Routine Creation

I actually looked forward to today for maybe a month. It was mainly because today was the first Monday that I could finally get back to my old routine. Last week didn't count because of the holiday and the week before I was still on summer hours at the store.

Today I looked forward to having a long workout in the morning. This included an hour walk, beginning a month-long intemediate pole challenge (1 of 3, so I really have 3 months of pole challenges ahead of me), finishing with some stretching.

If I'm on my game, I get 5 days in a row of this, this week before I work early on Saturday. With this schedule, I frontload all of this week's workout tasks and I'll more easily stay on track to my goals. I've been there enough to know it works, and I'm ready to race to it.

How many of you out there saw today like that too? Maybe for different reasons, but at least that today was the start of "getting back to normal" somehow?

I feel like those are the best days to start something new for routines and habits. Like the first Monday after New Year's, like the beginning of April or May for getting active outside.

Always a Monday that isn't a holiday. Those are the best.

Anyone else with me on that?

Aw. Today would have been a good day to start a 5-Day Challenge. Too bad I hadn't thought of that sooner. That's okay, I'll figure out a new plan for that.

So where does this thinking come from? Mondays specifically give you 5 workdays (if you follow the traditional workweek) to implement routines and healthy habits into routines before the routine changes for the weekend.

Ideally, you shouldn't really change anything habits-wise about your routine for the weekend. Realistically, we're human, so some aspects are going to change anyway.

Say it was last week, where Labor Day was on Monday. The "week" started on Tuesday and that would leave you "only about a half week" to implement something new.

That doesn't feel like a statement that would drive us, right?

Where I'm going with this is that success, whether it has to do with weight loss, other health goals, and really anything that we know we need to work on with ourselves, there's a lot of language that we use to either push us forward or talk us out of it.

Using language that makes something important look less significant, like "Meh, Monday was a waste, Tuesday to start gives me less time, I'll just wait until next week..." That made us lose a week.

So wait, didn't I just admit to doing exactly that?

Yup.

Did it mean I threw last week?

Nope.

6/7 days I ate healthy. I really wanted Don Juan's to celebrate on Saturday. lol.

I practiced bellydance on 4 days because... well, the show was a priority for sure. I wasn't going to start a pole challenge until after. That made more sense.

And I only had alcohol on Friday and Saturday. Go me. Still way better than where I was this time last year.

I tracked my food 2/7 days. There's a thing I can do better this week.

All things considered with my routine- that was a success. I accept it, am satisfied with it, and used it as leverage to add back in the new habits for this week.

And I absolutely killed the workout this morning, am going to track my food each day, and do even better because a change back into my more comfortable routine feeds me successful vibes.

Success with our health, no matter what we want, what are goals are, happens when we build the habits slowly and add them in gradually.

Too much too fast makes us uncomfortable and we begin to tell ourselves things to try to talk ourselves out of it all.

Guaranteed if that sounds like you, you aren't alone here.

Let me help even more. A couple weeks ago I got my podcast set up. It's appropriately named PAFE-Cast and is on several major platforms like Spotify, Apple, Google, Breaker, Castbox, Pocket, RadioPublic, and more.

Sure, there might be episodes on tips for healthy habits, but it's really going to focus on the mindset work everyone needs to stick with it.

You can have all the best tips in the world, but if it feels impossible to implement them, then nothing is going to work.

So let's all get to work. Let's make today awesome, this week productive, and pick a habit to start working on today! After all, if you aren't growing, you're dying.