Shortening the Loop

Guys, have you ever heard of the OODA loop? 

It stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. It was developed by John Boyd.

And it’s taught and practiced in many areas, including the military….However, I didn’t realize it could literally be applied to everything. (There are so many lightbulbs that have turned on in my life…and I often wonder if I’m the only one who didn’t catch on to these things).

And I’ve been working to apply this loop to my own thought patterns and shorten the gap.

One of the goals is to shorten the gap between when it happens(in this case, the way we maybe think or act), when we recognize it, and how we act to change it.

So, say we have a negative thought, the goal is to recognize that we actually did have that thought, and then recognize the time it took for that to happen, and then go, OK, I’m going to decide to do better. By shortening the gap between recognizing the thought and redirecting it, my hope is that I’ll reduce how often those negative thoughts take hold.

And then with sin. Especially when you’re in the formation stages of your relationship with God, it’s about learning what sin is and then recognizing when you do it; sometimes it takes a minute. And once I do recognize that, I work to shorten the time between action and recognition, because it’ll eventually get shorter and shorter.

Recognizing thought patterns and shortening the time spent in that space is the key step in actually making a change in this arena. This leads to a better execution of life with less negativity and fewer sins. Those are some of the goals, right?

This is how you form better thoughts that are rooted in positivity. It takes work.

But, all of a sudden, one day, you’ll recognize that you’re viewing a situation in a completely different light than before implementing this change.