(This post is a series of daily letters from me to my future children reporting from the emerging paradigm.)
Dear Kids:
Writing again towards the end of the day and not to start my day. And yet, I persist and we’ve gone one week of a daily challenge, which just means I’m moments from landing roots into when this will appear during my day.
Routine is something that has eluded me much of my life. My early career as a Real Estate Attorney (old habit to capitalize that, does it even need to be capitalized if you don’t need to “posture” like you do when you’re practicing as an attorney?) meant I was all over the NY and NJ metro areas every day. I could drive 300 miles in one day to multiple closings or, more heroically, going from deep in Brooklyn to Uptown Manhattan on a tight time schedule.
I never had routine in that job. Most of that type of career is problem solving, adapting and changing and other than regularly checking email nothing was the same from day to day.
As I’ve settled into the entrepreneurial life and I’m building a business to serve folks around their movement needs (aerobics) I have come to realize how much success is baked into a daily routine. Problem solving still comes up as a persistent need, but really I’ve noticed my true progress come from doing the same things every day to compound results.
I started that foundation when I read The ONE Thing, which also dispelled the myth of balance. There is no real balance in life and most people don’t feel particularly balanced. The things that really matter we need to attend to every single day (health, relationships, spirituality). It’s also true that small bits of effort compounded over time actually create real results.
I am about 7 months into a daily routine I set out to develop when I first moved away from Los Angeles. I was so grateful for my routine when the Corona quarantine first began because it was stabilizing. I keep up with it and continue to add to it as I need to while deleting habits that don’t serve me. Nothing feels like it’s in balance for long, something comes up and tries to disrupt and I cling to my routine and my momentum, knowing it will eventually feel more balanced again. But life is always lifing and routines serve us by allowing us to continue momentum by knowing what must be done in a day.
I was talking to one of my beloved coaching clients today about how social media is full of painful stories of reckoning with racism these days and it’s a lot to hold. I see this as using social media to collectively do shadow work–kind of like what happened with the #metoo movement. It’s a great use for social media, to connect over big ideas and share information outside of the six corporations who own all the media.
Social media is no longer where we can go to get our warm fuzzy dopamine hits and distract ourselves from what’s going on. This is beyond a marathon, this is sustained long term work that can really move forward if we routinize it. And care for ourselves!
Last year I set out to prioritize “What does my body want” as a centering question and it helps me know my self care priorities. Sometimes I can get so caught up in work that I don’t listen to my body.
I forced myself to take a dinner break because my body was saying “hungry,” and when I was up at the Lavender Queen (the name I gave to my trailer to acknowledge that it’s more like living in a boat than in a house) snipping greens to put into ramen and the Asshole in My Brain (TM) came up to tell me, “Gosh if you can’t even feed yourself on a routine how can you expect to have kids.”
If you can identify the “Asshole in My Brain (TM)” for you it helps to swiftly dispel shitty, limiting thoughts. I recognized the AIMB and I considered how balance is a myth, I’ll definitely figure out how to feed y’all and meals will all be routinized eventually by the time you show up.
xoxo,
Mom
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