Feeling a bit discombobulated at the moment with your habits and routine? You're not alone, I've been chatting to lots of clients and friends lately about this. Summer definitely has a way of messing up routine. For me, based on the weather and longer light hours, I want to take advantage of what feels like a longer day. I like to be a bit more sporadic and people arrange things last minute, making routine tricky to maintain. We also tend to be in that holiday frame of mind more often, which never tends to bring about the desire for routine.
September brings you that step closer to Autumn and naturally we've been programmed for years to acknowledge September as a time to get back into routine (the back to school feel). If you're feeling like your routine has become out of whack, here's my top three tips to get back into habits this month...

Step 1 - Start small
It can be very tempting when you're wanting to get back into routine, to just do it all at once. The reality is that this isn't sustainable, plus as soon as we experience uncomfortable feelings with our routine, our brain is programmed to avoid this. So instead why not start adding in one small new habit into your routine every one to two weeks. That way, you beat the overwhelm, reduce the chance of making it unpleasant and make it really simple.
Step 2 - Habit stacking
Bringing in something new into your routine can be challenging. For me remembering is something I can struggle with. Whilst alarms work quite well for me at times, it's also the motivation that can be hard. Habit stacking is when you tag a new habit onto an existing habit you do without thinking. So say you drink a coffee each morning without thinking, its a habit that's already established. You could decide that you'll add in your new habit of 2 minutes of mindful breathing, before you coffee each day. You're already programmed to remember that coffee each morning, by adding a reminder (post-it note on the coffee machine or kettle) saying breathe, you now know you need to do your 2 minutes breathing before you have your coffee. In time this helps lead to joining that new habit, with an already established habit of drinking your coffee each day.
Step 3 - Dedicate less time
Yes, I know this sounds a bit odd, but what I mean is dedicate less time at the beginning. Quite often when we start a new routine or habit we think we need to do it perfectly. We decide we're going to do yoga every week, three times. Online from some guru you heard that you have to do 20 minutes a day or it's not worth it. And Karen told you, exercise should be at least 30 minutes per day. So now in your head, you're thinking you have to do 20-30 minutes of yoga or it's really not worth it. But to be completely honest with you, that's complete and utter bullshit. My understanding of exercise, is that anything is better than nothing. And if you were doing no minutes of yoga a week and you managed 5 minutes of yoga three times a week, you'd be doing 15 minutes exercise than before. So you're doing more, which of course is better for you. Rather than aiming to do 20-30minutes and doing it once and finding it was too much. Then it becomes an unpleasant experience and you give up on the habit. So now instead of doing 60minutes of yoga in the month, you've done 20 minutes one week, given up and now hate it and don't want to do it again. Instead of starting with way less time and feeling like you wanted to do more, you've overdone it and ended up created an unpleasant experience for your brain. And let's face it, our brains are programmed to avoid us being in unpleasant or uncomfortable situation.
Feel like you want a bit more 1 to 1 support with getting back into routine, have a peek at my 1 to 1 coaching packages that cost the equivalent of just £3.61 per day (for the 6 month programme).
Comments