InjuI was someone who published one blog post every week for 30+ weeks straight. It was hard to maintain a routine. Writing is perhaps one of the hardest things for everyone to do. That’s why there aren’t enough of us expressing our thoughts. And yet I haven’t written a word for days together. It’s very hard to be consistent especially when it comes to doing stuff I like, leaving no hope for things I don’t like or things I have to do.
But those 30 weeks where I published blog posts, hit the workout mat every day, cooked and ate good food, spent quality time with friends and family and laughed a lot were some of my best and happy days. I have been trying to recreate those days for a while now but I haven’t been able to do it.
I gave myself many reasons. Being busy with work, I am just starting a new job, I just accomplished so much and so on. My mind always rationalizes stuff. So typical of the human brain to do it. And things started falling apart. First was my writing, then my workouts, and my eating habits. I realized this only by looking back but all of this resulted in poor decision making as well. I was recently interacting with a mentor of mine. He was taking stock of how I felt about various aspects of my life ranging from work to personal relationships. It didn’t take much time to figure out that my lack of routine has resulted in a downward spiral in all parts of my life. Everything fell apart.
Building The Routine- Brick By Brick!
Once I realized the importance of routine and its impact on all areas of my life, I started rebuilding it. This time with a change though. One of the centrepieces of this new approach is “Non-Zero Days”. This means to try and avoid Zero days at any cost. Zero days are days when I do nothing about my routine. I want to avoid this at any cost.
But I am a human and I get tired some days. I get to make excuses. But not for more than one day. So the second rule of this new approach is to forgive me for any zero-day but not let it spill into the next day. Essentially, forgive me for one Zero-day but be hard enough to not repeat it for two days straight.
What Am I Focusing On
With the realization from my discussion with the mentor, I understood the WHY behind having and maintaining a routine. The next step was to define the WHAT of this routine. I picked three key areas of my life, physical health, mental health and my relationships. I didn’t focus on my financial health much because it was already in good shape.
To improve my physical health, I started monitoring my weight, stopped relying excessively on weekend treks to burn off the fat, started monitoring what I eat and continued working out.
As a next step, I started actively writing in my diary again to reflect on my day(s). It’s not a compulsion to do this every day but whenever an extremity occurs in my behaviour, I write it down. Angry? Sad? Happy? Gloomy? I write it all down and if possible I dive deep into why they may have occurred. I am hoping this in addition to meditation (am still trying to inculcate this habit actively) will help me improve my mental health.
I’ve also realized the importance of relationships in life. Humans are social animals. We can’t live without interacting with people for long. So I am figuring out ways to be in touch with my people. I was one of those people who strived to be independent but I am slowly realizing that is not sustainable. It’s still early days but I am figuring out ways to keep in touch with my people without making it an awkward interaction. Leaving you with this quote below which sums up my views on the importance of routine.
When you don’t treat yourself well enough, everything seems toxic.
Inju
That’s all I had to share today. Thanks for sticking through till the end.
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Thanks. Talk to you soon.
Inju