Your routines make up your day-to-day activities. They make you who are. And if that is the case, then what they are ultimately doing for you matters.
In other words, are your routines helping or hurting you?
If your routines are helping you, then they are adding to your life, making things easier, smoother, clearer, etc.
For example, if you have a routine of walking for 45 minutes a day during the week, then you are helping yourself because walking is beneficial.
If your routines are hurting you, then they are detracting from your life, making things harder, rougher, obscure, etc.
For example, if you have a routine of watching TV or Social Media for 45 minutes a day during the week, then you are hurting yourself because while watching TV might be a nice escape or something to calm you down, if it becomes a routine it can lead to cognitive decline.
Granted, if you want to watch some TV and browse some social media, have at it. As they say with all things, moderation is key. But if it becomes a routine, then it becomes part of your life, and thus it becomes who you are.
Does It Hurt or Help?
Getting up, moving, and walking outside engages your body, your senses, and gets you up and going. It’s a proactive thing, and thus it helps you in many ways, even if your mind or emotions or attitude tells you it’s hard
Watching TV, usually, involves sitting, being passive, and doesn’t typically engage your mind or body, nor is it physically beneficial like exercise is.
Essentially, you want to think about how your routines are affecting your overall physical, mental, and emotional health — i.e., if they are helping or hurting you.
I’m not necessarily telling you what to do, but just helping you realize that what you do with your day ultimately hurts or helps.
Some helpful routines are things you do ahead of time, like setting your alarm clock to wake you up up so you can get to work on time. Then again, you might want to dive into why you are so tired and need an alarm clock to wake you up — but that’s me just playing devil’s advocate.
Remember: Your routines define who you are, what you think about, and what you ultimate do. And thus it’s a good idea to think about how they are helping or hurting you, and if it is the latter, making adjustments accordingly to lean toward more helpful routines.
Some Examples
Your routines can include your actions, thoughts, or even emotions. They are your daily behaviors, and may include things like:
- When you brush your teeth.
- Thoughts you have when you first get up / go to bed.
- When, how, and for how long you work out.
- When you walk your dog or play with your cat.
- When you think about giving into that delicious iced mocha and how doing that too much has a negative impact on your wallet ;).
Which Are They?
So, if you were to take a moment to look at your daily routines as a whole, would you say they are helpful or hurtful?
Again, when I say helpful, I mean things that add to your life, that benefit you, that help you. For example, maybe watching TV is helpful to you. If so, good on you. Enjoy the heck outta that routine.
Some people may agree that watching too much TV is hurtful, while others may say it rots your brain. If the latter is the case, then it’s time to change it.
So, how do you do that? Replace it with something else.
For example, I believe watching too much TV is hurtful, while reading is helpful. I also know that walking is beneficial to my mental, emotional, and physical well-being. So I combine the two by popping on an audio book on my old-school Ipod Nano (yes, I still have one that works), and go for a walk while listening to an entertaining story.
That’s what I do, though. And that’s how I define hurtful and helpful. But what do you do?
If it helps (heh, see what I did there?), let me define what I mean by helpful and hurtful in more detail, plus provide some more examples.
Helpful Versus Hurtful
If something is helpful, then it will produce things like:
- Provide feelings of uplift (you know, those things that make you feel warm and fuzzy inside, smile and laugh, and just feel nice?).
- Make you feel more inspired, pumped-up, and full of positive energy, thus leading you to be more upbeat and willing to get up and get going.
- Providing a feeling of general contentment in that things are being done in a timely and smooth manner (who doesn’t want that?).
See a pattern here? Helpful things will act like a Slip ‘N Slide that has plenty of water on it, and when you run and dive toward it, you slip and slide down to the end in an entertaining and smooth manner like this dude:
If something is hurtful, then it will produce things like:
- Increased stress, pressure, anxiety, and depression.
- Feeling as if you don’t know what you’re doing.
- A sluggish and overworked attitude because what you are doing is going nowhere, thus leading to deadlines being missed.
- An indefinite state of tiredness that must be satiated with constant caffeine.
With hurtful things things, the Slip ‘N Slide that was once enjoyable and slippery fun is instead missing necessary water, and thus not slip worthy, leading to rashes and burns, or maybe even a jagged rock underneath that you hit, or… this:
In the end, whether your routines are helpful or hurtful is ultimately up to you. But if they happen to be more hurtful, you can change them up, switch them out, and replace them with more helpful routines.
What To Do?
You have to find what works for you.
Whether it involves a small change or a big one, the optimal place to start is doing what works for you. For me, I like to walk, and I like to listen to audio books, so combining the two works really well for me, and thus, makes walking easier and natural (i.e., helpful).
I have also always wanted to write articles and post them somewhere and never done it. I decided that was hurtful to me, because I was not doing what I really wanted. And what I really wanted to do was write because I had something to say.
I let external things prevent me from doing that writing (like fear of failure of not being “good enough”), which was hurtful.
So I started with defining where I wanted to go — my outcome or goal:
To write and post one article a week on Medium every Sunday.
Once I had that, I wrote a plan of action, set my parameters, and got to work — all things that were helpful, by the way.
But Change is Hard
I know, I know. Sometimes trying something new, or replacing a hurtful thing with a helpful thing is hard. I get it.
But it doesn’t have to be.
You don’t have to force it. Don’t make this harder than it has to be, because then it will, ironically, turn into something hurtful.
The goal is to help yourself. So, if your focus is on change is hard, then you will ultimately be hurting yourself. Instead, change because you want to. Focus on that, and you will be helping yourself in the end.
I mean even “God helps those that help themselves.”
Again, doing something new, or helpful, may be a little weird, and feel off, because you will need to change things a bit, but it doesn’t have to be drastic or hard or overbearing.
For example, if you want to exercise, and you find yourself complaining about your weight, your mental health, this and that, and never really doing anything about it, then staying in that place of hurt and pain and feeling of hopelessness and helplessness won’t do much for you, except maybe hurt you more, because you’re playing a game of tug of war with yourself.
And no one wants to do that.
If you truly can’t change your routines, try to put things in place that don’t take the time you don’t have. For example, you could park a little father than where you normally park, thus leading you to adding some walking into your day.
Or, instead of using your break to sit and scroll social media, you could take five minutes and walk around.
Instead of taking the elevator or escalator, make a conscious choice to take the stairs. I know, I know, that’s soooo hard when your routine is not to do that, but it’s just an idea, and something to think about, and perhaps, helpful. ;)
What Is Your Day Filled With?
In the end, take a look at your day and figure out if what you are doing is helpful or hurtful. If you feel like your days are filled with more hurtful things, figure out do more helpful things.
Declare what those new helpful things will be:
- “I will take a walk around the block after work tomorrow.”
- “I will read an article on the benefits of walking tomorrow after work.”
- “I will take the stairs today at work, instead of the elevator.”
- “At the end of the night, instead of watching TV, I’m going to crack open a book and read for 10 minutes.”
Again, this doesn’t have to be huge. It can be small. You can take the stairs up one level, then elevator the rest, and go from there.
In the end, the goal is to have a day that is filled with helpful routines, not hurtful ones. Because then, you as a whole, will be better off for it.
Cheers,
Gentleman JSRD