so, you fell out of routine…
navigating the ups and downs of personal rules and routines
The start of the year always reminds me of how easy it is to fall out of routine (and how bad it feels).
The holiday season disrupts your rhythm — making it easy to fall out of good habits you had going
New Year resolutions are difficult to keep up
It’s hard to look at yourself in the mirror when you lose the routine you set for yourself. You wanted to be better and make a change, but you failed.
You know that sad, crushing feeling of self-loathing when you cave and eat chocolate when you’re supposed to be on a diet? Or when you convince yourself to smoke when you’re supposed to be avoiding it?
It really shakes you. It makes you upset with yourself.
I was talking to my friend Luke. He was saying he was upset at himself for falling out of his exercise and healthy eating routine over the holidays.
It got me thinking.
The fact that he was upset with himself was killing him more than the lack of routine was. And that’s when I realised something interesting:
Being upset at yourself for falling out of routine is the worse than the failure itself.
In fact, falling out of routine shouldn’t be viewed as a complete implosion of the routine, but rather a part of the realignment process.
The problem isn’t the mistake, it’s that the mistake throws you off. You lose confidence in your ability to maintain healthy routines and avoid bad habits. You beat yourself up because you didn’t have the willpower to stick with it.
And another year goes by without improvement. And not being able to improve can catapult you into self-loathing — because deep down you want to be better.
You want to be more.
So we should learn what it really means to ‘fall off the wagon’ — and how to get back on.
And there’s an old Zen story that might help.
The Archer and the Target
A Zen parable
A young archer told a Zen master, “I keep missing the target. I feel like a failure.”
The master set up a target, took a shot, and missed. The archer was shocked.
“Even you missed?”
The master smiled. “Yes, but the difference is I see my miss as a lesson, not failure. Each miss teaches me to adjust — my aim, my grip, or my posture. That’s how I improve.”
He added, “Falling off the path isn’t the end; it’s part of learning. True failure is giving up.”
Falling out of routine is an important part of the routine
There are two reasons for this.
(1) You can use the failure as information to better stick to the routine next time.
When you’re learning to ride a bike, you haven’t lost when you fall off. You’ve lost when you give up.
The one who is committed to learning how to ride the bike is the one who gets back on and tries to stay balanced no matter how many times they fall. They use the reasons for failure as data to inform their next attempt. And then they start to fall off less. And before you know it they can ride the bike.
“Without struggle, no progress and no result. Every breaking of habit produces a change in the machine.”
— George Gurdjieff
‘Falling off the wagon’ is simply missing the target.
Use that information to get back on it.
Why did you fail at the routine?
What can you do to avoid the cause?
Be smart. Don’t pull yourself down. There is usually an evolutionary explanation for why we succumb to temptation.
If you’re struggling to stick to your diet — it’s because your DNA is hardcoded to eat as much food as possible in case of a famine.
Get rid of the snacks, rather than giving up on the diet.If you’re struggling to journal every day — it could be because it takes too long. Maybe you don’t like sitting there and writing for 15 minutes. Make it a three-dot-point journal.
(2) You can use the failure to motivate yourself to get back on track
The second part is using that bad feeling as motivation.
Sometimes we simply fail.
There is no useful data to use. We just messed up. We caved. And that’s ok.
That failure can be used to light a fire under you to get back on track.
Like the person learning to ride the bike, just realign. It’s ok.
As the Japanese say:
“Fall seven times, stand up eight.”
You will never be perfect — but you’ll get closer
“Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and at last, we cannot break it.”
— Horace Mann
You will fall out of routine over and over again. Just remind yourself that it is part of the process. Having a strict routine, rules and guidelines for yourself is difficult — that’s the whole point.
If perfectly sticking to a diet were easy, everyone would. If having perfect routines and processes was easy, everyone would.
It’s not the perfect people who succeed, it’s the persistent ones.
And if you take one thing from this article, I want it to be this:
***Your failure to stick to the routine is better than no routine at all!***
Every time you ‘fall off the wagon’, use the following thought process to get back on:
It’s ok that I made a mistake
Being perfect is bloody hard. Don’t BE perfect, PURSUE perfection.What can I learn from this failure?
If you fail to keep off your phone, put it in another room. If you fail to stick to your diet, get rid of the snacks.Failure didn’t feel good, I’ll try to be better to avoid that.
Don’t be mad at yourself, just realign. Use it as motivation.
If you think in this productive way, not only will you get closer and closer to perfectly maintaining the routine, but you’ll also have great habits in general.
A lot better than if you completely gave them up because you weren’t perfect.
Sincerely,
eren
Follow me on Substack, Instagram and LinkedIn for short bursts of motivation and peace, and to follow along on my journey of creating the world’s best in-person mindset workshop.
