Read Time: 4 minutes and 5 seconds.

Picture this.

It’s New Year’s Eve and you’re itching to make the most of the New Year. This time, you’re determined to make a difference, so you take the sage advice of your close friends and do a Google Search for a proactive daily routine.

The first search result is a health and wellness website, so placing your faith in their content, you dive in head first and find a nice, healthy morning routine to follow:

1) Make Your Bed

2) Drink a Green Smoothie

3) Exercise for 1hr

4) Stretch in The Sun for 15 mins

5) Read 10 pages of a book

It sounds perfect.

You’re excited to start New Year’s Day on the right track and excitedly, you load reminders into your phone and close your laptop, feeling ready to get started. You then head out to spend the night celebrating with friends and family, and end up arriving home late, stumbling through your front door.

Next thing you know, the alarm rings, it’s 1:30 PM and as you groggily rub the sleep from your eyes, you realize that you’ve completely forgotten about your newfound morning routine.

Not the best way to start the New Year.

Are you surprised by this outcome?

In this edition of The Path Toward Purpose we’re going to explore How-To Create A Winning Daily Routine - and why we might find ourselves struggling to stay consistent.

Let’s get into it…

 The Foundations of Building a Routine

Routines are an excellent tool to assist your personal growth, yet without a meaningful element intertwined, it’s likely that you’ll default on the routine you’ve so carefully prepared. It’s why a Google Search is the worst way to create one, as a routine needs to be aligned to your goals entirely, to truly see some progression.

You need to be enthusiastic about the routine you’re trying to implement.

A routine shouldn’t be a chore, but a set pattern of meaningful behaviour that actually helps you observe progression in your life. However, if your routine isn’t aligned to what you’re trying to achieve, then it becomes detrimental and a source of displeasure.

Unfortunately for most of us, displeasure without purpose is intolerable and is often the reason most people default on their routines, and return to a more predictable, comfortable form of behaviour.

 The Mental Framework

Contrary to most personal development advice, motivation isn’t the answer to retaining a positive routine in your life.

Even discipline, the necessary ingredient to complete required actions, will eventually wane over time, especially if you aren’t fuelling your routines with a meaningful element.

The human brain prioritizes safety above all else, so in the beginning stages of following a routine, you’ll experience a lot of internal resistance. Excuses and distractions will suddenly pop up and it’ll be difficult to remain on course.

Which is why creating a routine surrounding the attainment of your goals is crucial. When you actually see, feel and recognize progress, that shifts the balance of resistance and provides you with the leverage to further work towards your goals.

 How-To Apply This

Here’s how you can create your own routine that is meaningful and purposeful.

Step 1. What are 3-5 high leverage activities that will help you make progress in a core area of your life? Here are the 7 core areas of life:

→ Social and Family Relationships

→ Career and Education Aspirations

→ Money and Personal Finances

→ Health, Recreation and Leisure

→ Life’s Routine Responsibilities

→ Contribution and Giving Back To Society

→ Mental, Emotional and Spiritual Health

Step 2. Of these 7 core areas of life, which 3 are the most important to you right now?

Step 3. Out of your chosen top 3, what is one daily activity that will move the needle towards achieving your goal?

Step 4. From these 3 activities, how can you prioritize them to be completed in a morning or evening routine?

Daily excellence is the secret to life-long success.

You can always modify this to select 4 or 5 daily activities, but to start off with, 3 is the golden number.

It will allow you to slowly integrate these patterns into your daily life, then eventually when you’ve reached a level of mastery over your routine, it becomes natural to add in further elements to keep yourself challenged.

🚀 Next Steps

Your routines are tied towards your progression in life. It’s not someone else’s routine, which you follow that will supposedly improve your life. No, this is all for you, by you to create a routine that is aligned to your goals.

When vision and desire are combined with action, you can attain anything you desire in this world. All that’s required for you now, is to make a start!

Next week, I’m going to share with you an actionable strategy to help you overcome internal resistance. So that whether it’s a meaningful routine you’re trying to implement, or perhaps new habits, you’ll have the tools to positively move forward. I can’t wait to share it with you!