Episode 85 – How routines can help to structure healing

Hello loves, 

Today I want to chat about how routines can help to structure healing. Having routines and structure when healing from grief or a chronic illness are great for success because they set you up that way. Your brain loves routine. It craves it. If you have routines, your brain can go off and create new ideas, instead of trying to solve the same old problems. Creating routines makes life easier by reducing decision fatigue.

Most people have routines, even when they don’t realise it. Unconscious routines are so easy to create, usually don’t progress us towards our goals, and feel great only for the moment we’re in them.

How many of these negative routines have you slipped into:

• Routinely hit snooze
• Routinely reach for biscuits at 3pm
• Routinely check out of your life and into someone else’s via Facebook or Instagram
• Routinely think negative thoughts about yourself.

Don’t treat yourself like crap.

It’s not about setting the alarm for 5am when you usually get up at 8am. It’s not about jumping out of bed for a five mile run when you’ve not run before. It certainly isn’t about judging yourself for what you should be doing, or what you’ve failed at before.
It is about being kind to yourself, setting yourself up for success.

Having the structure in place can help protect against the shall I – shan’t I? – I should but I can’t face it questions that can spin around your head, and you can end up feeling worse.

It is well evidenced that in regularly developing these behaviours they support your internal system, so having an external system to help ensure you make them happen, is very helpful.

Make a plan.

Having a simple plan that you more or less stick to regularly is extremely helpful in containing physically the emotional turmoil.
It’s about consciously deciding what you want to do and what you will do by slowly shifting where you are now, to where you want to be.

Think of it as “what would X do?”. Imagine your end- result person. The one who is moving along their healing journey. Ask it positively – avoid using don’t, not, lost etc.

Imagine the life, the daily routines, and adjust yours. 

Look at the routines you have now. What do you like? What do you want to stop? What do you want to add?

If you want to get up at 5am, but currently get up at 8am, set the alarm for 7.45am for a few days, then 7.30am, etc and slowly adjust.

If you want to be healthier, what are your bad habits? What can you do instead of reaching for the biscuits at 3pm?
Write it down, set it up, and then, show up for yourself.

This isn’t about trying to control externally. 

This is about setting up self-care so that you are able to take on what you need to when you feel unsettled. It also needs you to allow yourself some flexibility, and to not beat yourself if you end up needing to feel your feelings instead and not going for a run, for instance, and having a shower instead becomes a better healing process for you than making yourself go for a run with tears running down your face, she says speaking from experience.

Developing a structure of good habits has the multiplier effect, the more we do them, the better we feel. It takes about five to six weeks to develop a good habit that it becomes so habitual, we do it, without thinking about it.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Life in Align podcast. If you liked what you heard and want to hear or read more, head over to lifeinalign.com. Please also subscribe and share, so that we can get this out to others who are also wanting to take back the life a chronic illness stole from them.

And remember – you are worth it, and you get to choose. 

Have a lovely day.