Do you have self-care routines? Do you take consciously time and effort to take time just for yourself? Thankfully more and more people are beginning to answer those questions with yes, but the majority of people still doesn’t have any consciously chosen self-care routines in their lives. We have tons of habits and routines in our lives. It is even said that our habits make us who we are and the five people we spend the most time with (one could argue seeing them is also some kind of routine) is a big part of our personality. Why? It doesn’t necessarily have something to do with the amount of time we spend on those habits each day but the fact that we spend time on them every single day. It is about the repetition, the consistency of those things. The time is adding to this of course. It makes a difference whether we spend 5 minutes each day on something or a whole hour. What is more important though is the consistency over the long-term. Imagine it like poison. Having a little dose of something might not kill us but consuming it every single day over decades will inevitably have an effect on us eventually. Habits can have a positive or negative impact on us. We all have habits, we all do something, actually many things every single day. Studies prove that 90% of our thoughts are the same every day. Just 10% of our daily thoughts are something new. Maybe not even completely new but just something we don’t think about every single day. We all have exercising habits. Either we don’t exercise but our habit is sitting most day or we have a consciously chosen exercise routine. Our daily thoughts impact our mind, our exercise habits our body and because of the connection of body and mind, they impact each other at the end of the day.
The more aware we are of our routines, the more mindful is the connection with ourselves. The more aware we are of what we do with our body and mind on a daily basis, the more we can control their wellbeing.
The relationship with ourselves is a crucial part of our mental and physical health.
Do you want to be healthy? Do you want to be happy? Do you have dreams? Me too. While we don’t have an influence on so many things in our lives, we can always choose our actions and thoughts. We can choose whether we decide to do something every day that benefits our health, our happiness and our dreams, or if we just completely surrender to our mind and its programs that are the same day in day out. Which are simply the easiest way but not always the best way.
A classic example is our morning routine. Go through your average morning. What do you do within your first 60 minutes, the second you wake up? This is a time that includes tons of habits, because in the morning it takes our brain some time to wake up and it does everything to keep things easy, meaning our brain runs programs and we simply do the same things every day. Did you ever arrive at the office or to your first appointment of the day, and couldn’t remember how you came there? You didn’t remember what happened on the way there? It is because our mind just does it. It knows what to do and our brain is intelligent enough to take us safely through a car-drive or however we get to our first appointment of the day.
Isn’t that somewhat shocking? However, think again through the things you do every morning. Do they support your health? Do they support your happiness? Do they support your dreams for the future? If the answer to any of those question is no, you might want to rethink whatever it is that you do every day. Do you still want to keep it in your life? Is it just there because you are used to it, or do you consciously choose it to be in your life?
Some routines where very useful in the past but might not be very helpful in the present anymore. What we need changes. Our lives constantly change and so does everything with it.
We all dream of harmonious, beautiful, powerful relationships with our partner, friends or family but what about with the relationship with the one person, that we have for our whole lifetime? The one with ourselves. When we don’t feel good, we don’t bring all the joy we could into the relationship with others as well.
We have 24 hours every single day. 86,400 seconds. What if we spend a fair amount of time every day, on something that supports our healthy, happiness, and our future dreams?
Only 1 hour each day, which is just 4% of our day, can have a massive impact on all of those three topics, happiness, health, and dreams.
This is just meant to be just a little reminder to live life a little more mindfully. To create awareness especially around the things that you do every day. The things you spend a lot of time on after all. Time is the most precious thing in life. We don’t have time, we get time. Every day again and again until we don’t. Let’s spend the time we get, on the things that mean something to us. That make us happy, that keep us healthy, that help us make our dreams a reality.