Inconvenience Yourself

Routines are amazing! They provide structure and are proven to relieve stress and anxiety. This improves overall mental health and wellness. But there does come a time when our brains get too used to doing the same things over and over. This can cause stagnation in our lives. The best way to switch things up is by actively choosing to inconvenience yourself!

The Benefits of Routine

Research consistently shows that routines play a key role in mental health. By focusing on the things you are able to control, you can get necessary tasks out of the way. This opens up more time and energy to do things that bring you joy. Without structure, it’s difficult to keep a grasp on our constantly changing reality. Establishing and engaging in routines relieves this pressure.

Having a regular routine has many benefits. It can lower stress levels, help form positive habits, improve physical health, and even allow you to feel more productive. Structure is especially beneficial for managing challenging child behaviors. For people experiencing learning disabilities and ADHD, behavioral routines are also a vital part of coping with time-related and productivity challenges. 

If structure, routines, and healthy habits are so helpful, why would you even consider switching things up?

How to Know When It’s Time to Drop the Routines 

Before making any major behavioral changes in your life, always consult with your trusted mental health care team. Everybody is unique. Thus, context matters in mental health care. This is especially true when establishing (and altering) structure and routine in our lives. 

The best way to know that it’s time to switch up your routines is by realizing when your brain is operating only out of habit instead of consistently experiencing new things. Being on autopilot and missing the wonderful life happening around us is a surefire way to start feeling the effects of burnout. Nobody wants that. 

Our brains are naturally designed to build heuristics. Brains love making shortcuts and building efficiencies. While we at Simply Psych are fans of efficiency, we err on the side of quality over quantity. The shortest route may indeed be the best route sometimes, but definitely not every time. 

Letting our brains grow and learn and develop so our cognition can find ways to minimize input to maximize output is part of evolving. But there are times these heuristic shortcuts can be individually and socially dangerous. Falling back on “quality over quantity” is generally a good rule of thumb here.

How to Inconvenience Yourself

When you choose to inconvenience yourself, you are actively participating in the world around you. As humans, we find meaning and purpose in many different ways. Slowing down to “stop and smell the roses” from time to time is a great way to keep you on track of feeling present in your own reality. Failing to examine or alter our habits can have a deadening effect on our lives.

While our brains are naturally inclined to opt for the least challenging and most convenient routes, it takes active, cognizant effort to inconvenience yourself. To find the places your brain has developed these ruts of repetition, try to proactively notice the moments you are doing the same thing the same way around the same time of day. 

The less you’re consciously thinking about a particular action, the more likely your brain is shifting into autopilot mode. These are the moments worth switching things up!

The options are endless for choosing to inconvenience yourself. Here are a few examples:

• Leave earlier

• Eat less

• Park far away

• Write instead of type

• Rearrange your rooms

• Call instead of text

• Say thank you in a genuine way

What you May Discover

Habitual behavior can cut us off from feeling. This can lead us to lose touch with ourselves, and it may even lead to boredom. But studies have shown that people feel happier when they depart from their daily routines. Explore a new place, seek a unique experience, and relearn how to appreciate the little things. Perhaps there’s a way to experience mundanity as novelty.

By slowing down and being mindful in the moment, we allow our brains to utilize their ability of neuroplasticity. One of the easiest ways to retrain our brain is with new experiences. Novelty allows us to be reinvigorated and can help increase focus. Research has also shown that switching up your routine can actually improve your ability to retain information while improving memory. 

By switching up your routines, you’re allowing yourself to experience the world around you in a fresh way. As humans, we crave both structure and novelty. It’s important to set our mental health and wellness up for success by finding balance between the two. 

Let yourself become the main character of your own life. Don’t become stuck just going through the motions. Life is a beautiful, wonderful, exciting experience. Whether we chose to be born as a human at this particular point in time or not, we are here. Let’s make the most of it, together. ????

If you own and operate your own private practice, you know how important being efficient is. That’s why it is essential to build in occasional moments of inconveniencing yourself. Burnout kills. Don’t get stuck in a rut. Let us know how we can help you build, scale, and maintain your practice by connecting with us! We’re happy to help!