Over the course of everyday life, there are a huge number of different things that have the potential to negatively or positively influence our sense of well-being – ranging from the sort of inevitable stresses that everyone has to deal with on a routine basis, to more dramatic and occasional scenarios.
In your own life, you may find that your sense of well-being is currently being undermined by particular financial issues that have caused you to seek out direct lender loans and other such avenues, or you may find that your well-being fluctuates dramatically in one direction or another on the basis of things that are somewhat difficult to pin down.
Ultimately, however, it’s our everyday routines that frequently have some of the most substantial impact on our sense of well-being – for better or for worse – as we make our way through everyday life, and strive to achieve and maximise our full potential.
According to authors such as Charles Duhigg, our habits and everyday routines can play such an incredibly fundamental role in shaping the course of our lives as a whole, that managing to figure out how to properly balance and manage those habits and routines can be one of the most powerful ways of achieving not only a sense of stable well-being, but also of moving towards life of your dreams.
The power of your routines to influence your well-being is hard to overstate. Here are just a few reasons why your routines can be so powerful in this regard.
Your everyday routines can keep you moving in the right direction even when you are otherwise stressed and overwhelmed
From time to time, we all feel stressed and overwhelmed, and find it difficult to work up the motivation to do much of anything – or in some cases, even to get out of bed.
One of the great things about your everyday routines – if they are good routines, that is – is that they could help to keep you moving in the right direction even when you’re otherwise stressed and overwhelmed, and find motivation to be a real challenge.
This is essentially because established routines – and habits in general – or essentially “automated” processes and behaviours that we engage in and carry out, and which therefore end up requiring significantly less in the way of willpower.
Routines have their own inertia, could be another way to put it, and it’s important to realise that this inertia and momentum can manifest in both positive and negative forms, based on the particular kinds of habits and routines that we allow to become established in our lives.
This is one reason why it’s extremely important to make sure that you do everything you can to structure your day according to routines that are ultimately beneficial and that help to uplift you, as opposed to allowing negative and self-destructive routines and habits to gain a foothold.
If you are used to doing the same sort of thing each morning right after getting out of bed, you would likely find it very automatic and even “natural” to continue doing things that way consistently – and if you want to actually break that routine or habit, there’s a good chance that it will end up taking a lot more focus and willpower than you had imagined it would.
The implication of this is clear: good and life-affirming daily routines could help to keep you moving forward consistently, even when life as a whole is becoming very stressful, and you are feeling overwhelmed in a number of different senses.
Your routines can safeguard fundamental pillars of well-being – like sleep
Well-being is highly dependent on certain fundamental “pillars” of a well-balanced and structured life, which include things like getting sufficient sleep – and especially going to sleep and waking up at approximately the same time every day.
Although it’s certainly possible to keep your spirits up in haphazard and unfavourable situations, the bottom line is that you are almost certain to feel significantly less positive, optimistic, and to experience a very reduced overall sense of well-being, if these “pillars of well-being” are absent from your life.
Of course, it’s by no means simple and straightforward to always make sure that you are keeping set sleep and wake times, or are preparing and eating good nutritious food at similar times each day, in a way that helps to support your energy levels and motivation, and your sense of well-being.
This is where routines come in – as they create habits of normalcy around some of these fundamental pillars of well-being, and can help to ensure that you consistently observe these important features of well-being, in spite of the usual ups and downs of everyday life.
In many cases, for those of us who don’t have good and well-established routines in place, there doesn’t even necessarily need to be some very stressful or dramatic situation at hand in order to undermine our sense of well-being. It could simply be the case that there is a new TV show that grabs your attention, and so you stay up a couple of hours later than usual to binge watch it.
One of the saddest things about this, however, is that it tends to be very easy to “spiral” downwards when you start to undermine these pillars of well-being, including sleep and proper nutrition. First you miss a couple of nights of sleep, or your sleep routine becomes very disrupted. Then you are exhausted and unmotivated the next day, and so end up performing much more slowly at everything you do. Then, the next night’s sleep cycle is even worse. And so on.
Maintaining good routines around these fundamental cornerstones of well-being in your life, can have many remarkable benefits.
Your routines and habits can allow you to progress towards valued goals while keeping your attention focused on the present moment
Virtually everyone wants to achieve certain things over the course of their lives, and to make progress towards particular valued goals, whether those have to do with becoming an entrepreneur and pursuing a particular professional destiny, or whether the “goal” in question has to do with ending up in a loving and supportive relationship.
While goal setting has tended to be very popular, and has been emphasised by many different individuals, particularly those who comment on things like productivity and entrepreneurship, there is also a significant amount of pushback that has picked up steam in recent years, with regards to becoming overly fixated on goal setting.
According to various influential individuals including habit coach James Clear and cartoonist Scott Adams, becoming overly fixated on your goals can actually significantly undermine your well-being, in a variety of different ways.
For one thing, when you set yourself an ambitious goal and become very fixated on it, your “locus of control” naturally shifts to the external, and you will tend to perceive your well-being as depending on achieving that goal, which resides at some point in the future.
At the same time, though, it’s important to know what sorts of things you find truly meaningful life, and to be able to consistently make progress towards those things. So, how do you get the balance right?
Well, according to a number of commentators – including the two already mentioned – the best way to strike the right balance might be to have a sense of the goal that you are interested in achieving, but to focus the majority of your time and attention on developing the right habits and systems in the here and now.
In other words, if you want to become very fit, you could set yourself a largely arbitrary goal to weigh a certain amount by a fixed date, or you could make sure to establish daily routines to keep you physically active and to help to support good nutritional practices.
In this way, your routines and habits can help you to progress towards valued goals while keeping your awareness focused primarily on the present moment.
”Keystone habits” can influence your behaviours in all sorts of positive ways
Certain habits and routines just have a disproportionately powerful effect on the kinds of behaviours that you are likely to indulge in on a regular basis, overall – and Charles Duhigg, for one, has referred to these routines as “keystone habits.”
Ultimately, a keystone habit is a habit that creates a positive “cascade effect,” and that promotes many other desirable habits downstream of itself.
For many people, waking up at a certain time each morning (usually early) – proves to be an effective keystone habit, and contributes to other desirable behaviours such as greater morning productivity, an earlier bedtime, better nutritional decision-making, and so on.
Getting a few key routines right, therefore, can have a very significant “ripple effect.”
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