Have you ever felt uncomfortable switching up your daily routine?
When I work with clients living with mental illness, setting up a realistic and healthy routine is important. Many parents live by routines to help teach their kids responsibility. Personally, I live and die by the clock. My client sessions are 50 mins long and I even schedule my blog work by the hour.
Productivity experts would vouch for setting up a routine, but let’s look at these routine errors that could be silently sabotaging your life.
Your Routine Doesn’t Include Self-Care
The common complaint I hear as a self-care blogger is, “I don’t have time for self-care.” You don’t have time because you don’t make time. If you automatically shut it down, you have assigned a negative label to it. Did you know that self-care consists of that paid hour lunch you receive? Self-care can occur on your way to work, while you’re in the shower and while you’re doing the normal things you already dread doing. One of my Pinterest boards includes a shower meditation, where you can envision washing off whatever you need to release for that day. On weekends I play music in the shower to signify a shift from the sleepy Monday-Friday showers. If your routine involves eating lunch at your desk, I would suggest taking your lunch elsewhere. You may surprisingly feel refreshed and ready to conquer the 2nd half of your day!
Your Routine Involves Too Much Multi-Tasking
I sometimes amaze myself at how much housework I can tackle all at once. Does it leave me exhausted at the end? Absolutely! I’m not suggesting taking away the multi-tasking but try to place a limit on it. When I feel overwhelmed between errands, housework and my blog schedule I use the Pomodoro technique. This is also a good tip for anyone with chronic pain. I break my tasks into hourly segments. I sit and blog for one hour. Then I take a break by completing housework for 30 min or 1 hour (depending on how my chronic pain is acting). I dread looking at an action list that involves a mix of all 3 responsibilities. When I break these tasks into hour or 30 min. segments, the tasks feel more realistic. Plus, this gives me a break from sitting or cleaning too long. These active breaks also help my creativity and allow me to put my work to sleep for a minute. Is anyone else a fan of the Pomodoro technique?
Your Routine Doesn’t Include The Important People In Your Life
How often do you get to text or chat with your best friends?
When was the last time you visited with family members or friends who are out of town? If our weekly schedules don’t include time for connections, what are we working so hard for? Click To Tweet Do we feel bad on the holidays because we don’t have the money to visit family members? Could we start saving money or vacation time at work for the holiday we really want? Weekly (and sometimes daily) group texts with my best friends in California are a life saver for me. We even have a Snapchat group list so we can send life updates or encouraging messages to each other.
(Recommended reading: Are You A Bad Friend?)
Personal connections can get lost in our daily hustle. Relationships take work. Our supportive people in our life can ground us, distract us from our daily struggles and remind us of our importance in their lives. Spending time with friends or loved ones (without drama or codependency) can help reduce burnout as well. If work/school/career is burning you out, you need that distraction, encouragement, laughter and connection with others.
Our lives can easily get controlled by the necessity to work, make more money and do that next thing. Auto-pilot is dangerous. Maybe your daughter is tired of playing that same sport every year. Who says you have to run that weekend program or coach that team again? If you keep signing up for the same responsibility with a tinge of resentment, that’s telling you something.
Spending quality time with quality people and adding self-care can only bring necessary benefits to your life. They shouldn’t be withdrawing from your valuable time but depositing instead.
Put the control back into your life, replace dreadful activities with elements of self-care and bring back that sense of belonging!
How has your routine sabotaged your life?
