Building A Routine

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is therefore not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle. This old saying calls us to build a routine in our lives with an expectation of excellence.

My old clinical supervisor would end every email with Aristotle’s quote on excellence. She used this quote as a gentle reminder that she expected excellence every day. As a result of her many reminders and my internal training, my clinical skills sharpened over time in small ways without minimal effort.

This is an extreme world in many respects, and we can easily overlook whispers and subtle habits building one on top of the other. Most humans tend to favor the vivid and the loud. We favor people and situations that demonstrate extreme behaviors. Human beings tend to admire those who are successful, and where we can see their success. We see the fruit of labor rather than the seeds and roots.

Building Habits

The roots of our behavior are the small habits that add up. The seeds are the small steps, such as checking in with your family daily to build a bond rather than saving it all for the holidays. Seeds also look like developing a healthy sleep ritual to nourish your body daily. A healthy routine and self-care plan are far from sexy, but it does form a stable and happy life. Routines are rituals that anyone can learn in their quest for life satisfaction. In therapy, sleep hygiene is one of our key indicators of how someone is functioning. Habits such as taking walks and building joy into your day move people and family systems into alignment.

Building Balance

In my office, we practice mindful balance. We create a life for ourselves where we practice mindfulness and set sustainable and healthy intentions. A daily practice in achieving conscious balance is creating a healthy routine that reflects who we are and where we want to go. A continuous self-check happens in multiple ways throughout the day to reconnect you with your most authentic self.

Habits encouraging this self-modulation and insight include meditation, writing in a journal, and earthing. We also develop insight when we reconnect with our support and express gratitude for the small things. One of my habits is to ask for forgiveness early and often in recognition of the many mistakes we make on the path to finding our truest selves.

Building Excellence

Most human beings want to be excellent; Some want to be perfect. All human beings want to feel stable, content, and happy. How can we become happy people? How can we become our best? One of the things that we work on in my office is removing old habits of negative self-talk. We work on removing false expectations. In the therapeutic space, we dump out all the emotional stuff, keep what is useful, and release the rest. We create a habit of being mindful of our emotions and behavior. This routine-based mindfulness moves us into an excellence-building space with minimal effort.

 So when we reach that small crossroads where we have fallen short, we have several options ahead of us. We can fold, or we can live. As a great philosopher once said, there can be no conflict about the mistake; we simply accept that action and move from there. Anything else is madness. Simply put, don’t beat yourself up. Accept the flaw as part of you and make adjustments accordingly. We are all flawed, and we can all get better. You are building yourself one day at a time.

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