Sometimes we get stuck in routines. Sometimes they’re even good routines! Routines designed to make us healthy, support productivity, and help us keep the wheels-of-the-day on the bus.
At their best, routines can be practices — consistent steps we take to deepen our presence and accomplish a goal. But at their worst, routines can become…well…routine.
We can fall asleep in our lives a bit, going through the motions on autopilot.
We do this in little ways, like driving the same route to work everyday and realizing as we arrive that we don’t really remember the journey; or missing every sunrise because we just keeping hitting repeat on our late night/late morning routine.
Our routines can lead us to miss the proverbial sunrise in big ways, too —ways that impact what we get to experience in this one wild life we are given. We put off the creative project we want to take on because we are stuck in the routine of putting all our time into our work in its current form. Or we don’t carve out time for romance and erotic connection because we are stuck in the routine of the daily-grind.
Relationship dynamics even become routines…we loop round and round in the routine of feeling resentful, or of squashing our feelings to keep the peace, or of shutting down in the face of conflict instead of walking through the fire into the intimacy we actually crave.
Routines can lead us to forget to push our own edges,
to wake up new parts of ourselves,
and to expand into the fullest versions of who we are
and what our lives have to offer…and all we have to offer in them.
Sometimes we have to shake it up.
I never thought I was a morning person until I broke out of my late night routine
and gave sunrise a try.
Turns out I love it.
I’ve spent my whole adulthood routinely saying “I’m not a runner.”
But you know what was on the other side of that routine belief?
Running.
I’m up to 4 miles. I can do it.
I had to break routine to discover my own full capacity.
So today, instead of staying in my pajamas like I often do on an admin morning at home, I put on the purple polka dotted dress that I found at a thrift store a few years ago and have never worn. Just me, alone at my table with my coffee and the dress I bought for no reason other than it made me smile. And you know what happened? I started to write. It wasn’t on my to do list. Instead of opening the pile of mail, I sat down and wrote this newsletter. In my purple polka dotted dress. Next I’ll go do the tasks I had planned to do as per routine…but the unexpected purple polka dotted dress carved out a space I didn’t even know was there for something new to happen.
If you’re looking for a routine breaker, too…one that can make space for unexpected things to happen, one that can wake up parts of you that are dormant in your routines; one that can invite you into the fullest version of yourself and all your life has to offer…snag the one spot that just opened up in my sold out Women’s Awakening Retreat in Maine, October 15th-18th. You can find more information on my website, or just shoot me an email. Easy peasy.
 Copyright (C) 2026 Dr. Lindsay Jernigan. All rights reserved. |