Habits and routines are something that I struggle with. Creating and maintaining them is a huge challenge for me. Growing up I thought there must be something wrong with me. Everyone else seemed to be able to do this without issue. Meanwhile, waking up and getting moving and sticking to good habits felt like a new mountain every day. There have been times when I have been able to do this and it has oddly been in times of high stress—particularly when I had a lot of work or school deadlines. Unfortunately, it was very easy for me to abandon the habits or routines and then felt impossible to restart. Building a routine just seemed impossible.
Now that I have been diagnosed with ADHD (link post) I realize that there was nothing wrong with me. It’s just that my brain works a little different and requires a bit of a different training regime. I have spent a lot of time in therapy talking about how much I have struggled over the past year. Between sickness, some major changes at work, and some general burnout, I have really had a hard time figuring out what routine looks like in this phase of my life.
I now understand that building a routine that works for me is complicated. There are a lot of things that have held me back in the past. However, I am finally starting to understand how my brain works and how I can start to work through those concepts that have prevented me from being successful. I am challenging myself to grow this space and maybe even write a book. Hopefully these challenges help spur me out of bed each day.
I want to bring you along with me as I try to build routines, rituals, and habits that support cultivating the best version of myself over the next eight weeks. Below are my goals, how I plan to achieve them, and how I’ll be tracking and checking in!
The Goals
- Wake up before 7:30 every morning.
- Take pilates class twice a week.
- Average 5000 to 8000 steps per day.
- Join InFlow daily planning call every day at 8:30 AM.
- Write at least 1000 words every day (book or blog).
- Sleep at least 7 hours each night.
- Read 10 pages of non-fiction per day.
- Post on the blog at least twice per week.
- Journal 3-5 times per week.
- Spend at least 2 hours in a coffeeshop on weekends.
- Only get take out once per week.
- Meal plan and grocery shop on Fridays.
I am a big fan of building some personal rituals into my routines. I’ll write more about this in another post, but the long and short of it is, I want to create “rituals” out of ordinary tasks. This means that the task becomes almost holy to me. In doing this, I create boundaries around that ritual and say no to things that are going to interfere with it.
The Rituals
- Morning coffee
- Morning writing
- Weekend self care
- Evening ritual
I’ll be tracking my completion of the habits in Notion. I have set up a page that is dedicated to this tracking. I am also planning to journal and take photos as I complete and accomplish these goals. I think romanticizing these goals may be helpful. The hope is that by romanticizing these things, I will be more likely to accomplish my goals and delve into my rituals. I’ll write more in the coming weeks on how I have romanticized things, how I have created rituals from the every day, and how successful I have been. Hopefully this is the start of me building a routine that supports the life I want to cultivate.
