It happens to everyone eventually. You’ve got your routine set. You dialed in your habits so that they support you in feeling your best, with enough energy and inspiration to do what you want to do with this wild and precious life (thank you Mary Oliver for one of my favorite ways to describe this gift we’ve all been given.)
You know what works for you and you can practically get it done without thinking about it. Many people end up with some version of meditation or mindfulness, movement, food intake that works for them, and rest.
Yours might be run for 20 minutes, stretch, eat something that fuels you.
It’s all gotten to be routine. Consistency and routine are essential for making progress on our wellness goals, (and all goals for that matter) but they can also paradoxically be the enemy of progress if you don’t change things up often enough.
Your body is an incredible and adaptive organism that has a way of getting used to what you do with and to it. Sometimes, it’s a good thing, you can handle less sleep when you are on a deadline, because to a certain extent, you get used to not sleeping. Not that you could go on forever like that, but you do adapt in the short term.
Your body wants to figure out how to get what you do done consistently, with as little effort as possible. Your muscles stop being challenged when you do the same thing all the time. You slip into auto-pilot when there is no variation to what you are doing. Even practicing gratitude can become less effective if it just becomes a mindless thing that you check off your list at the end of the day.
So what’s a well-meaning wellness seeker to do?
My tried and true suggestion it to SHAKE IT UP!!
Mixing up your routine, adding variation and surprises will challenge you both physically and mentally, so you can keep pushing that edge and moving forward instead of getting stangnant.
Some suggestions for ways to shake it up.
- Shake up Your Workout. If you workout in a flat place; find a hill, add more intensity, stop every 5 minutes and do push ups or sit ups or jumping jacks. If you hike the same trail, seek out a new one, invite or friend, or switch the path that you follow. Try a new weight routine if you’ve been doing the same one for more than 4 weeks. Change the weight you are lifting, your repetitions, or the manuevers you are executing.
- Shake up Your Positivity Practice. If gratitude is something you do every day, change the way you do it: go outside, express your gratitude with a picture or a symbol rather than writing it down, or hand write a letter to someone who made a difference in your life, even if they have passed away. You could also include some other positivity boosting exercises, such as finding ways to awaken your sense of awe and wonder, or searching out ways to laugh more.
If what you are doing feels dull and ineffective, even if those things are good for you, find a way to shake it up, add something different, some spice and sizzle. You will feel more alive, more inspired, and more likely to continue doing fabulous things for your mind, body, and spirit.
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