“YOUR ENERGY IS YOUR SOURCE FOR THE FUTURE.”
Congratulations! You’ve found an exercise that you like; perhaps more than one. Mixing it up is one great way to stay enthusiastic. Now, it is time to examine our habits and consider how to fit them into our life. This section will help you to create a new routine that best suits your personality, schedule, and goals.
What are your everyday routines? Perhaps you shower, get dressed, make some eggs, brush your teeth, and then go to work. Consider writing about your daily routine so that you can see which habits may be extraneous or unproductive.
When I wrote down my daily routine, I was able to decide what needed to be added to the list and what could be removed. Somewhere during the day, there’s bound to be something you can do without, such as TV before bed or a sedentary lunch at your desk. You may want to carve out thirty to sixty minutes every day to exercise or add in meditation time in the morning. Whatever the case may be, establishing a positive routine is a self-investment and a great way to enhance productivity.
Healthy routines give us structure, build forward-moving habits, and create momentum that will carry us through days when we don’t have the strength to carry ourselves. If you’re going through a loss, it is especially important to establish a new routine. Now that your life no longer includes the person or experience that you are missing, you need to fill your life with other opportunities and activities that bring you happiness, grow your confidence, and heal your grief.
Following my divorce, my life and my usual routines were thrown into a state of chaos. I had built my life around another person. My divorce showed just how intertwined and tangled that life had become. When we build our lives around someone else it is like intertwining two strings. They become stronger in places but knotted in others. Once we reach a point where we must separate those strings–those lives–the act of untangling can be agonizing. We find the places where the connections were bad, and it will hurt to pull those apart. Worst of all, we discover where the tangles were good, just not good enough to hold, and those separations will cause the most pain of all.
However, once we’re untangled, we’ll be better for it. Stronger. We’ll patch up the parts made raw where knots used to be in time and through routine. And, in time, should we find a new connection, we can merge our lives in a more healthy way because we will have more independence. We’ll have our routine, present, and a renewed sense of self.
My divorce hit me like a champion boxer working on his kidney punch. I thought my life would never get back on course, but God had greater plans for me. Today, I am happily remarried. She is my best friend, and she brings more light and compassion into the world than I ever knew existed. We have a beautiful life together, but I take joy in knowing that we are both our own strings, tied together yet never tangled.
Following a routine can help you establish priorities, limit procrastination, keep track of goals, and even make you healthier. Today, I have more drive, motivation and passion, which makes achieving my goals easier and more fulfilling. I have more physical and mental energy to make it through my days— even the challenging ones. I am happier and more satisfied with the quality and depth of my life. As motivational speaker Brian Tracy stated, “Good habits are hard to form but easy to live with. Bad habits are easy to form but hard to live with.”
The key is to create consistent patterns that will take you where you want to go in life, maximizing every level possible. Let me offer two nuggets of wisdom to help you find your rhythm.
START THE DAY WITH A MANTRA
Positive thinking helps manage stress and even improves our well-being. Try repeating the following mantra: today will be the best day ever. Or: today will be a great day! Many times, I just quote Psalms 118:24: “This is the day that the LORD has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.”
Every single day, as soon as I get out of bed, I start my day by verbalizing that simple sentence. Yes, even on rough mornings when I feel like the world’s weight is on my shoulders. Why? These words put me in the ideal mindset for the day ahead. What makes a day good or bad isn’t the events that occur, but rather your response to them.
As American entrepreneur Jim Rohn once claimed, “Either you run the day, or the day runs you.” Positive thinking and intentionality can help you to overcome roadblocks and avoid the sense of hopelessness that accompanies mindless habits.
MAKE A DAILY TO-DO LIST
Creating a to-do list is a great way to prepare for the day ahead. (Just ask entrepreneurs like Barbara Corcoran from Shark Tank, Sam Adams founder Jim Koch, and 1-800 FLOWERS’ founder and CEO Jim McCann.) When I plan my day, I usually write down up to six tasks to complete. Crossing off each item can help keep you motivated as you visualize your progress. This works for two reasons. First, it helps me plan my day in a way that allows me to get the most out of it instead of performing random tasks in the hope of moving forward. Second, creating a to-do list keeps me focused. I know what needs to get done and when, which makes accomplishing the task infinitely easier.
Make sure to condense your list into MITs (Most Important Tasks). When you’re able to cross items off this list, you feel inspired to keep going and accomplish even more! Having a healthy routine makes functioning on all three planes of existence — mind, body, and spirit — possible. Though it may seem insignificant, having a to-do list can make you a better person by helping you to see opportunities and to view problems as situations that can be overcome.
