Ep 140: Adapting and Restarting Your Routines
When it comes to routines, we always hear that consistency is key. But the truth is, there are very few things in this life that you will start and finish without some interruption along the way. This can become discouraging when we are interrupted and cannot maintain the routines we have worked so hard to establish. That’s why I believe the most important part of a routine is learning how to adapt it.
Adapting Your Routines
For a large part of the year, I am on the road hosting clinics, but my routine didn’t always used to be this way. My time used to be primarily spent on training horses with a small dose of clinics–now, my schedule is split closer to 50/50. When I am on the road, there are certain parts of my daily and weekly routines that I do not get to implement. For example, my morning workout routine or going to my local church on Sunday with my family. Of course, there are ways that I can implement pieces of these routines while I am on the road. I can do sit-ups in my hotel room, or I can tune in to the recorded broadcast of my church service. That’s the power of adapting your routines. Instead of just saying, “oh well, I can’t do them,” I find a way to implement small pieces of these routines so that I can maintain some level of consistency in my daily actions.
I believe that this commitment to consistency is what keeps me moving forward. But, there are times when even the small pieces of my routines are not feasible. That’s where the importance of learning how to restart your routines comes in.
Restarting Your Routines
When we think about routines, it’s almost like we are in a competition with ourselves to maintain a streak that we cannot break. When an interruption comes along and we do break that streak, we feel like we have failed. But, that’s simply not the case. Your whole life is going to be about learning to get started again. You have to learn how to take those little interruptions in stride so that you can start back where you left off.
Starting New Routines
If you are going to implement change in your routine, do it in small increments. Change is much less overwhelming when you look at it one step at a time. I once heard that if you make changes one at a time, you have an 85% greater chance of achieving them. On the other hand, if you batch these changes into multiple actions at a time, your chance of consistently making those changes drops drastically. When implementing a new piece of your routine, give this small change enough time to become a habit before adding another small change. Allow yourself to experience that small win. Let yourself build confidence, then use that momentum to establish consistency with another habit.
Establishing Routines with Your Horses
The idea of building confidence and using momentum to create consistency is not just reserved for our lives; it holds true in horsemanship, too. You have to focus on getting your horse really comfortable and confident with one habit before you introduce a new habit into the mix.
I was talking to a trainer the other day about a horse that was extremely heavy on the front end. Since horses are naturally front-end loaded, we have to make small changes that help the horse adjust and develop new habits.
For a horse that is front end loaded, moving the shoulders is a small change that can help create a desirable habit. You can learn more about the fundamental exercises discussed in this episode inside our Foundation to Finish online training community.
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