The Strange Insanity Of Being Addicted To Our Patterns

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”

This quote is often attributed to Einstein, but it actually comes from a novel by Rita Mae Brown.

Repetition isn’t the problem. It’s actually how we learn.

We practice our craft, repeat skills, and rehearse behaviors so they’re available when it matters most. That kind of repetition builds capacity and talent.

Today, I want to discuss a different kind of repetition. The kind that keeps us stuck.

It’s the repetition of personality patterns: the automatic ways we interpret situations, manage emotions, protect ourselves, and relate to others. These patterns were formed a long time ago and reinforced repeatedly, each time they helped us feel safer or better under stress.

What makes them so compelling is that they work very well in the short term, even though they often create problems in the long term.

We find comfort in predictability. Our nervous systems often prefer a known frustration to an unknown possibility. So we repeat behaviors because something in us has become attached to the short-term benefits of the pattern.

I knew this cycle well. For years, I brought the same ineffective ways of relating into very different relationships - professional and personal - while hoping for deeper connection and more fulfillment. What I got was a familiar set of dynamics, over and over again. The problem wasn’t goodwill or effort, it was that I was operating on autopilot and didn’t even know it.

With self-compassion, I can say that it was quite insane.

Real change began when I could finally see the pattern itself and the deeper logic driving it.

For me, the key that unlocked the whole structure was the Enneagram.

The Enneagram exposes underlying motivations, mental, emotional, and behavioral strategies, and early adaptations that define how we perceive reality and respond to it. It offers a precise map of where we’re stuck and what reinforces the loop. It shines a laser-sharp light on the very patterns we’re most likely to be blind to. It also shows our innate strengths - capacities that we can engage intentionally in service of our inner work.

That depth matters because when we try to change behavior without understanding the engine beneath it, we often recreate the same pattern in a slightly different form and wonder why we get the same unfortunate results.

The investment of learning to recognize and disengage from my own patterns paid off. It returned choice - in how I listen, how I respond, and whether I stay merged with an old strategy or step into something new.

That’s what finally stopped the insanity for me.

Where in your professional or personal life might you be repeating a pattern not because it’s effective, but because it’s automatic? And what might become possible if you had more freedom there?