As an aspiring Fierce Gentleman, I believe in the efficacy of the routine-based life.
What do I mean by that? I mean the effectiveness of building a life of positive influences that is mostly on autopilot.
It only takes a moment’s thought to realize that most of our lives are lived on autopilot anyway — at least 40%, according to the scientists — based on the routines we’ve established for personal care, work, family life, and hobbies.
We are creatures of habit. So doesn’t it make sense that we should cultivate habits that will lift us up, rather than bring us down?
So today we tackle the question of how we can build healthy, sustainable long-term habits & routines.
To get started, let’s take a look at the basic structure of building a new healthy habit — as discovered by Stanford university — and follow it up with a real-life case study.
THE STEPS TO BUILDING A HEALTHY ROUTINE
- Decide what routine or habit you’d like to create. (If you are trying to get rid of a negative routine, decide what new healthy routine you will use to replace it. Simply stopping an old habit won’t work as well.)
- Reduce the new routine to it’s smallest, most elemental seed — something that is ridiculously easy for you to do. (Example: for a gym habit, probably the smallest seed is simply putting on your gym clothes immediately when you get out of bed in the morning. The next step after that would be to walk in the general direction of the gym, or maybe get in your car and start driving in that direction.)
- Start doing the new ‘seed’ of the habit immediately after an existing action that you already do without fail, using your existing routine as a success trigger.
- Continue until the new ‘seed’ is boring, and you naturally want to move to a more intense step — like actually going into the gym, instead of just driving there — or, stretching at the gym instead of just going in. Your body’s natural processes will build on this success and take you to the next success.
Now, let’s look at a real-world example.
THE HABIT OF OVERWORK
Meet Maggie & Chaucer. This happy couple work at the same company, albeit in different divisions.
Because they love their jobs, both tend to work very hard. In fact, oftentimes Maggie is still working at 7pm, when Chaucer is already done for the day. Because she just needs another 30 minutes to finish up, Chaucer ends up working an extra 30-45 minutes, as well. He might as well — he’s just being “productive” while waiting for Maggie.
Because Maggie & Chaucer don’t have kids yet, this lifestyle is workable for the time being — although both complain to each other of not having enough time for hobbies, or for each other. They promise themselves that as soon as their school debt is paid off, they’ll take a big vacation and stop working so hard — and maybe think about kids. In the meantime, the habit of overwork goes on, unabated.
At a deep level, neither of them are satisfied. This habit of overwork is causing real stress in their lives. Neither of them are eating well or going to the gym like they want.
THE ECOSYSTEM OF POSITIVITY
Maggie & Chaucer are not alone, by the way: most of us have a habit of overwork, under-sleeping, under-vacationing, and over-eating (the wrong foods) and over-drinking (alcohol).
We do it to get our drips of dopamine, to “unwind” after a stressful day, to feel better.
The problem is, all these habits are cheap, easy, and (to varying degrees) toxic ways to feel better. Instead of these toxic habits, we need to build into our lives an “ecosystem of positivity” that supports us, nurtures us, and continually reminds us of the beauty and possibility of the world.
The media, by the way, is a major problem: it presents us with a distorted, highly-selective, focused picture of only the negative things happening in the world. The truth is very different: the world is a big, beautiful place, and true kindness, boundless acts of selfless love, and spirit-inspiring art is happening all the time, all around us.
And this brings us to Step One of How to Build Healthy, Sustainable Routines: go on a media fast.
In fact, I want you to take it one step further: remove from your life all toxic or negative media stimuli, whether that be magazines that encourage you to feel fat or compare yourself to status symbols, TV news that stokes baseless fear, reality TV that highlights human drama and ego weakness, violent movies, or even trivial or petty shows you watch for “recreation”.
Comedies and documentaries are usually okay, as long as they’re not mean-spirited or overwhelmingly sarcastic.
Consider how manipulated your reality is becoming: Facebook recently admitted to conducting a massive experiment on over half-a-million people in which they edited News Feeds to try to give people negative emotions. (The Truman Show is creeping closer every day.)
You don’t have to take part in that. Study after study has shown that viewing Facebook basically makes us depressed — so you probably want to limit that particular site to 2-5 minutes every other day (unless you’re using it as a business tool.)
What you’ll notice as you remove this negative inputs from your life is that your overall outlook on life lightens. Without being constantly bombarded by negative inputs, your emotions have a chance to reach a new equilibrium.
But we’re not done yet. Step Two is to add back positive influences.
Pick a spiritual leader or motivational speaker, and either read what they’ve written or watch or listen to them speak for at least 20 minutes each day (You should have plenty of time for this, since you got rid of all that useless TV watching and magazine reading.)
I like Tony Robbins, Marianne Williamson, Thich Nhat Hanh, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. You could also get yourself a book of inspirational quotes and spend time studying them each morning. (You could also follow @FierceGentlemans on Twitter, since we tweet 99% uplifting and inspiring material.)
You could also read hard non-spiritual books, as I suggest in Read More.
Now you’re cooking with gas, because not only do you have less negativity in your life, you have a bunch more positivity. This will produce all kinds of benefits in your life, chief among them a nice little daily mood lift.
It’s the combination of these two things — reducing the “drag” of negativity on your life, coupled with increases bursts of positive “fuel” in the form of positive-emotional energy, that give you the energy to drive a “wedge” — your first tiny habit.
So let’s look at how it plays out with Maggie & Chaucer.
THE HABIT OF RESTORATION
Finally, Chaucer has had enough with the habit of overwork.
Instead of just hanging around waiting for his wife to get done each night, he leaves work on time himself and goes to the gym. This gives him all sorts of endorphins and makes sure he gets home on time, and he has the energy and motivation to cook a delicious, healthy meal for them both. He does this three nights a week.
Then, when Maggie gets home, she begins to eat better, and this improved diet is the “wedge” that gets her into the gym, before work. Pretty soon both of them are working out 3x a week and eating quiet, unhurried meals together four to five nights a week.
Over dinner one night, Maggie says, “You know…I like having dinner with you. I’m going to make it a priority to leave work no later than 5:30pm.” And so she does.
Because Maggie now has a “hard stop” at work, she works more effectively to get everything done. This leads to both Maggie and Chaucer to have a more constrained, limited work schedule, more energy for their relationship, and the time and space to contemplate the next phase of their adventure together — kids? Vacation? Part-time side-business?
Does this sound “just so?” It’s worked out this way for thousands of people.
The process is simple: drive a wedge, and keep hammering. This is what I do and it works. It’s worked for others in countless cases. It will work for you — if you do it.
And if you get stuck, give me a call.
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Also published on Medium.