Is There A Danger To Routines?

[Coraline]

Hey, I am glad you are here: tips, experience and thoughts appreciated.

Within the last year I started building up a routine, it more or less goes like this: Getting up early, meditate, shower, breakfast, university, lunch, studying, dinner, this and that, going to bed early ... and than the circle starts over again. So, there are two points I am struggling with:

1. Whenever something interferes with my routine, I feel stress within myself. I feel the need to go back to that routine as soon as possible. Thoughts like "Shit, I still need to do my meditation", "So late already? I need to get my sleep!" will come up. I spot myself being really clingy to all that habits. I am sure the purpose of a routine is not to make you chasing your daily habits and making yourself stressed and nervous.

2. My routine sometimes feels way too "clean", too "robotic" to me. I mean, sure, I absolutely see the advantages I have due to my habits and schedule. But sometimes I miss the color, the easiness in it. I do not know how else to explain this. I feel like my routine is holding me back from really experiencing life to its fullest. 

Thanks for all your answers!

 

 

[Forestluv]

Routines can be great for progress, yet for me, routines can create habitual ways of thinking and believing. A comfort zone that’s hard to step out of.

Last summer I spontaneously took off and lived immersed in South America. Very little planning. Living with native tribes and locals while learning Spanish broke my habits and pryed open my mind. After a few weeks of that I didn’t know who I was anymore.

When I returned, I realized how little awareness I had of my local enviroment. So many fascinating things I was unaware of. I realized it’s all perspective and I never needed to travel away in the first place! ?.  

 

Edited October 6, 2017 by Serotoninluv

[Saarah]

@Coraline It's that issue of balance again. If you want to create results in your life it's important to do certain things with direction, focus and consistency 

But... too much of that is robotic and dulling to the intuition, spontenaity, creativity and playfulness, acceptance, letting go, all that good stuff 

So, I'd say figure out where you can relax more, how you can give yourself time to let loose so to speak, and still get  things done. It could also play out in approach, you could try approaching even rigid tasks with more ease and it could lighten up the routine. There's going to be the daily ways, weekly ways and yearly ways of balancing your schedule with ease so do that as appropriate too like a holiday 

[Vitamine Water]

@Coraline I think it has to do with you setting too much expectations for "a perfect routine". If the routine feels too robotic, then try to stop being robotic about it.

Take some time off, change the routine up a bit. Flexibility and easyness with the routine is important. Robots are not flexible; they perform one task after another, pre-programmed.

And try to be okay with every dicision you make. Don't fight yourself over it. Flow with life, be water!

 

[eye_wanderer]

I'm in a similar position as you are: university student with similar routines. And I've really struggled with those problems as well, especially the first one. I get so attached to the routines that it stresses me out to the point of breaking the routines... so in the last year I've partially solved your two problems for myself. 

1. I realized that running the "perfect day" is impossible or near impossible. Even if you sleep 10 minutes too late or meditate 2 minutes less you're technically breaking your routine and don't feel the full gratification of having a productive day. So what I've done is shifted my mindset away from following the routines literally to following them in spirit. More specifically, the routines give me a direction to exert my willpower towards, and so long as I do that, I have followed them in spirit. This shift has relieved a lot of stress and attachment. 

2. I don't have much of a solution for this, but what I personally do is occasionally switch up the place I work to make them more exciting. For instance, my campus is downtown and I go to the top floor of my building, which has an incredible view, and study there sometimes. 

Of course these two solutions have their own traps. In essence they're a trade-off between efficiency and resiliency of the routines. If you find that your routines are too rigid maybe the solution is to sacrifice some efficiency for flexibility, without going overboard.

[Coraline]

I am so happy everyone seems to really understand what I tried to explain! :-) I see that my problem is probably less about the habits themselves but more about my attitude towards them and the consciousness while doing them. A big barrier might be judgments and regrets... Being like water sounds so desirable!

@Serotoninluv Wow, that sounds like an awesome trip though. A few days ago I had this little life crisis where nothing seemed to make sense to me anymore and I honestly just asked myself: "Why don´t I just go to South America and live there in a little hut in nature and just experience life from minute to minute?"

@eye_wanderer That is a good idea. I just thought about five different places where I could go for studying. But I think, I did not get your point about the willpower completely. Maybe you can explain it a little further?

[eye_wanderer]

@Coraline What I meant to say was that in a given day we have a finite set of resources, our willpower being one of them. The point of goals and habits the way I see it is to simply direct these resources. If a goal or habit isn't met perfectly, that's okay, because that's not their purpose. So deviations from routines are okay. There's no need to get attached to them and stressed about them.

... my mind has sort of accepted this logic and I don't feel guilty if a habit isn't performed perfectly. 

[Joseph Maynor]

Yes.  The issue is control.  If the routines are authentically made then that’s one thing.  But if they are made with the mind, then that will lead to trouble.  Routines are good for intermediate personal development but not necessarily for advanced.  If you have transcended the ego — then you wanna dump conceptual routines and rules.   Routines are a form of control that will backfire unless authentically created and clung to very loosely and tentatively.

Edited October 9, 2017 by Joseph Maynor

[Forestluv]

@Coraline There were several people in the village that did just that. One guy was a stock broker. He quit his job and joined the tribe. Drinking ayahuasca, playing music and living each minute in the sacred valley. He seemed pretty content

[Michael569]

Routines may become dogmas and traditions if kept unchecked over years. While that is inherently not a bad thing, sometimes it leaves the person very stiff and unflexible because "traditions have to be maintained. "

 

[zenjen]

@Coraline Maybe it would help to start planning for small breaks in your routine. Take a different route to university, study or meditate in a place you've never been before, cook something new for dinner, take a break each week to do something you've never done. This might seem difficult at first, but I think it helps keep the wonder of living in an otherwise tired routine. This might also help ease the stress when your normal routine is interfered with. I would suggest keeping your bedtime the same though, there are a lot of benefits to that. Hope this helps.

[pluto]

Routines can be useful at times but they always can be deadly!