and you fall into you see your parents drink on the weekends. You see your parents have a couple glasses of wine or a couple of beers when they get home at the end of the day from work and then you perpetuate that into your adulthood until before you know it–oh no–you have an alcohol problem or maybe you just have a habit that isn’t serving you, but you’ve seen it perpetuated. It’s perpetuated by society and woo you fell into the rhythm.
Shi:
Yep. The hypnotic rhythm at that right. Think about both of these words here. Hypnotic means that you’re not even always aware that you’re in that state, that you’re just blindly following along, and rhythms are part of our lives and something that are very attractive to us. Even your heartbeat is a rhythm. So, when we get pulled into these hypnotic rhythms, it can be really tough to shake your head and shake yourself free from them, and in the example that Kay just used, which alcohol for us is the most stark example because we awoke out of the hypnotic rhythm of it and realize how pervasive this hypnotic rhythm is. It’s not just you saw mom and dad drink; you saw it depicted in every major TV show and movie you watched and in every setting.
Kay:
Okay. Quick side note, Vampire Diaries, a show about teenagers. How many episodes do they drink? Every single episode. You all are teenagers.
Shi:
It doesn’t need to be included but it’s so much part of our culture and our society right now that it is absolutely included and it’s weird to see the more we get away from it the more we realize. It’s such a destructive habit, but it’s very profitable and of course, it’s very addicting and so you can see how these things under a capitalist economic system can really come together to perpetuate a hypnotic rhythm that is not positive and helpful for human beings, long term.
Kay:
Well, the caffeine-alcohol cycle really came to fruition back in the 1920s when capitalism was starting to take form, industrialism was really at its rise in our country and we had people working in factories having to wake up early in the day and get home and not be so upset about extreme, long working hours, crazy working conditions. So, Napoleon Hill actually talks about this in “Outwitting the Devil” that alcohol being a numbing agent made people more placid and able to stay in uncomfortable situations for longer. So, it’s this coffee-alcohol cycle. I wake up in the morning and I’m exhausted from drinking the night before/being completely overworked in terrible conditions, so I chug a bunch of coffee so I’m ready for the day and now I’m back at the grind. I’m in the grind for 10 to 12 hours then I get home, but I’m energetically wired because I’ve been doing all this stuff all day. So, I start numbing myself with alcohol which also makes me forgive the horrible things that happened to me throughout the day and the alcohol also helps me go to sleep only so that I can wake up and do the coffee-alcohol cycle that fuels the factories. So, this was back in the 1920s we really saw this rise. But that hypnotic rhythm got set off in our society and it has not reversed yet.
Shi:
You know, alcohol is a major hypnotic rhythm but there are countless hypnotic rhythms and small ones and big ones. So, we challenge you as you hear this concept to just think about where you see them in your life, where you see them in society. Where do you have a place in your life where you want to make change, where you’re maybe struggling, or you’ve plateaued? You might be engaged in a destructive, hypnotic rhythm that you’re not aware of and hopefully, this little teaching has helped.
