Breaking Up With My Routine
Between Sunday and Thursday, I wrote out an hour by hour plan about my Thursday four different times. Each variation was pretty similar, and as I was writing it, I understood the redundance. I knew that when Thursday came, I wouldn’t be looking at how I had planned my day out on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. So why do I do it? Why do I feel the urge to see my day out on paper?
Thursday wasn’t a special day chalked full of appointments or meetings. In fact, Thursday is the opposite for me. I have no class and no true obligations. This is a habit leftover from a couple months ago, when I had so many things on my plate that I was worried I wouldn’t have enough time to get it all done. It calmed me to visualize that there was enough time in the day for all of my engagements.
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So why is it lingering? I have only a few important things to do every day, and I know, logically, that I have enough time to do them. I have learned that after putting my mind under so much stress for 6+ month period, my brain is grasping at stress. I am regularly finding ways to stress myself out and induce anxiety.
So I’m challenging myself to not write out my plan for the day for the next week, and hopefully indefinitely. It’s not something that is providing value to my everyday life, at least for right now. In this exercise, I hope to go with the flow more, mix up my routine, and reduce my anxiety. I want to see what happens if I let go of the urge to control every hour.
I like consistency and routine, and I’m trying to push the boundaries of that. As I soak up my last 5 months in college, I’m trying to appreciate the diversity of each day and maximize that before I head into full-time work that leaves my M-F a bit more homogenous.
To kick it off, today I drove to a nature preserve to go on my walk rather than do it in my neighborhood (where I walk nearly the same route, every day). It was a beautiful day, and it was so much easier to ground myself in gratitude and be present in the moment, since my mind was off autopilot, walking in a new place. My mood shifted significantly for the rest of the day, and I haven’t felt anxious since.
Try to switch up your routine this week.
