Building habits is a tricky, yet wonderful thing. Take a second, and reflect on the habits in which you have in your life... the good ones, and yes even the bad ones.
Now that you have thought these out. It is time to double down on our good habits.
This will be the focus of this week’s newsletter: integrating our good habits into our life on a daily basis through our Self-Care Routine.
Self-Care Routine: the “good” daily habits that you integrate into your life on a consistent basis.
What are the daily habits that you would like to integrate into your life on a daily basis?
An important factor to our Self-Care Routine is creating a daily TODO list for these tasks. As success in achieving some basic goals towards your self-care is a tremendous feeling. It builds confidence, as you embark towards any other task during the day. As I have written before Sustained Attention builds confidence, having a cumulative effect in our practice as we work towards a specific goal.
Defining your Self-Care Routine
Defining the tasks that you would like to include in your Self-Care Routine, is the most important part of establishing your practice. My advice for beginners is to start small.
My initial Self-Care Routine consisted of 8 tasks. This was way too much to handle.
Now don't get me wrong, when I completed these tasks I did feel tremendously empowered, it just came to a point, where each day... I had no time devoted to anything besides Self-Care. Which at that point, I believe became Self-Harm.
Self-Harm in the sense that I was assigning myself too many daily tasks during the day, and leaving no room for fun. It ran counter to what the intitial purpose of setting a Self-Care Routine was in the first place: to build confidence and develop a rhythm in our day.
Instead, tending to 8 daily tasks created a feeling of uncertainty and harmed my rhythm by being burdened by too many self-imposed activities that turned into chores. Worst of all, I didn’t focus on the things I felt were truly necessary for my Self-Care.
So my advice for starting off: is to start small with your Self-Care Routine.
Recognize what tasks genuinely help out towards that feeling of Self-Care rather than a feeling of Self-Harm. The best part about establishing a Self-Care Routine, is that it is OUR experiment and no one else’s.
The Evolution of Our Self-Care Routine
Here’s what my current Self-Care Routine looks like on a daily basis.
^Pulled Directly from my notes off of Roam Research.
Writing, Meditating, Exercising, as well as reviewing my flashcards on Anki. Everyday.
Was this always the case? No it wasn’t.
Is 4 the right number for habits to cultivate in your Self-Care Routine?
I'll give you an honest answer, I do not know. You will find what works as well as what doesn’t.
My previous Self-Care Routine reached the point where I set the time I woke up to as a TODO item. Needless to say, it didn’t work, and my sleep suffered as a result. This however, was not a bad thing, it was instead a learning experience.
It gave me the recognition that our approach to our Self-Care routine is continually evolving and we must adjust it with an experimental approach.
Treating Life as an Experiment
Your approach to defining what to include in your Self-Care Routine is a continual experiment. As soon, these habits will ideally become so ingrained into our routine(s) that we may not even have to include them on our TODO lists.
Over time you can choose whether to include the same tasks in your Self-Care Routine, or switch it up entirely, as you strive towards new goals as a person.
“It soon became clear that doing one thing better and better might be more satisfying than staying an amateur at many different things.”
- Angela Duckworth from the Book “Grit”
I love this quote above, the reason being is it perfectly captures the importance of starting small and getting really good at a few things. Ideally, you’ll focus on the same subset of Self-Care tasks working up to legitimate expertise in those areas… versus the alternative of remaining an amateur at multiple things.
Two weeks or so ago, I wrote about my “Two and a half hour challenge” where I detailed my new approach to making music a more consistent practice. In this piece, I shared a new mix I made as a result of this new practice Earth Disco.
This week, I have found myself recognizing that perhaps devoting two and a half hours isn’t the right approach every week. Perhaps, this goal from the outset seems to large, intimidating me to dive into it.
Instead, the framing of this goal should perhaps be to log onto my Serato DJ Pro account everyday OR loading Logic Pro (Music Production Software) even if I just tinker on it for a minute, ten minutes, or 6 hours. How can I better integrate these goals towards my work in music into my Self-Care Routine? It is critical to ask yourself these sorts of questions to your approach.
The most important thing of all: is that the TODO items reflected on our Self-Care Routines are working towards our goals on a daily basis. It is the idea that these tasks are eating up our mental space, and that this is actually a great thing in terms of us striving to accomplish goals that once seemed far and distant.
Creating a daily Self-Care Routine and sticking to it is in essence you brainwashing yourself.
My hot take to end this newsletter is that you can ACTUALLY BRAINWASH YOURSELF FOR GOOD.
This may actually be the only thing that sets those who do extraordinary things in their life from those who do not.
So my final question to you this week is simple: what is involved in your Self-Care Routine?
Cheers and Happy Learning,
Adam Bartley
Parting Note
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