Routine gets a bad rap. If you Google the word itself, you’ll find that the noun form is a synonym for “order”, “regime”, and “formula”; the adjective is a synonym for “typical”, “common”, and “unexceptional”. You can’t be blamed for failing to find inspiration in the routine! While routine can be boring, it doesn’t have to be. You can harness the benefits of routine by first reframing your perception of what it is, followed by creating a healthy and advantageous customized one, before gradually integrating it with your lifestyle.
Studies show that routine has psychological benefits, including improving the symptoms of anxiety, insomnia, digestive issues, and ADHD.
I believe that routine is one of the most important things for optimizing my daily life to stay on top of my game: it supports a healthy mental, emotional, and physical lifestyle.
Once you create and establish a schedule for doing chores, work goals, meetings, exercise, paying bills, etc., these tasks will become easier to manage and less of a pain for you day-to-day. Having a routine not only helps ensure you do things, but that you do them well, because the more you practice something, the continually better you get at it. You will become accustomed to the presence of these sometimes unpleasant jobs in your daily life. Eventually, a seemingly chaotic and tiresome set of tasks could become an organized list of items to be easily completed… You haven’t known satisfaction until you’ve crossed off the last item in a to-do list!
Regular journaling is a great way to make sense of your thoughts.
Routine also alleviates anxiety and stress because to manage anxiety, you need to constantly be checking in with yourself about your worries before addressing them. Scheduling ‘thinking time’ to process your worries is so much better than letting them build up. Regular journaling is a great way to make sense of your thoughts. It can help you prioritize and organize your stresses, hopefully resulting in reduced mental load and heightened mental restoration.
Another bonus is that sticking to a routine will allow you to carve out time to enjoy other passions and hobbies. Once something is set in a routine, you have no excuses not to do it. You carve out an hour in the evening to read a book, paint, sew, knit, bake… The bottom line is the more you practice something, the better you become at it. Thus you may find yourself enjoying it more, and wanting to do more of it. Step one is to create a routine, step two is to follow it… No excuses!
Be the type of energy that no matter where you go, you always add value to the spaces & lives around you.
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What is grounding and why is it important?
Grounding is a holistic term, referring to centering your soul in your body, and in turn, connecting it with Mother Earth. Research shows that spending time in nature and connecting spiritually with our natural environment is linked to both cognitive benefits and improvements in mood, mental health and emotional well-being.
Once you connect with the Earth, you will feel more energized, awake, and alert for the day.
If you experience a lot of fear and anxiety in your day-to-day life, you may have somehow become ungrounded. When your connection to Mother Earth is weak, you may feel unsafe and lost, aimless, left searching for a purpose.
Scientists have proposed a number of ideas to explain why connecting with nature can help us feel so much better. One theory is that since our ancestors evolved in wild settings and relied on the environment for survival, we have an innate drive to connect with nature. Spending time in nature may trigger a physiological response that lowers stress levels because we feel we are exactly where we should be, doing something we should be doing. Our ancestors spent time outdoors hunting and gathering, farming, and tending to animals, which provided not only for themselves, but also for those who relied on them. Dwellings were likely very bare and small, so the outdoors allowed them a wide, bright, and fresh space to socialize – to learn, laugh, and collaborate with others for the common good.
For us in the 21st century, being in nature may be a way of allowing us to connect with these primal, natural instincts which we no longer devote ourselves to. It may restore a deep-seated sense of purpose in us. We may feel an indescribable sense of belonging when we are out in nature. Mother Earth envelops us in her love and care, replenishing our cognitive resources, restoring the ability to concentrate and pay attention not only to ourselves, but to others too. Once you connect with the Earth, you will feel more energized, awake, and alert for the day.
Ways to practice grounding
Barefoot walking has grown from a playful trend to a well-researched practice with recognised health benefits. It restores our natural gait, and strengthens certain parts of the foot that have been weakened over decades of shoe-wearing. Walking without shoes can improve balance, help with pain relief, and lead to improved mechanics of hips, knees, and core.
The easiest method is to walk barefoot on grass.
As mentioned previously, our ancestors evolved in close connection with the earth’s energy. We walked barefoot. We slept on the ground. We benefited from the Earth’s healing natural healing energy. Today, so much of our time is spent insulated from this grounding energy, in shoes, in our cars, and indoors. So, when weather permits, you can try going barefoot for a little while in the garden or at a park. Feel the energy of the soil coming up through your feet and into your ankles and legs. Imagine it rising all the way up your body and finally splaying out like a ray of light from the top of your head. There’s no denying the feel-good factor that comes with experiencing soft, but resilient, blades of grass beneath your bare feet, lovingly supporting you in their thousands.
Green, blue, and remote spaces!
So we’ve established that getting outside is good for us. Now, scientists are working to determine what types of environments are best.
While green space activities like nature walks, park runs, and hiking, have historically been touted as the best place to connect with nature, attention is now being given to the potential of what are called blue spaces – marine and freshwater environments.“Interacting with water – living near bodies of it, listening to it move, or even just looking at pictures of it – may be a potent antidote to anxiety and other stress-associated mental and physical health conditions”.
Research has shown that when a person is partially underwater, their heart rate slows and certain blood vessels constrict. We may feel coldest in our arms and legs when we jump in for a swim in the Atlantic or Irish Sea because blood is redistributed from the limbs to the brain, heart, and other central organs. This activates the body’s “rest-and-digest” state, which promotes better digestion, circulation, and sexual interest. It also mellows out our “fight-or-flight” response, reducing blood pressure and stress. These physiological shifts are known collectively as the human “dive response” or “dive reflex.”
If you do not fancy yourself as a sea-swimmer, you can simply dip your toes in or run your hands through a body of water. Again, feel the cool, refreshing energy come up your ankles or wrists. If you notice any stones or pebbles beneath your feet, even better. Give yourself a foot massage by slowly and carefully making your way across the smoother stones, it will stimulate your senses and distract you from other thoughts.
If you don’t live near a body of water or cannot easily access one, many people benefit from merely the sound of water – crashing waves, a babbling brook, falling rain. These natural sounds are rhythmic and usually build up or dissipate gradually, rather than suddenly. The naturally soft, and predictably repetitive nature of water sounds are qualities that the brain finds inherently soothing.
Remote spaces, then, are the last type of environment people may find relaxing. In a survey of 4,515 U.K. residents, researchers found that people reported more connection to nature and felt more restored after visiting rural and coastal locations than they did after spending time in urban green spaces.
Again, if you cannot access such places, studies have shown that even watching nature videos with a diverse mix of flora and fauna can lower anxiety, and promote increased vitality and better mood.
Visualization
For those of us currently unable to just get up and go to the nearest green or blue space available to us, there may be value in trying visualization. It is the practice of mentally forming images in your mind; images of different situations, different outcomes, and different places. There are plenty of visualization guides online, but a simple exercise to start with is imagining yourself as an oak tree:
First, find a quiet and comfortable place where you know you will not be disturbed. Close your eyes and take several deep breaths to help relax.
Close your eyes and imagine yourself outdoors in a green or blue space; a forest, a beach, or a park. Wherever inspires peace and calm.
Stand upright or sit with a wakeful posture, and close your eyes.
Imagine there are roots growing out from under your feet and from the base of your spine. Visualize these roots stretching down into the ground below you, towards the warm center of the earth, in search for water, nutrients, and restorative energy.
Imagine your roots slowly pulling this life-source from the ground, up into your trunk, and out through your limbs. You can take your time with this. You set the pace, just let your quiet mind and still body guide you.
Finally, when you’re ready to emerge from the practice, imagine the energy you’ve taken from the ground spilling from the top of your head and cascading down around your body. Grounding can help you feel more secure, like you are not only enriching your energy, but protecting it too. It may help you feel stronger, and less susceptible to the effects of other people’s (sometimes negative!) energy.
Other ways to practice grounding
Below is a quick list of things you can do to interact more with nature and practice grounding.
- Get your hands dirty with houseplants or window plants
- Embrace the cold!
- Put out bird seed and start bird watching
- Consciously feel the sun
- Transplant seedlings from your kitchen to your garden
highly recommend you try more active grounding techniques such as barefoot walking explained above. If you cannot, really try and give visualization or any of the previous quick grounding ideas a shot! Only 15 minutes for a week to start with should be enough for you to notice changes in yourself.
Give it a GO, you have nothing to lose and so much to gain by trying!
With love
Gosia Wojciulewicz