So, what I LOVE about Tim is he has several mottoes that regularly rule his life and his routine . For instance, here’s one: “Patient, persistent, pursuit of the proper process produces the progress that ultimately leads to success.” So, true, right? He lived of this for quite a while, before he met me. I tell him all the time if he hadn’t met me when he did, he and I may not really be friends, much less married. We are so different today, than we once were! But I truly admire his sense of discipline and I have learned so much from him! ( Thanks, babe!) In fact, he has really good business sense and has helped build my platform for writing and helped with my growing entrepreneurial skills 
So..life is good. Below, Tim gives really GOOD advice about working out a really good routine, and taking care of your life and business stuff .
Tim regularly takes stock of his life, and he has had such an impact on CHANGING mine, so helpfully, his article will also help you!
Here’s the rest of his article. If you missed part one, click here.
Developing Routine in Your Life
Developing routine in your life begins with taking stock of your life. It starts with taking a long hard and brutally honest look at what your life is currently, what you like about your life, what you dislike about your life, what you can change about your life right now, what you must currently keep the same until change is possible later on, and what will never change about your life. The Serenity Prayer begins with “Lord, grant me the grace to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” I encourage you to make a list of the people, attributes, issues, challenges, dreams, goals, desires, needs, (etc). that currently best define your life and then mark the items on your list that you like and dislike, can change and can’t change, want to keep the same and want to change.
Once you have taken stock of your life, the next step is to identify specific changes you will make. Again, I encourage you to document the changes you can and want to make in your life. This time describe them in measurable and verifiable terms. For example: I want to be able to be comfortable in the size 12 dresses I have in my closet rather than the size 20 dresses I currently wear. Rather than simply saying I want to lose some weight. Say, I want to have a place in my office for everything and to have everything in my office in its place. Rather than simply saying I want my office to be more organized.
After taking stock of your life, identifying specific changes you will make, the third step is to identify specific behaviors you must carry out in order to bring to fruition the changes you have identified. For example: if you want to be able to go from a size 20 to a size 12 there are some specific behaviors you must engage in over time. You must do enough cardio exercise to burn enough calories, and do enough weight lifting or resistance oriented exercise to build enough muscle and consume few enough calories daily in order to create a daily negative caloric intake. Doing a weekly routine that includes these behaviors given enough consistency over time will result in the desired outcome (i.e. the size 12 dress fitting to perfection.)
Once you have identified the specific behaviors you need to carry out the next step is to develop a process for completing those behaviors in a systematic organized way. For example: I need to do cardio, lift weights, and take my nutritional supplements that aid in weight loss. So I decide that I will go to the gym on Monday through Friday for one hour. I will do 30 min. of cardio on the tread mill, and 30 minutes of a full body light weight work out. I will take my daily supplements immediately before I walk out of the door to go to the gym. I now have a process for getting to my desired dress size. My process is to take my supplement, go to the gym where I run for 30 minutes on the treadmill and then lift weights for 30 minutes in the weight room. I do this Monday through Friday.
Having a process will go a long way toward establishing your routine, but it won’t get you there completely. Once you have identified your process you will then need to identify the time frame within which you will practice your process. If your entire process (i.e. getting dressed to work out, taking supplements, driving to the gym, exercising, showering and getting dressed actually takes a total of 2 hours you need to identify two hours in your day to actually commit daily to that process. Without a time frame that you can and will consistently commit to your process, you will have a great idea, but no consistent execution. Without consistent execution of your process you will soon become frustrated and give up on the whole idea. My rule of the 7 P’s is “Patient, persistent, pursuit of the proper process produces the progress that ultimately leads to success.”
After you have taken stock, identified the changes, identified the specific behaviors need to bring about the changes, developed a process for carrying out the behaviors, and then committed to a time frame for executing the process; the final step is to identify an anchoring life activity that will serve as a trigger to remind you to execute the process at the appropriate time. For example: If I decide that I will work out early in the morning before I go to work, my trigger could be waking up by my alarm clock in the morning. I simply determine that every morning Monday through Friday I will wake to my alarm clock and the first thing I do will be to get dressed, take my supplement, and go to the gym. I don’t have to think about it, I don’t have to make a decision as to whether or not I will go to the gym, or when I will go to the gym or what I will do once I get there. I simply need to wake up to my alarm and all of those decisions are already predetermined for me. I can therefore block out anything that would seek to distract me from my goal because I have already chosen to do this. All that is left for me to do is to make it happen by focusing on completing one task at a time in succession until the entire process is finished. As I do this consistently over time I will achieve my goal.
Dealing with Interruptions to your Routine
Most people start well. They work hard and are successful for about 2 – 3 weeks on average. About week 3 life happens, and they encounter some kind of distraction that takes them away from their process (i.e. they had to stay up late working on a project for work over the past week and just didn’t have the energy to get up early enough to make it to the gym, or they went out of town on vacation, or a relative came to visit for a few days, etc.) Remember we said earlier that the only thing that is completely constant in our world is change. The problem is not that we get off of our routine due to some life event. It is that we don’t get back on the routine or one similar, immediately after the life event is over. Getting back on routine after getting off is just as important a skill to have as is the ability to develop the initial routine from the beginning.
Getting back on routine effectively begins with first being able to anticipate life changes that will affect your routine before they actually happen and developing a plan for managing them effectively. Those life changes that can’t be managed must simply be adapted to in the shortest possible amount of time. But beyond that, getting back on routine is simply a matter of noticing you are off routine, and then developing a plan that will get you back. Plan your work and then work you plan. Don’t beat yourself up or pressure yourself to get back on routine. A wise person once said “If you can’t fight, or flee, just go with the flow.” Pressuring yourself to get back on routine, or do anything for that matter will make you less likely to be successful.
So in closing, routine is important for the structure of your life. We benefit from routine by increased stability, increased efficiency, and greater quality of life. You develop routine in your life by identifying a behavioral process that you practice repeatedly over time. Finally, I encourage you to pursue routine, but be sure that you make your routine server your life, rather than making your life server your routine.
Tim Owens has an M.S. degree in counseling is a certified personal trainer, counselor/therapist and works as a weight loss/behavior management coach for his clients in the Tulsa area. He can be reached at [email protected]
