In the past you have heard me speak to the benefits of routines and even habits as being especially helpful to scale your lifestyle. I have found that things get increasingly easier to perform as they become more habitual and ingrained into my lifestyle.
Four years ago – I did not have the time to workout daily. I barely did any cardio in a week. Now if I do not lift on a day, I feel it the next day. Cardio is very similar. My lifestyle is now imbued with physicality each and everyday. The payoffs are there now on a daily basis.
Three years ago when I started running more – I was sore for days after a hard run. I was the guy that would go out and rip 4 miles as hard as possible to ‘make up for lost time.’ The pressure to perform...
Two years ago when I started lifting more – I was constantly sore for a solid 6 months after I returned to throwing around iron. I was maxing out like crazy each week in the hopes of burying a bunch of emotional baggage and in the hopes of regaining my form from my early 20’s. Now I know that a 7 out of 10 is more valuable when I am consistently grinding down at the gym.
Today, the routine and habits are there to power me up. I have chosen many of the routines in my life. Lifting being a big one.
However, routines and habits are meant to be broken from time to time. In the past week – I went a whopping 5 days without lifting.
I skipped cardio in the traditional sense. Definitely got my cardio in creative ways though.
I decided to give my body a full on rest from physical exertion at the gym.
Now a few months ago, I would have been demoralized by my apparent lack of discipline. My streak of 13 days straight in the gym got busted all to hell. Instead, I took a long weekend sabbatical, and absolutely unplugged from the daily routines – aside from my writing for this project – although I did skip a day or two – thanks to my buffer of material previously authored.
The routines and habits are helpful so long as they remain helpful.
They become imprisoning when they are your default approach to things. If you use the routine of your life as a shield from doing something new or uncomfortable – even though you know it would be a good thing for you – the routine has become a limiting factor for your growth.
I have a ton of commitments and obligations across many Dimensions of Life, and yes sometimes those obligations preclude me from doing something that would benefit me. Sometimes I use them as a way to avoid doing something that would be helpful in the short term or even in the long term.
This is a weak approach to getting out there.
I know when it happens for myself, and I can usually sense when it is happening in others as well. The cringy tightening feeling in my stomach when I say ‘ I cannot because of X’ is the same feeling I usually have when I am on the receiving end of someone close to me saying ‘I wish I could but….’
Both parties know that the next best thing to do is to be polite about it. The white lie is accepted and everyone moves on – knowing that it really is a priority and limiting belief equation on the part of the person invoking the excuse. Many times – the routine of family life and of bullshit obligations are used to avoid things that may be uncomfortable or even worse – conflict inducing. Oh my…
Here’s the challenge to you – do something new this week. Don’t think about it. Don’t dream about it. Get out of your head and hit it.
Do you normally go to the gym every day?? Skip it for three days and use the time instead to do something creative during that time.
Do you normally work right through lunch everyday at work? Skip lunch and go for a walk outside and fast for the day.
Do you normally get to bed by 9pm at night to be charged up for the next day? Go crazy and stay up until 1am watching a double feature of an old movie you love and a new movie that just came out.
Do you normally stay in on a Tuesday night and do household chores? Let the dishes pile up and get out to see an acoustic set at a nearby bar.
Give yourself permission to try something out of your ordinary.
Here’s the point – if you find yourself and your loved ones are grooved into well worn patterns. Break that shit.
Take a risk and do something totally unexpected and without warning. You will find that those around you will become ever more attracted to what you are doing. In a romantic context – you have to keep things interesting, God forbid either partner gets accustomed to certain expectations and boredom sets in. This is true of any facet of your life by the way…
Use your habits and routines as a mechanism to improve yourself, and as a way to build upon them to increase variability in other parts of your life. And break them hard from time to time to reset.
Back to the regret that I would foist onto myself – historically – for missing more than 1 day at the gym in a given week. I was able to take the time off without a care, as I had already put the consistent work in, and I had surged a few personal records at the gym leading into my intended time away. I deliberately leaned into my break, knowing that I would be taking a few days off to recover in my body and in my spirit for a few days.
Now when I returned to my routine at my local gym yesterday, those first couple sets on the bench were very strange. My body was really rattled with the movements I had done a thousand times already this year – literally. After my second set, I relaxed and continued to grind through the workout – actually getting stronger as I went.
The break made the lifting that I did for the first time in a week – fresh again. I was stronger at the end of it, and I had felt better after lifting than I can remember in quite awhile.
Today, I’m going to go kill it as soon as I am done writing this article, and you know what?
I am so excited to hit those weights, because of the the time off. Deliberate variability balanced against your routines/habits will keep you better engaged, more attractive, and better positioned for increasing more habit building over time.
Having zero variability makes you vague image of what you were born to be. In a word – you become a boring habit yourself.
Do not be a slave to your routine.
Own it, and then break it when you choose to do so, deliberately. Especially if we both know that you could have some fun for yourself by doing so.