#dailyhabbits

“you’ll never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret to your success is found in your daily routine.”       John C. Maxwell

Did the above quote make you analyze how your routine is present? Well if it did, that means you do want to change something in your life hence you’re looking at how to create a daily routine. routines create achievers. For instance, Tim Ferris has 5-morning rituals making the bed, meditation, exercising, tea, and journaling. Tony Robbins, the performance coach also follows a morning routine that includes taking a cold shower, breathing-related exercises, and meditating. 

Almost all high achievers find things that they want to do daily and create a routine, this has played a vital role in the success that they’ve achieved. 

HABITS, ROUTINES, AND RITUALS

How to create a daily routine, and then how to stick to it are the 2 basic things we need to focus on. For this, it’s necessary to know the relation between habits, routines, and rituals. Habits are things that you do automatically. So if you wake up in the morning and the first thing you do is check your Instagram or whenever you eat your breakfast you always shower first. All of this is what is called your habit. A routine is a collection of all your habits and actions. Like waking up in the morning checking your Instagram, then taking a shower, and after that proceeding to breakfast. On the other hand, the difference between routines and rituals is the attitude and perspective behind them. Things you do for productivity become your routine and things you do not do for productivity are rituals. 

How to Make a Daily Routine?

Spend some time recording what you exactly do all day: write down what you exactly do daily. Analyze what is productive and what is a bad habit developing over some time.

Know what’s unwanted and reduce them from your day: if you know the things that are just piling up and not giving you anything except for stress look upon such things and try to eliminate them. All those activities that are unhealthy and unwanted should be reduced.

Add productive activities that you want to be doing daily: things like exercising, meditation, waking up on time, or anything which you consider to be important shall be added to your list of daily compulsions. It could be anything from skincare to reading a book daily. 

Make it realistic: do not just fill your day with work after work, it’s not possible to be doing so much with the same enthusiasm, it’s important to have a particular goal for the day and move to achieve that.

Add time for not only work but also sleep breaks, and fun things: things that you enjoy like singing, listening to music, driving, or swimming are the activities to be imbibed in your daily routine for better functioning daily.

Repeat till you make it: when you try your routine and make changes, try to make it suitable enough for yourself so that you could repeat as much as you can till you make it.

The Science Behind Creating Habits

Have you heard about the classical conditioning experiment conducted by Ivan Pavlov? It’s the best-known work done by Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov set up a stimulus (sound of a metronome) and then gave food to the dog. After this happened several times the dog began to salivate in response to stimuli. Hence, a stimulus causes an automatic response of salvation, and further on the reward of food is provided.

Now that we know how a routine is simply a collection of our habits. hence we shall understand how to make a daily routine by using the science of habits. 

choose the habit you want to imbibe in your routine: for example if you want to meditate daily and practice some yoga poses.

Connect that habit to your old habits: this works as a stimulus for you. As you follow your old habits you get reminded of the new habit you wanted to follow. For example, if you regularly take your dog out on a walk, you can think about how you could come back and practice a few yoga poses. 

Reward yourself: you can reward yourself by thinking about buying new gym clothes if you meditate every day for a month.

Because I was sleepy

Because I slept a late

Because I had so many tasks that I couldn’t finish

Because I didn’t organize things well and scheduled more tasks for that day.

Now you know that you only have to work on organizing and managing tasks well and this small effort will lead to a huge positive impact on your routine and lifestyle.

The third way to stick to your routine is to stay ahead of your routine: Try to speed up and stay ahead with all that you had thought to complete by the evening or afternoon you’re completing by noon. 

This detailed and scientific study is done to make you create your schedule which becomes a part of your being. Even if you know how to make a daily routine Remember, some habits, and routines might be suitable for one person and not for another. Hence, you need to do the reverse calculation on how you want to be and how to make a daily routine. Once you’re on autopilot mode it's going to be very easy for you to fight the small stressors of life.