The Power of Repetition

"It's too repetitive."

"Repetition kills the joy of reading."

"Don't repeat the same thing over and over."

"I have said it once, what's the use of repeating?"

"It's not working, why do it every day?"

Have you, too, heard of such things about repetition? But I believe the opposite. I believe that repetition is too powerful to be ignored or called out.

Repetition can help you remember even the things that are too tough to remember and too easy to forget.

Repetition builds trust. When you speak repeatedly about something, you build authority around it. The listener or reader can rely on your knowledge if you know enough about a topic and aren't afraid to repeat it.

My grandmother-in-law and I share more of a storyteller-listener relationship. She loves telling her stories and I love listening to them. But the only ones I remember are those that she has told me repeatedly over the past 6 months. The ones that I can recite to someone else if needed. I can't fully remember those that I have heard only once or twice or even thrice.

We repeat things that we love the most or hate a lot. Repetition makes people remember things about you without really trying to remember it.

My InstaFam and everyone around me knows how much I love stationery, that's because I keep nagging them about my stationery love. Now, they know I love stationery but they also know, I love journals way too much. There's stationery of all kinds, but I speak about journals repeatedly. You see?

Whenever I could not understand a concept and the question seemed it would appear in the exams, I would just mug up the answer and repeat it till I remembered every word of it to paste as it is in the answer sheet. On the other hand, the concepts that I understood were easy to remember after repeating a few times.

Repeat something which can make a difference in the world not till people hear you but till you are tired of hearing yourself repeat it.

It doesn't mean you have to repeat the same thing in the same style. Get creative. Change the way you repeat it. Keep the essence but change the form.

Repetition helps convey messages from the conscious to the subconscious. That's why affirmations and mantras are so powerful. It's just a sentence that you repeat to yourself until it becomes a part of your being and shows up in your reality. Journaling each day has changed my life for good.

Working out or doing yoga one day does not show any results but when repeated over a period of time, the results come out to be wonderful.

Repetition helps to build habits that become hard to break after a point in time. Now, it's up to us whether we form good habits or bad with our repetitive behaviours.

When it comes to writing, I read this writing 'advice' often: 'Don't repeat words.' Well, what if repetition is making it more worthy than boring? What if my readers retain more information through repetition than using a hundred synonyms for the same word?

Make yourself clear and informative rather than a walking thesaurus. Write and speak like you are talking to a fifth-grader. The simplicity that repetition brings is more powerful than fancy words decorating your writings and speeches.

Repeat as often as required.

Takeaways:

1. Don't be afraid of repeating yourself even in writing.

2. Repetition builds trust and reputation.

3. Repetition helps you form habits and make a huge change by repeating a small change every day.

4. Repeating affirmations or mantras can be life-changing.

---

You may get my Book of Infinite Prompts (PDF version) from here: The Book of Infinite Writing Prompts

or from Kindle: