I've always been a very disciplined woman. Maybe it was all the time I spent playing elite level sports, but even now that that period of my life is over I still thrive with strict routines. They're how I make sure that I have all the time and energy I need to be the mother, homeschooling parent and business woman that I want to be.

And if I'm being really honest with myself, a big reason why I make sure I always stick to those routines is becaus I'm afraid of what might happen if I don't. They feel like the glue that's holding my life together.

Well, I don't tolerate fear; I spent too long living in abject terror to live with that nonsense anymore. So any time I find myself feeling afraid of anything, I want to dive straight to the bottom of it, find its source and get rid of it immediately.

And last weekend my daughters gave me an opportunity to do that, and I learned an important lesson about how valuable it can be to break ALL of your patterns from time to time … even the ones you’re enjoying, the ones you believe are beneficial to you.

And that's true because all patterns have an addictive quality to them, which means we naturally feel compelled to repeat them, and all patterns are based on the past, which means they’re formed around who you used to be, or who you used to want to be and not on who you are now or who you want to be now.

So when you look at all of this together, you can see that all it takes for a “good” pattern to become “bad” is for it to be operating outside of your conscious awareness for too long of a period of time.