You’re not a hamster! Guest Post #3

If you’re a hamster, your day, every day, is something like:

• Wake up
• Feel hungry, search for food, eat…
• Feel thirsty, search for something to drink, drink…
•  All else taken care of, Find the wheel, get in and run… and run…
• Uh oh, it’s that time! Relieve yourself…
• Repeat previous steps over and over until you fall asleep.

And of course, you repeat this each day. A really wild day might find you changing the order; Woohoo!?

Now hamsters are perpetual loner’s and don’t do much with others; we’re different and interact with others all the time. There’s a little known addition to the “law of conservation of energy”** that states it doesn’t apply to hamster wheels. People don’t understand this, and ask many questions about it, but if you watch the hamster as he moves along (or she, it applies to female hamsters too!), the hamster and wheel just slow down. 

Most people reading this are fairly certain they’re not a hamster (and those who aren’t better solve those problems first). But with most people, when they wake up their steps are really different:

1.       If hungry, search for food, eat…

2.       If thirsty, search for something to drink, drink…

3.       Find some clean clothes to wear, hopefully they match… wear them.

4.       All else taken care of, Go to work, or school… (some really wild people are doing both!?)

5.       Relieve yourself as needed, where appropriate….

6.       Repeating previous steps until you fall asleep.

And repeat these steps each day; obviously that clothing step is huge! If you ask several people what they’ve been doing lately, you’re going to run into: “Same thing, different day…”; those people might as well be hamsters!  What you need to realize is it’s those differences that really matter. Every function you do, even good or great things can be ‘hamster-wheeled’ (yes, I’m using it as a verb now! You’ll have to get out of your hamster-wheel to see if it’s in the dictionary?) Look at concepts like prayer, or telling someone you love, ‘you love them’; Hamster-wheeling them (saying/doing the exact same thing, the same way over and over reduces their effect). At some point, the process will not feel like it has the same value it once did. Picture an employee walking in each day telling their boss: “This is the best job I’ve ever had!” (at first, the boss smiles and likes hearing it – but after it’s been Hamster-wheeled… the boss will try to avoid talking to this employee)

I know there are some determined hamsters out there that are going to point at the great things they achieve by establishing a good habit, and repeating it until it’s ingrained in their daily routine. I’m not arguing against that (adding new processes/functions is not hamster-ish) and we have to get off ‘our wheel’ to start those habits. But if we don’t review them, and ‘shake it up’ a bit… the monotony will slow down our wheel. Special events, vacations or even changing up the order of what you do each day, will be beneficial.

Just remember… you’re not a hamster!  Get off that wheel!


Written by Todd, what do you guys think? Are we hamsters, dancers, or human?