Practice Makes Permanent

I have been putting lights on our Christmas tree for 28 years now and have had the same struggle with them every year. This year I decided to start at the bottom and go up the tree. Wow! That was the right decision. Why hadn't I figured that out before? Because practice makes permanent. I suspect that a lot of bad politics and bad religion flows from practicing the same not-so-good thing over and over again. We learned it at some point, but never changed it, even when a lot of data (too many plugs in one plug, struggles with getting the last string of lights into the outlet) suggests we should change our practice. Don't confuse us with the facts, though. We would rather sometimes do poorly than change our minds and our practices. But I must admit that I wished I had learned this way of putting the lights on many years ago.