Are your habits hurting you?
I’ve been thinking about routines lately, and it feels like Friday is a great time to reflect. I spend a lot of time around high-achievers and perfectionists (hi, I am one), and notice that something we all have in common is a routine. It’s easy to understand why the habits that make up our routines are so important to our health. They eliminate the need for constant decision-making, keep us accountable, help us provide for our families, and the list goes on. Routines can be an incredible instrument for elevating our overall wellness.
But when these seemingly good habits begin to rule our lives, they can take a toll. I know this because I’ve been there. I thrive with a routine, love my to-do lists, and feel accomplished after doing specific things. My routine was developed with good intentions -- bringing about efficiency, balance, and wellness -- but about eight years ago I found myself addicted to the habits I had formed. I had to work out, be able to access food that didn’t make me sick (a lot of this happened when I was diagnosed with Celiac), get a certain amount of work done, see my friends, but also get alone time. It got to the point where I would rather do my routine activities than go for an impromptu brunch with friends, or I would get anxiety about traveling somewhere because I might not have control of my routine while away from home. I was actually MISSING OUT on the things in life that my routine was supposed to cultivate. I was missing the whole point. It was disruptive, to say the very least, and while I could and did find a million excuses why it wasn’t actually an issue, I truly believe it impeded my happiness and prevented growth.
Today, I still love a good routine, but I’m not wedded to it, and in fact I derive joy out of changing things up. But I look around and see so many people on autopilot, unable to identify that the very things they think are contributing to their health are in fact putting their body and mind under immense stress.
Perfectionism & Routines
Ask yourself this: If I took away your routine tomorrow (your regular food, your workout, your work schedule, simple habits you’ve created), would you panic? And, most importantly, how would you feel about yourself at the end of the day having not gotten in your workout or your vegetables, bought the groceries, unloaded the dishwasher, finished your work, checked off your to-do list? What about if took away your routine for a week?
Yes, I too hate a sink full of dishes or not being able to find any spoons because they’re all in the dishwasher. But stick with me here. Habits rarely start out with ill intentions. In fact, quite the opposite. Most of us have built routines under the guise of improving our lives, optimizing our health, ensuring productivity, and maximizing our ability to achieve a certain definition of perfection. Perfectionists love routines. We can fine-tune our schedule and our activities such that we meet our own expectations and feel content. Once we’ve gotten that down to a science, we keep repeating it, day after day, finding comfort in the fact that we’ve already measured the results and know what to expect.
So what happens when the comfort we find in our routine prevents us from making positive adaptations? What happens when our habits become unhealthy? And how do we dig ourselves out?
Where we go wrong:
I believe it’s when we get obsessed with living our routine day in and day out, addicted to checking off those boxes, and paralyzed if we can’t. It’s the point at which we rely so heavily on it that we become blind and desensitized to how we actually feel on any given day. Eliminating our ability to self-reflect means we start harming our mental health, which can ultimately impact our physical health. If we can’t hit the pause button or break from our routine without feeling guilt and shame, we’ve put ourselves in a tough spot -- right smack dab in the middle of my favorite Einstein quote:
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”.
Are you on autopilot, and are you getting the results you want?
So to extrapolate a bit on that quote, I would challenge you to ask if you’re happy, given the routine you have in place. Do you feel fulfilled at the end of the day, and do you approach yourself with compassion and acceptance? Do you have a sense of peace, and are you finding moments of joy throughout the day? Seriously, think about it. My guess is that most of us would have to admit that no, we don’t feel 100% satisfied (shout-out to my perfectionists again). And that’s not wrong. But what IS wrong is refusing to adapt when we know that life is constantly evolving, and we are constantly changing. But yet we are terrified to break from our routine. Why? Probably because even if we know things have the potential to get better, we fear things getting worse. So we keep doing the same thing, and in fact, we often keep doing more of it. More work, more exercise, more (fill in the blank). If I’m only achieving this with the amount I’m doing now, then I should do more to achieve more. Because if some is good, more is better, right? No, my dear friends. That’s a sure fire way to undermine your own health, and at the very least, stunt your growth.
I’m getting slightly side-tracked here, but I really see this all being intricately related. Our perfectionism, our determination to be disciplined, it can make us unhealthy in a multitude of ways. And it’s hard to identify it is yourself if you’re in constant “go-mode” -- going through the motions without taking the time to think about why.
Alright, let’s wrap this baby up.
Take a hard look at the routine you’ve developed and answer these questions:
Why do you follow this routine?
What do you want it to achieve?
Is it serving you in that way?
Are you willing to change it, or are you clinging to it for comfort and support?
Are you doing the same thing day in and day out, expecting something to change?
Is your routine actually disrupting different areas of your life and the balance between work, play, and relationships? (think: family, sleep and rest, socializing, self-care practices, mental health, stress)
Then, either on your own or by enlisting some support, start experimenting with breaking your routine once in a while. Every now and then, take a deliberate pause and see what might need some tweaking. Shake things up, and make conscious decisions about what could serve you better. We will forever be changing, as will the proportional balance of things, so our routines should as well. I find balance to be elusive, and really depends on how we define it for ourselves, but if we can keep an open mind about what that balance is at any given moment in our lives, perhaps our habits can follow suit.