What to do when your Habits & Routines are NOT Working

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Can we really boil the best, most important ingredient to habit settings and routines down to one thing?

I wanted to make sure that, in writing this, I believed what I wrote. That this is the most important thing. That I wasn’t oversimplifying or dumbing things down in an effort to make what I’m about to say true. And I don’t believe I am.

The singe most step in superpowering your habits and routines? It’s awareness.

it’s as simple and as complicated as that: awareness.

If there’s one thing I think we need to talk about more when it comes to habits and routines it’s awareness. I’m all for habit stacking, temptation bundling and all the other guru tips and tricks that are out there when it comes to these things, but—in my opinion—the ONLY thing we need to worry about is awareness.

Let me explain…

my anecdotal evidence

I was brainstorming all the times in my life when awareness helped me make a habit or a routine stick and this was one of the first ones I came up with.

Last year, I was doing #75Hard. I’ve expressed my thoughts about #75Hard here and the name in and of itself should give it away: #75Hard is hustle culture in exercise form. But last summer when I was doing it, I came to realize more and more some of my natural tendencies. For example, it was really hard to motivate myself to get out of the House at the end of the day, especially after a really long workday or day of business tasks.

Yet, I had that nagging outdoor workout that I constantly had to “fit in.” So, I had a moment of reflection: “how can I fit this in but where it doesn’t conflict with this fundamental desire to not leave the house at the end of the day?” The answer seemed so obvious: just do your outdoor workout in the morning!

And yet, it took me over 1/2 of the way through my #75Hard experience for me to make that switch.

I think sometimes we get in our heads that we just need to be disciplined. Just show up. Just do the thing. Who cares if it’s hard? Just do it. But, my approach in recent years for a lot of things is, if it’s hard, how can we minimize that resistance? What can we change to make it less hard? And that’s where the awareness piece comes in.

After I switched to doing walks in the morning, it made all the difference in the world because I realized that I preferred walking in the morning. It actually felt rejuvenating, put me on track for my day, etc. I preferred the fact that there were fewer people out and I preferred the fact that it was cooler and I wasn’t as tired. That awareness helped me get through 75 Hard and do it in a way that didn’t feel so grueling…

Here’s another example. A non-exercise one at that: my morning routines.

I’ve done so many iterations of morning routine blogs, podcasts, and YouTubes that I’ve honestly lost track. This literally goes back to 2017 when I first did the Miracle Morning. But recently my morning routines have been a struggle again. I didn’t like that I was skipping out on things that were important for me to incorporate. I didn’t like that my work days were seemingly getting longer just because I felt compelled to start working as soon as I sat in my chair.

So, I journaled on it. How did I feel in various different parts of my morning routine? What felt natural and easy? Where did I feel resistance? What wasn’t working? And I had a big realization…

I realized that once I sit down at my desk to journal, it’s difficult to pull myself away. Sitting down at my desk to journal feels like a mental switch into work mode for the day even if I haven’t actually started working yet. It doesn’t help that I had “check email” in my morning check-in (pre-journaling at that), which was also switching me into work mode before I actually wanted to be switched. So, I made some changes.

Instead of insisting to myself that I needed to journal after I meditate, I decided that all of the other things I wanted to incorporate into my morning had to happen before my butt hit the desk chair. If I wanted to stretch or workout that morning, it needed to happen before I journaled. If I wanted to go for a walk, it needed to happen before that.

I also started keeping track of the mornings that just felt perfect.

As I write this, yesterday was one of those. I woke up easily. I read first thing, which is another change I made because meditating immediately after I woke up meant that I tended to just fall back asleep on the meditation cushion. Then, I changed into workout clothes and climbed on my meditation cushion. After meditation, I put on a YouTube video and stretched for about 15 minutes. Then, I got on my computer (because this was a no-workout morning). I did some self-therapy for about 20-30 minutes before looking through my to-dos, roughly mapping out my schedule before joining my Friday morning coworking sessions and getting to work for the day.

Making that note of a morning routine that felt amazing allowed me to more intentionally designing a morning routine that fills me up.

I can’t say that this will always be my morning routine but, beauty of awareness as a focus is that it is constantly allowing and encouraging you to adapt your habits and routines to what you need simply by recognizing when you’re resisting parts (or the entirety) of your habit or routine. Once we can identify that that resistance exists, we can ask ourselves where it’s coming from and what we might try to change it. We may not get it right the first time, but that’s fricken okay. The former scientist in me always encourages thinking of it like an experiment. Your experiment likely won’t be perfect the first time. That’s okay! We just make a modification and run the experiment again. No harm. No foul.

How do we improve our awareness?

• Meditation.

• Verbal or mental processing. i.e. writing in a journal or talking it out to someone.

• Have others help you. A therapist, significant other, friend, coworker, coach, etc.

• Track your thoughts, emotions, or moods.

• Take personality assessments. Don’t get too caught up in the results, but they can help you understand aspects of yourself a little more.

What do you think?
Drop a comment below!