Changes

I am a creature of habit.  I park my car in the same place every time.  So I have a special spot at Sainsbury, Tesco, Shopping centre, work and especially at home.  It feels good to be able to park in  my spot, the place familiar place all the time, but when someone choose to park in my spot, not that it has my name on it but at times I am tempted to write on it

MY SPOT, FIND SOMEWHERE ELSE TO PARK.

Now if I can park next to my parking spot or maybe two to three car spaces away I’m a little bit miffed but  I can graciously accept sharing my spot with someone else. But when I arrive at my spot and there is no spaces anywhere and I have to park way out in the wilds. That’s when I get real aggravated and start driving round and round in circles like a mad woman, secretly hoping that someone will move out of my space, so I can park in my spot or at the very least near it.   I would rather drive round in circles for hours rather than park somewhere else I’m not familiar with.  In fact at times, the only thing that stops me from endlessly driving in circles. Is the time factor I don’t have the time I need to be somewhere else.  Sometimes I wonder how long I would drive round, if time wasn’t an issue!

Why don’t I want to park somewhere else?

Now everyone who knows me knows that exercise is a dirty word to me.  I drive everywhere even to  post a letter.

I will drive to the local storing office so I can just roll down the car window and post it in the letterbox without having to get out of my car. I get really annoyed when someone parks in my spot so I have to get out of the car and post it! 

So it stands to reason that when I park at any shop, business or at work. I try to park as near to the door as possible, so I don’t have to walk far especially in bad weather. I don't like getting wet unless I'm in the shower then it fine, not a problem.

 Another more serious reason is I don’t want to lose my car, in the car park. It happens on a regular basis for some people. I have a friend who parked their car in The Trafford Centre once.  For those of you who don't know The Trafford Centre is one of the biggest Shopping Centres in Europe with lots of  very large, very different car parks. Each with their own fancy name.  Their car was lost for hours just because they couldn’t remember where they had parked it. How embarrassing for them. So it can happen!  When I park somewhere different, than my spot.  I walk out of the where ever and  I  feel a little disoriented.  As my first thought is. 'Where is my car?'  There have been times when I have had to point my keys in the direction I think it may be and hope I see my lights blink and not someone else trying to find their car.

My final reason is safety, safety for me and safety for my car. It feels somehow safer for me to walk out my car into my house.   It feels safer to know that my car is parked outside my front door, so I can keep an eye on it.  Not that I look at it again once I’ve parked it, until the next morning.  

These reasons seem like rational ideas until I started to write them down and realised that they are not rational reasons or ideas but excuses not to change what I think is right and what I feel is right.  Which have created a learnt behaviour pattern and an attitude and excuses to protect my behaviour from scrutiny.

Excuses that keep me doing, what makes me feel comfortable! Even if I'm wrong 

 The question is:

Is it safer for me not to change or more harmful for me to change.

 As Human beings we do not like change.  

We will fight to stay in our own comfort zone, where we feel safe and unchallenged.

We like being able to predict what will happen when, where and how.

Change makes us feel unsettled and disorientated.

 So we resist change!