Start With Routines
Blog At A Glance:
- Food For Thought
- What are routines?
- 3-steps to create a routine
- How to stick to your routines
Food For Thought
"Your future is found in your daily routine. Successful people do daily what others do occasionally." – Paula White
What is one thing that you can start doing daily, instead of occasionally, to get you closer to the person you want to be?
What are routines?
Routines are a set of intentional actions done in sequence to get you to a specific outcome. Whether that is a state of mental or physical readiness or feeling how you would want to be feeling emotionally.
Take, for example, your morning routine. Your goal might be to feel energized and prepared for the day ahead. You start by going to the bathroom, then you turn on your favorite tunes, brush, shower, and get dressed. Finally, you make a smoothie for breakfast. Each intentional action flows into the next to finally lead you to the feeling of readiness that you were hoping for.
With consistency, routines become a tool that, in any situation, can shape how you feel, think, and act. If you take advantage of it, you can approach any situation with the mindset you want.
Just like a map helps you get from point A to point B. Routines help you get from where you are to whatever mental state you want to be in. Much like a road trip, before you can get started, you need to define your end goal and your starting point and plan the route to get there.
3 Steps To Create A Routine
- What is the end goal?
Before you can start to build a routine, first decide what you want to achieve. What mental or emotional state do you want to be in? Do you want to feel confident? Excited? Calm and present? Take, for example, two individuals. One is preparing for a teaching presentation in front of his peer. The other is about to step onto the rugby field against a rival. Each requires the individual to be in a different mental state. Knowing your end goal will guide you as you set up your routine.
- What is your starting point?
Now that you know where you want to end up, define where you are starting out. Does your routine begin at the start of the day, or 30 minutes before the its “showtime”. How are you feeling at the start of this routine? Are you calm, scatterbrained, unfocused? Understanding your starting point will help you become more aware of the gap that lies between where you are now and where you want to be. Think of creating the routine building the bridge between these two points.
- Chart the path
This is the fun part! You get to design your routine—a set of actions that are completely within your control to help you reach your goal. Control is key! When your routine is built around actions you can control, it fosters a sense of stability and confidence. Therefore, no matter what is going on around you, the routine is the one thing that you can rely on every time to get you to the mental state you want to be in.
How to stick to routines?
- Persistence
“A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success.” - Elbert Hubbard
All good things take time, and progress may feel invisible at first. But with persistence, change happens. How you do one thing is how you do everything—if you don’t practice your routine under pressure, you won’t use it when it counts. Repetition is key; train your routine until it becomes second nature in high-stress moments.
- Think like a scientist
In the path to creating the perfect routine, you will have to adjust your trajectory a few times. Learn to think like a scientist and experiment with your routine. Some actions may not work as well as expected. Rather than getting frustrated by the outcome, learn to step back and view it with objective curiosity. Assess what worked and what didn’t, and then adjust accordingly.
Your routine may not be perfect right off the bat, and that will make it hard to stick to. However, with persistence, practice, and viewing obstacles like a scientist, you will find it easier to stick to these new routines.
