Hey there gorgeous!
Last week you absolutely crushed it with the 7 Day Self-Care Challenge! I know I said this like 1,000 times and honestly, I’m probably going to say it 1,000 more, but I’m so proud of you!
In 7 days, you managed to set a solid foundation for your self-care routine, and build upon that each day by identifying wellness activities that bring you joy. You rounded it all out by not only creating a routine but also creating a weekly schedule, so that you are able to hold yourself accountable for seeing it through daily.
What you managed to do in 7 days is not an easy task to accomplish, so if you haven’t already celebrated yourself for doing so, now it the time to do it! But celebrate responsibly 😊.
Now, it’s been almost a full week since the challenge ended and I hope you are still going strong! This week I wanted to share with you what my current daily wellness routine looks like (in case you’re a visual learner like me), and my top tips for wellness consistency (because honestly in the beginning it’s hard to be consistent). Below you will find my current daily wellness schedule/routine, and my top 3 wellness tips to help you remain consistent with the schedule/routine that you created.
Let’s get into it!
Wellness Tips for Consistency
First, let clarify what is meant by consistency. Towards the end of the challenge, I challenged you to do your routine every single day. This was because I wanted you to start creating the habit of moving through your day with your newly identified wellness activities, as well as introduce your body to the new schedule. Even though I challenged you to do this every day I want you to understand that is not the only way to show consistency.
What is consistency? Consistency is simply your capacity to be able to routinely engage in something. Think about your day job. You consistently get up at the same time every day, do your morning routine as usual, and work your work hours from start to finish. Like most people, you may do this five days out of the week, four weeks in a month. That is consistency.
With your wellness routine consistency can look exactly the same, depending on what you created for yourself. For example, if you exercise from 7:30am to 8:30am two days out of the week, for four weeks in a month, that’s consistency. Or maybe you are intentional about doing your 10-minute skincare routine every night before bedtime. That’s consistency.
In a nutshell, consistency with your wellness routine is simply any wellness/self-care activity you are able to engage in routinely, while you build up the stamina to increase the activity in volume.
Tip #1: Understand Your Emotional/Physical Capacity for Your Activities
I’ll be honest with you. You can’t set out on a wellness journey of any kind without understanding your emotional and physical capacity to be an active participant in it. I say this because a lot of the time we respond to immediate changes from an emotional part of our brain, and this can sometimes be the downfall we never saw coming.
For example, if you’re someone who decided to start going to the gym because you didn’t like the way you looked in a picture, and the next day you were in the gym doing what you thought you had to do in order to achieve the results you wanted, you could be setting yourself up for failure. Why? There’s no plan, no direction, and no foundation for consistency.
While this is good motivation it’s not the right way to use it. Instead, what you should do first is have an honest conversation with yourself about what you didn’t like when you saw yourself in that picture, and why you didn’t like it. Then you need to figure out how you can go about achieving those results in a realistic manner. This requires you understanding how much time you may be able to dedicate to the process, and knowing when and where you are going to be doing the work.
All of this is part of understanding your emotional and physical capacity. The last thing you want to do is jump right into something that you can’t be consistent with. It’s great if you can get to the gym three days out of the week for one week. However, if you miss the gym for the next two weeks because of work obligations, that’s a clear sign that you didn’t take the time to flush out your schedule.
This is why we started the 7-day challenge building your foundation from the ground up. So that these are things you are thinking about ahead of time and don’t find to be a roadblock when you start. A big part of consistency is being able to commit to the routine and activities that are going to help you move forward.
Tip #2: Have An Ideal Routine/Schedule
Which brings me to the routine/schedule part of the challenge. I don’t know about you, but I’m such a visual person, which means I learn and understand best when there are images or videos to go along with it.
Being able to see activities and routines (the order and days in which you plan to do something) can help you create consistency by taking out any guesswork for how to move through your day. I am a firm believer that if you are able to envision it, you can achieve it. Sometimes you have to take that from a literally standpoint and see what it is you are envisioning in your mind.
Below is my current routine that I follow. You will see that I have literally listed all the main tasks that I do for each day, and I’ve even put them in the order that they get completed. What I like about this process is that I know what my day is going to look like ahead of time, and I have some type of structure and understanding of my week.
You’ll also notice I have at least 3 wellness activities at vital times throughout my day (AM, Noon, PM). The way my routine is set up helps me start my day strong (hot yoga), give myself an energy boost when needed (walking my dogs), and unwind from the day peacefully (nighttime routine). Having activities that bring you peace and joy scattered throughout your day and are easy to commit to is the best way to build consistency.
Tip #3: Hold Yourself Accountable
My last tip is to hold yourself accountable. I know this can be hard because we all like to give ourselves the perfect excuse as to why we weren’t able to see a commitment through. I do it sometimes, I use to do it a lot when I was starting my journey, but I’ve since stopped altogether. Why? Excuses get you absolutely nowhere! To build consistency and be consistent you have to be honest with yourself at all times.
That means being honest with yourself when you know that you chose to have a cheat day because you failed to meal plan ahead of time, and were too lazy to actively plan in the moment. Honesty should never be coupled with judgement because that will decrease the chances of you actually learning from your “mistake” and improving upon it in the future. Instead, choose to find the source of your weakness in your honesty so that you are able to build that resistance when it shows up again.
Taking the example above, failing to meal plan ahead led you to make poor nutritional choices the next day. The weakness in that honesty was that you didn’t meal plan so you decided there wouldn’t be a difference in being mindful about what you ate for the day. The reality is that you did fail to meal plan, and while it may have required more time than you wanted to give, you could still have been mindful about your food choices for the entire day.
Instead, you took the easy way out by having a cheat day, and probably telling yourself “I’ll be sure to meal plan for the next day.”
Again, no judgment but it’s important to be able to recognize the different between accountability and excuses. This is why I like to have detailed schedules for my day. I’m the type of person that can get distracted very easily, and when I’m fully invested in something I lose track of time. However, having a schedule that I can look to and be able to pair the time of day with to where I am on my routine helps me stay on track.
Which is why I always encourage those starting out on their journey to take this approach to help build consistency in the beginning, until it becomes a natural process.
I hope you found the 7-day self-care challenge to be helpful in getting you started on caring for your mind, body, and spirit and bringing them into alignment. Hopefully you will find these tips also useful in building consistency with your new schedule/routine if you found it to be a bit more challenging in the beginning. Remember self-care is 100% personal so there’s no right or wrong way to go about it. All that matters is that when you start, you remain as consistent as possible in order to move the needle in the desired direction, but only you know what that consistency is going to look like.
But always I’m here if you ever need an accountable partner 😊. Talk soon loves!
Love and Light,
Kimora
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