Tag: Healthy Routines

For those of you trying to make healthy changes in the new year, we’re in a midst of a series called New Year’s Desires because resolutions somehow were meant to be broken, but we want to be living out of the God given desires of our heart to connect with him and other people in our lives.

Hello, and welcome to Christian Faith and OCD with Carrie Bock. I’m a Christ follower, wife and mother, licensed professional counselor who helps Christians struggling with OCD get to a deeper level of healing. When I couldn’t find resources for my clients with OCD, God called me to bring this podcast to you with practical tools for developing greater peace.

We’re here to bust through the shame and stigma surrounding struggling with OCD as a Christian, sharing hopeful stories of healing and helping you replace uncertainty with faith. I’m here to help you let go of the past and future to walk in the present abundant life God has for you. So let’s dive right into today’s episode.

Today I want to talk with you about developing healthy routines without becoming obsessed about them. We all have something that we know we should be doing, and we want to get into this healthy rhythm, routine experience, but it’s just challenging for us to do that. And also, there may be concerns that if you do get into some type of routine, that it will become compulsive, or you’ll become perfectionistic about it.

And then if you miss a day, you end up shutting down and just saying, well, Let’s see, I wasn’t meant to do that because I messed it up over here. So how do we find this balance? If you’ve been around a little while, you know that I like to talk about the why that we do things. So we’re going to talk about that first.

What are the purpose of routines? Why do we need healthy routines and rhythms in our life? Well, first of all, they create a level of stability and predictability. When you have a routine, it provides a certain anchor in your day to know, hey, this is my time to do this thing. And that helps us really prioritize and accomplish that which is most important to us.

If you see someone’s calendar and you see someone’s bank account, you’ll see what’s truly important to that person. Routines help us feel safe. They’re really great for children, if you have children. They help us feel a sense of connection to other people because we know, like in our family, when we sit down to dinner every evening, we know that that’s a time to connect with each other, to talk about our day.

to eat nourishing food, and that’s a routine and a rhythm that we have in our home. Routines also keep us from having to think all the time. If you make a meal plan on the weekend, and you know what you’re going to eat for the week, and it’s on the calendar, you don’t have to be thinking or scrambling at five o’clock or 530 every night going, Oh no, what’s for dinner?

I don’t have anything. I don’t have any meat thawed out in the fridge. I don’t have Maybe an ingredient that I wanted to have to make something. Oh, let’s just do something really quick or spend more money. Causes this weight on our mental activity as well if we don’t have a plan or we don’t have a routine.

This is a secret hack that I’ve been doing. You know how Steve Jobs wore black. He had like a certain outfit that he wore all the time, so he didn’t have to think about what he wore. And I decided earlier this year that I was going to start picking out my clothes for the week, the work week on Sunday.

Like on the weekends, I’ll just get up and decide what I want to wear. But sometimes the mornings can be really hectic, and I don’t want to use that extra brain energy. So I’m able to look at my schedule and see, well, how many in person clients do I have or virtual, what outfits might be most appropriate based on the weather report, et cetera.

And it allows me to exercise that thought process then, and then I don’t have to think about it during the work week, which has been really great for me. I don’t know if that would work for everybody, but just a little small hack that I’ve been doing is making my clothing decisions on the weekends. Now, we’ve talked about the purpose of routines, but there are maybe times where we intentionally break our routines.

I will give you an example. We are pretty strict about getting our daughter to bed between 7 at night because That helps her rhythms. It helps our rhythms as a family. And sometimes she has a hard time falling asleep or different things. She may not be asleep, but at least getting her in the bed in that timeframe.

But there are times where we certainly have our daughter up later. Because we may have friends over, we may have gone out to eat with some friends, or we may be doing something fun as a family together. We might be involved in a church event that’s in the evening where we keep her up a little bit later.

Sometimes we break routines in order to have fun or to connect with others. And I know some of you are saying, wait a minute, you said the purpose of having a routine was to connect with others. That’s also true, but we have to recognize when the need of the moment is more important than the routine itself.

This will help you in terms of value based decision making. What do I value more right now, getting my daughter to bed at a certain hour? Or do I value more this time or experience that I’m having at church or with my friends? Now, there certainly are times where we say, Hey, if you’re going to go out to dinner with us, we need to meet you at like five, because that gives us time to eat, socialize, go home, et cetera, put our daughter to bed, even though some of our friends without kids probably would rather eat at six or six thirty.

That’s just not a good situation for us. You may need to break your routine if OCD is getting in the way or wanting you to do it perfectly. I know I’ve talked with a lot of people that really obsess about a variety of things regarding their schedule. They might obsess about what they’re actually doing.

They might obsess about how much they have to do. They might obsess about not being able to accomplish certain things. And maybe I know I need to get something done. I need to run over and do this errand, but I don’t have time today in my schedule. The end result of all of these scenarios ends up being that you just shut down and you do nothing.

Which is so not helpful. What we want to do is help you break out of, like, whatever your current spiral is. And, you know, OCD really likes avoidance quite a bit. So that makes sense that there becomes this shutdown and doing nothing. We spend so much time thinking about doing the things that we don’t actually do the things.

You may have to do a shorter version of the routine you wanted to do, you may have to break things down into smaller steps. I don’t know your specific situation. I was talking with someone the other day about a routine issue, and what we noticed was that It was a daily routine that a lot of us normally engage in, but for this individual, it was extra hard because OCD was telling them that they had to do it this prescribed way or with these steps that took them a long time.

So I said, I know it’s going to be uncomfortable for you, but what if We were able to do this routine sometimes this way and that other times we’re able to do a shorter version of this routine. And I want to just clarify, it was not a compulsion per se, it was more of just a way that they like to do things.

Sometimes when we like to do things a certain way, there’s nothing wrong with that, but maybe we don’t have time to do it and then that was causing problems because then this person wasn’t doing the daily routine that they needed to do at all. Right? It was an all or nothing thing. Either I have to spend an hour doing this, Or, I just won’t do it at all, versus saying, well what if you spent a half hour on some days and then some days you spent an hour, that’s fine, when you have more time.

And as you know, OCD’s rules are completely arbitrary and it just makes it up as it goes along. If you’re going to develop a specific routine, first let’s think of the reason for your routine, start with your why. And know that your goal is not perfection, but stability or creating that anchor to your day.

Number two, write down the steps to your routine and utilize technology if that helps you. Now, I know this may sound really basic and simple, but if you’re having struggles Like, for example, getting ready in the morning on time. Maybe there’s all these things that you know that you have to do to get out the door, but your brain feels really scrambled and they don’t end up in any kind of order.

Everything’s rushed and you end up forgetting something. If mornings are really chaotic and hectic for you, it might be helpful for you to do things in a particular order so that you can keep track of where you’re at in the process. Especially if you have children that are interrupting that process, you want to have approximate time frames that you’re going to engage in your routine because you need to know how long certain tasks take you.

And if you don’t know how long certain tasks take you, then you may need to just evaluate that first before setting up that routine. For example, I have to buffer a little time in my morning for me to actually wake up and get dressed before I can start working out, because initially I would be like, oh, well, I can start working out at this time.

And if I do a 30 minute workout, then I will be done at this time. However, things were not working like that and I was getting pushed back. So then I had to originally kind of push my get up start time a little bit earlier in order for me to get acclimated and adjusted, make sure that I had all of the tools laid out for my workout.

If I was going to need weights or bands or other things that I had those in front of me too. You can get super idealized about how you think things should work, and then as you start to do it, notice that you need to tweak or make changes. That’s totally fine. Making changes is not a problem. You can do that.

Don’t send it to an all or nothing where you just throw out the routine completely. And you want to be able to use some technology, if that helps you, in terms of reminders. I have certain reminders on my phone that pop up, and it was funny because I was sitting with my daughter the other morning, and I was like, Oh, my phone just made this calendar noise.

Like I have an appointment in 30 minutes. And then I was like, Oh yeah, I do have an appointment online in 30 minutes. I mean, I was together and fine, but I was like, Oh, I am going to need to go upstairs in a little bit. I had completely forgotten because it wasn’t an every week type of situation. It was a little bit of an off day.

I had reminders in my phone for a long time to make sure. That my daughter had lunch money because there’s one day a week where they buy lunch for the kids that I need to actually have cash and bring that to her school to give to the teachers. So I would have a little note in my phone, make sure you bring five dollars.

And whether you write things down in a paper planner, or you use reminders on your phone, or you have a Google calendar, whatever you do, just be really consistent about how you’re tracking those tasks or those routines or rhythms that you need to get done. until it becomes just an ingrained habit of something that you do all the time.

Step number three is to set yourself up for success. In a sense, make sure that you have what you need. So great mornings, I know I’ve talked a lot about the morning routine, but great mornings actually start the night before. It’s when you have the clothes picked out, or you have your workout stuff laid out, or you have your meal prepped, breakfast prepped, or you have some things chopped up for dinner.

Whatever it is, making sure that you’re taking the time to set yourself up for success and that you have all the materials, that the lunch boxes are laid out so that all you have to do is put the lunch in and put the cooler pack in in the morning. You should be able to set yourself up to have just a gentle rhythm and flow to your routine so that it’s easy.

You’re wanting this process to be what we call a low barrier to entry. You’re wanting to make it so that you get up and it’s like, okay, I’m up and here are my clothes and here are my things that I need to get ready and here is my Bible and it’s right by my chair where I’m going to sit and read it, just making everything so ready to go so that you don’t have to put a ton of energy into going, Oh, what was I going to do next?

Oh, where did I put my Bible? Oh, I had it in the other room last night. Just making sure that things are getting put where they go. Obviously, that’s a big task that we all need to work on. I know I’m guilty of leaving things and not putting them back where they go, but I’m working on it. It’s a progress.

It’s not perfection. I have developed this rhythm of planning meals on Thursday nights. Thursday night after my daughter goes to bed, I will go through and plan our meals for the next week, I will order our groceries online, I will make sure that it’s gonna be a good time for them to come, whatever, so usually then we’ll get groceries on Friday, and there may be some meal prepping or chopping that happens on Saturday or Sunday, whether that’s cutting up fruit, or cutting up vegetables for the week, or, um, Making sure that meat’s thawed out or portioned in a container.

There’s things that happen sometimes during the weekend, and it’s not a perfect system. It doesn’t always happen. Some weeks that I know that we’re going to be super busy on the weekends, I’m not going to try to do all that extra. I’m going to just keep things very simplified. I have a list of items that we usually buy every week, so I can go through that.

It’s on an index card. I can go through that index card pretty quickly and go, if we don’t buy it every week, it may be an every other week thing, so I’ll just check the pantry or the fridge. Okay, how much of that do we have? Do we need more? Yes, we do. Add it to the cart. I usually can run through that pretty quickly, and then I will buy whatever we need for the planned meals.

And my husband also knows too, like when I’m going to be doing the grocery list, if there’s anything that he wants, he’ll add that those things to the grocery list or say, Hey, when you do the shopping, make sure we get some of this or that. But I will tell you what used to happen so that you know what life used to look like.

It used to be, I kind of did the meal planning and the grocery list, like, when I got around to it. So it’s like, sometimes it might be Thursday night, but then other days, times it might be Friday. And then I’m ordering the food on Friday, but then I’m not really getting it till Saturday. And then I might not have an ingredient for something I need.

Oh, no, I have a brunch I’ve got to go to Saturday morning, but I didn’t have the order in time to make sure that the ingredient got here. So then I’m running to the store and nobody quite knows when groceries are arriving or not arriving. Do you see the difference there? One feels a lot more chaotic and one feels a lot more safer or comfortable because everybody knows kind of what the routine is and what the structure is, and we know when we’re going to be getting items in the house.

And I know too that that time is dedicated and blocked off on my calendar and in my life for that purpose. And understand that everything that I’m telling you, there’s a flexibility and a rhythm and a flow to it. If I am sick as a dog Thursday night, I’m not going to be planning meals for the next week.

I’m going to be resting and rejuvenating and just telling my husband, we’re going to eat what’s already in the house for a little bit until I can get back on my feet. Or if there’s something I really need, I might have him order the groceries. Don’t allow OCD to make you some type of slave to your routine.

Where it says, well, you said you were going to do the groceries on Thursday night. So therefore you have to do them Thursday night. No, I don’t have to. It just makes life a little bit easier or the rhythm a little bit better. But the world is not going to collapse if I don’t order the groceries until Friday or Saturday, things will be quite OK.

Leaving room to be flexible and adaptable is really healthy for your brain. Step number four is to focus on one routine at a time until it gets really solidified in your brain, until you get in that rhythm. Don’t try to create a completely new schedule for yourself where if you’re currently getting up at 7 a.

m. you’re wanting to get up all of a sudden at 5. You’ll be able to do that for a few days. But then you’re going to burn out, probably crash, be exhausted. And if you want to get up two hours earlier, you’re going to have to adjust the time that you go to bed. Morning success starts the night before type of situation.

You don’t want to be white knuckling through routines. That’s not the design of them. Remember, there should be some element of ease and flow. When you make one small change at a time, you’re much more likely to stick with it. That’s why I’m saying focus on one routine, and you may just focus on getting that one healthy routine established, solidified in your life for a month, and that’s okay.

You’re going to learn it, you’re going to flow with it, you’re going to recognize pieces that aren’t working, that might need to change, you’re going to feel probably really good and accomplished, even 20 days, for example, that if this was a daily routine that you were trying to establish, for example, right?

That’s good. That’s still much more than what you were doing before, which might have been 10, or it might have been zero. I don’t know the particular routine that you’re trying to add to your life. When we try to make large, drastic, all at once changes, typically our brain and our body resists that. And like I said, we can do it maybe for a little while or white knuckle our way through it, but then eventually we will go back and revert to our old behavior.

This is an example that I use with clients pretty frequently, is that if you change the rudder controls, what direction the ship is going to go in, even if you make a minor adjustment to that rudder, over time, that boat is going to be going in a vastly different direction. You may not see it at first, when it first goes out.

But over give it time and all of a sudden, wow, that ship will be very far from the direction that it was originally going. There’ll be a big gap between where it was if it had just kept going in the same direction versus if it just changed slightly. And so you want to think about slight changes.

measurable changes that you can make that can lead to long term different results. And then the last thing I would tell you is not to give up. This can be a challenge for you in your life. And when you try to do healthy things for yourself, OCD might get in the way. Doubt or self confidence issues might get in the way.

Your past might get in the way. But don’t give up on those positive things that you really feel convicted by the Lord that you need to be doing, whether that is spending daily dedicated time with him, whether that’s exercise, whether that’s putting healthier food in your body, whether that’s connecting with more social relationships or friendships.

Instead of shutting down, giving up and doing nothing or reverting back to former behaviors. Recognize where things went awry, and actually expect that sometimes things aren’t going to work out as planned, or aren’t going to go according to your routine. And that is an opportunity for you to then tweak and make changes as necessary.

And you can continue tweaking and continue making changes until things are really solidified, and you have these healthy routines without obsessing about them. That is what I hope for all of you in this new year. I hope you will join me next week as we have a very special guest. Brittany Poppy is going to share her story about how she felt like she could not be forgiven for something that she did and how God broke through through his word to show her that she absolutely is.

So next week, our episode is going to be when God forgives what you can’t forget. And I really hope that you will join us for that personal experience episode. To receive weekly encouragement, find out about our monthly meet the podcast host zoom meetings and receive information on exclusive sales, become an email insider today.

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