Artists’ Rituals & Routines

Laura

0:00
Why should we have rituals or routines? How can they benefit us? Are there rituals and routines that can be destructive or hold us back?

Nikki

0:08
I think about this a lot. I plan my ideal morning or day or week, all the time. Sticking to it is another story altogether.

Laura

0:18
Okay, let’s dig into this.

Laura

0:26
Hi, this is Laura.

Nikki

0:27
And this is Nikki with the Startist Society, inspiring you to stop getting in your own way and start building an art biz and life that you love.

Laura

0:36
We are artists who believe strongly in the power of community, accountability, following your intuition, taking small actionable steps and breaking down the barriers of fear and procrastination that keep you stuck.

Nikki

0:50
Follow along with us on our creative business journey as we encourage you on yours.

Laura

0:57
I think of rituals and routines much like habits, they can be really positive, or they can hold you back. And I’m working to replace some of my negative habits with more positive routines.

Nikki

1:09
Rituals and routines can reduce anxiety and stress, they can help you sleep better, they can help you be more productive, they can help provide clarity and a whole lot more. There’s three main types of rituals and routines that we’re going to talk about today.

Laura

1:25
Okay.

Nikki

1:26
Morning routines, evening routines and creative rituals.

Laura

1:31
From a positive perspective, I like to think that rituals and routines can help us focus. They kind of clear our energy and space so that we can focus on our next priority, and sort of let go of anything else that’s filling up our minds. So let’s start off with morning routines.

Nikki

1:50
Okay, Laura, what does your ideal morning routine look like?

Laura

1:54
Alright, so my ideal morning routine in the perfect magical unicorn world.

Nikki

2:00
Which we live in all the time.

Laura

2:02
Yes, we do. It would be waking up, stretching, having a little brief yoga session, maybe 10 minutes of meditation, followed by some exercise and walking my dog, then taking a shower and having some, either some water or tea or a green smoothie to help wake me up and then setting an intention for the day, so I can approach the day and life from a place of possibility. So I would want to write some morning pages.

Nikki

2:33
And morning pages, for those who aren’t familiar are an exercise from Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way. And it’s basically the daily practice of writing three pages longhand of whatever is in your head first thing in the morning. Basically, it’s a brain dump.

Laura

2:49
Right.

Nikki

2:49
You don’t edit yourself, you don’t even really need to look at it again. You just get all that crap out of your head first thing in the morning.

Laura

2:56
Yeah. And so I love the idea of those. And then writing in my Start Today journal, which is a journal that has some dreams and goals and it’s sort of writing out things as if they’d already happened to sort of, you might call it a little bit of the law of attraction woowoo stuff, but I think it’s really just setting your mindset towards towards those things. And then also reviewing the priority list and the schedule that I had completely set the night before, so that I could just be ready to get started.

Nikki

3:29
Okay, so that’s your ideal morning routine, what does your real morning routine look like?

Laura

3:35
Okay, in reality, if I have an alarm set, I hit snooze, maybe four to five times, possibly more. I grab my phone before I even get out of bed. I mean, I check email, Instagram, Facebook notifications, and then eventually I get up and decide if it’s worth taking a shower that day. Because you know, we’re in a pandemic after all.

Nikki

4:00
And let’s face it, it usually is not worth taking a shower.

Laura

4:07
You do the sniff test and then you move on. I walk the dog until he goes number two and then I briskly walk him back into the house, which is usually like five minutes, the poor guy. And then I feel disorganized and I sit around and try to figure out what to start working on first. So I frequently just go back to checking email, Facebook and Instagram again.

Nikki

4:30
Yeah, so your your ideal morning routine sounds great. But it’s a lot to expect to move to that perfect scenario from where you are now. So why don’t we see what you can compromise with that’s in between the two extremes.

Laura

4:48
Okay, so realistically, I could remove my phone from my bedroom. And if I need an alarm, I can just set my Alexa downstairs to go off and then I have to physically get out of bed and go over to the the stairwell and holler downstairs to turn it off.

Nikki

5:08
You can you can hear Alexa from upstairs when she’s downstairs?

Laura

5:11
Yes, well, I’m a super light sleeper, so I wake up from anything but yeah, definitely hear it. Okay. So once I’m physically up, I can just make the commitment to myself that I’m not going to go lay back down.

Nikki

5:24
Does that work for you?

Laura

5:26
Sometimes.

Nikki

5:28
Okay, so then what? Are you frantically running downstairs to pick up your phone?

Laura

5:33
Probably. But I think I can check just to make sure that there were no urgent family phone calls, and then commit to setting it aside for 30 minutes.

Nikki

5:43
And would that work for you? Or would you just start mindlessly scrolling once you’ve picked it up?

Laura

5:48
I think I could make that work. I’m not one for exercising early in the morning. I prefer to do that in the evenings. But I like the idea of setting that phone aside and then taking five minutes to stretch and doing maybe a 5 to 10 minute meditation. And there are like plenty of great guided meditations available…

Nikki

6:07
Which means you’re not setting the phone aside at all. But you’re using it for good and not evil.

Laura

6:13
Yes. Okay, true, true. Yeah, touche. Okay, so I but I love Sounds True has some great ones, and I use Hoopla a lot for that, which I’ve mentioned before, it’s a great app that my Dallas public library system offers woohoo, yay, library.

Nikki

6:28
When is the Dallas Public Library gonna sponsor this podcast?

Laura

6:31
I don’t know, they need to soon because we give them a lot of free advertising, don’t we? So then I can walk the dog and take a quick shower.

Nikki

6:40
And you don’t have to do a big workout. Just the little bit of yoga and the walking the dog, It’s just helpful to move your body.

Laura

6:47
Yeah, I agree completely. And then I can still do a larger workout if I want to later in the day. But…

Nikki

6:54
If I want to.

Laura

6:55
If I want to. I’m not a big primper, so in the morning, it probably takes me 10 minutes to get ready. And I likely I likely won’t sit and write three morning pages though, to be honest.

Nikki

7:08
Right. But if that’s something that you’d like to do, but don’t think you have the time or patience for, there’s other ways that you could kind of do it. I know that the ideal way is to write it out longhand. But I would say something’s better than nothing. So maybe you consider dictating those random thoughts, that brain dump, dictating it into your phone while you’re walking your dog or doing other parts of your morning routine.

Laura

7:32
Okay, so we’re not actually ditching the phone anymore, but we’re using it in a positive way.

Nikki

7:38
Yes, absolutely. Yes. As a tool, not a distraction.

Laura

7:43
As a tool, not a distraction. That’s a good way to put it. So I do like the idea of sitting down after the walk and reviewing my top three list of things that need to get done that day. And to set an intention at the same time. It helps sometimes to even give myself a little mantra, like “everything today will be full of ease” that I can repeat to myself a couple times because then I can approach things from that place. I know it sounds silly, but I find it can really make a difference. And taking a few minutes to write down in my Start Today journal. So that journal I mentioned before it has it has a list of 10 dreams that you already made happen, like your writing as if they already happened in the now. So it’s a little bit of law of attraction, a little bit of woowoo

Nikki

8:31
10 dreams every day. That seems like a lot of dreams.

Laura

8:34
Well, I like to think big Nikki.

Nikki

8:38
Okay.

Laura

8:40
Now, this is much easier to attain when I’m building my own schedule. It’s a little bit harder when you’re bound by external meetings and obligations in a day job, for example, or perhaps it’s your family and your children. So when you’re dealing with those, it gets a little bit harder to to manage that type of morning.

Nikki

9:00
It sounds exhausting to me even when you don’t have to report to someone else.

Laura

9:05
Okay, Nikki, well tell me about what your ideal morning routine looks like.

Nikki

9:10
Okay, so I have a list of things that I’d really like to do. But that adds up to probably half a day. So it’s not likely to be practical for me to do all of this and actually get my work done. But in an ideal world, here’s what I’d like to do. First, morning pages, right? Then I’d really like to start meditating, even if it’s just five minutes in the morning. I’d also like to read. I used to read all the time and I just, I don’t allow myself the time anymore. I feel it’s too indulgent. But I want to learn something every day, you know. So I feel like if I built that in as, even if it’s just a couple pages, a chapter… nonfiction, maybe an artist’s biography or something like that, I’d like to start the day learning something.

Laura

10:06
Got it.

Nikki

10:08
Then I’d like to sit down with my coffee and a sketchbook and just do some warm up sketches, get the creative juices flowing, get some of the ideas of things that I’ve thought about overnight, or dreams that I’ve had, get those out of my head and onto paper. And exercise. Really, this is not something I want to do at all ever. It’s something I feel like I should do. And then…

Laura

10:38
We all feel that way, by the way.

Nikki

10:39
I know. But some people actually want to do it.

Laura

10:42
Okay, well, not you and I.

Nikki

10:44
No. But my sister wants to exercise.

Laura

10:49
I know some people like that too. I take it right. You’re right. You’re right.

Nikki

10:51
There are some people. They’re crazy. But…

Laura

10:54
Morning workout fans, we still love you.

Nikki

10:56
Yes, yes, Sandi, I love you anyway. Okay, then I’d like to plan my day. Or hopefully I’ve already planned it the night before, or ideally on Sunday for the whole following week. Well, really, in that perfect world, I’d never have to plan my day. And I would just work on whatever I felt like working on.

Laura

11:17
But as a human being, that’s probably not gonna happen.

Nikki

11:21
Yeah, that’s true. And currently, what I really do, instead of that beautifully curated list of tasks is, I grab my phone before I even get out of bed, and I check my email, which usually puts me right into that reactive mode instead of a creative mode. It’s all the work that needs to be done that day. Then I roll out of bed, quickly make some coffee and immediately start working on client work. I don’t even walk my dogs like you do, because I have a fenced yard that I’m still paying for. I just tossed them outside in it.

Laura

11:58
Okay, given that what would be a realistic compromise between these two scenarios for you?

Nikki

12:04
Well, like you, I think it would be wise of me not to have my phone right by my bed, so that I’m more likely to actually get up when I wake up and not just lie in bed scrolling on my phone.

Laura

12:18
I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Nikki

12:19
Yeah, right. I’m not trying to stick to a certain time of waking up. I mean, I’m not as much of a night owl as you are Laura. But I’m also totally not a morning person. I tend to wake up anywhere between 8 and 10am. But I usually stay in bed on my phone as long as my bladder will let me. But really, I should leave my phone charging on my desk, not next to the bed. And then I could actually spend a few minutes when I wake up before I get up doing some meditation or reading during the time that I’m usually scrolling on the phone.

Laura

12:52
Yep.

Nikki

12:53
And then I could get up, make my coffee, let the dogs out and sit down with my coffee and do morning pages. Even if I don’t take the time to do three full pages, I feel like even if I just did five minutes of a brain dump in the morning, that would be awesome. Right?

Laura

13:07
Right.

Laura

13:07
And then one thing that I’ve done periodically, which works for me is to kind of combine my sketchbook time in the morning with morning pages. Instead of just writing out longhand, I can do a combination of a brain dump of what’s going through my mind, it’ll be a combination of words and images.

Laura

13:26
So it’s kind of like an art journaling version of them.

Nikki

13:29
Exactly.

Laura

13:30
Now, I noticed Nikki, you didn’t really mention the word exercise anywhere in there.

Nikki

13:35
Ah, damn it. I was hoping you wouldn’t notice that. So I actually enjoy riding my bike, when someone kind of makes me do it. It’s the getting it out and starting it that I dread. But I actually like riding it. So if I were smart, I’d find a cycling buddy that has as bizarre schedule as I have to ride with.

Laura

13:57
Well, if I lived in Paducah, I would be your cycling buddy.

Nikki

14:00
Awesome.

Laura

14:01
I actually own a road bike, and I don’t think it’s even seen a bike path in the last two years.

Nikki

14:06
Okay, Laura. Well, when do you move?

Laura

14:09
I’m not sure Paducah could handle me.

Nikki

14:13
Oh, you’re under estimating Paducah. It can totally handle you. If it can handle me, it can handle you. But anyway, so I even bought a stationary bike with a laptop desk on it thinking that I use it in the morning when checking my email and planning my day. But really, it makes a nice bookshelf and clothes rack. So yeah, I haven’t figured out the exercise part yet.

Laura

14:40
Well, I’ll say I’m personally going to commit to starting a new non-frantic morning routine that add some healthier habits into my morning and eliminates the bad scrolling phone habits that I currently have.

Nikki

14:52
So are you actually going to leave your phone downstairs?

Laura

14:55
Well, I’ll stick it in my bathroom upstairs so it’s not easily accessible. And Arianna Huffington would be so proud.

Nikki

15:02
Oh, she really would. Okay, so what can I commit to?

Laura

15:07
Please don’t say drinking bourbon every morning.

Nikki

15:11
I never put bourbon in my coffee before 11am. Okay, but seriously, I will commit to leaving my phone at my desk and not bringing it to bed. And trying not to check my email until I after I’ve done a few of the healthier habits for my list. Does that sound reasonable?

Laura

15:30
I think so. Yeah, there’s a book called My Morning Ritual, How Successful People Start Every Day Inspired.

Nikki

15:38
Okay.

Laura

15:38
And the one common thread seems to be that successful people start their day doing something personal that is unrelated to their job. So it’s kind of ensuring that you start your day off in the best mental state possible. So I think our plans will help with that.

Nikki

15:54
I sure hope so. And I think it’s important, as we’ve learned from some of the books we’ve mentioned before about forming good habits, don’t try to change everything all at once, or you’re really just setting yourself up for failure. Pick one habit to break and one new one to form and make them second nature before you stack on new habits.

Laura

16:16
Yeah, that makes sense. Now, we’ve talked about morning routines here. But there are also other types of routines that can be really beneficial in your day, for example, evening routines before you go to bed or creative rituals before you begin creating.

Nikki

16:30
Awesome, so what should we address first?

Laura

16:33
Let’s talk about evening routines.

Nikki

16:34
Okay.

Laura

16:35
Here are a few things that I’ve used in the past that I find helpful. So in my ideal evening world, I’ll sit down and I’ll write in a gratitude journal, and I’ll write five things that I’m thankful about from that day. Another is setting my top three things to get accomplished for the following day. so I won’t have to use brain power in the morning for those since I’m not a morning person.

Nikki

16:59
And have no brain power.

Laura

17:01
And have no brain power, at least at that time of day. The third is reading a chapter or two have a really good book, you know, having that chance to escape or that chance to learn something new, you had mentioned learning and I love learning every day as well. So that’s an opportunity to do that. And then having some evening, no-caffeine tea, like a chamomile tea, and then maybe a salt bath to relax and unwind. And then putting away those devices and all the screens before I end up in the bedroom, so that I’m not staring at those and then triggering all those things that does in your head that keeps you from sleeping.

Nikki

17:41
Okay, so that sounds like a lovely, ideal evening. But in reality, what are you currently doing?

Laura

17:48
Okay, here’s the reality. In reality, I wash my face, brush and floss my teeth. Well definitely brush my teeth. I don’t always floss. I drink some water.

Nikki

17:58
Okay, so those are good habits.

Laura

18:00
Those are good habits.

Nikki

18:01
We’ve got a couple of those.

Laura

18:02
Then I binge watch just one more episode of whatever series I’m into at the moment.

Nikki

18:08
Just how many more episodes?

Laura

18:10
Well, we’re gonna call it one.

Nikki

18:12
Okay. We can call it that.

Laura

18:16
I keep a gratitude journal on my coffee table and think about how I should have filled it out when I’m sitting in bed. And then I take my phone to bed. And when I don’t fall asleep right away, which happens pretty frequently for me, I pick it up and I start scrolling, which means I’m going to be down some rabbit hole for the next hour and a half glued to my screen instead of sleeping.

Nikki

18:37
All right, so how can we move the reality list closer to your ideal evening routine. We already talked about leaving the phone in the bathroom. So that part is taken care of, theoretically.

Laura

18:48
Theoretically, that that would be huge. But I also think that this is where habit stacking comes into play. So I already wash my face, brush my teeth without really thinking about it. So maybe I can add some habits on to that like right after I brush my teeth, I go write in my gratitude journal that will be sitting right there on the nightstand.

Nikki

19:08
After you floss.

Laura

19:10
After I floss. You know, I love this one. Since we’re talking about habit stacking. I loved this from a book that I recently read, they were saying that you should just floss one tooth. That’s your goal. Because once you’ve gotten the floss out and you’re flossing, one tooth, you can’t help but floss all the others, right? It’s just a natural progression. You’re not gonna stop at one.

Nikki

19:30
Again, theoretically. All right, so…

Laura

19:34
So the key to maintaining these routines is to make them accessible. So for example, set that gratitude journal with a pen on your nightstand or have a dedicated power station in your bathroom for your phone.

Nikki

19:48
Okay, that sounds like a great start.

Laura

19:50
How about you Nikki? What does your ideal evening routine look like?

Nikki

19:54
Well, what I would ideally like to do is to stop eating and drinking three hours before bed. Which would be easier if I had a set bedtime, which I don’t. I’d like to take a warm bath every night and spend some time reading a book in the tub. I mentioned reading in the morning as a time to learn something new. But what I’d really like to do is in the evening, read some fiction that is just total escape from work and all the things that I’m actually trying to learn. So it’s just a whole different feeling.

Laura

20:26
Well it helps you unwind your brain from the day, right.

Nikki

20:29
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And then I’d like to stretch my achy body after sitting at the computer all day, and then kind of loosening it up a little by that warm bath, brush and floss my teeth.

Laura

20:42
And floss.

Nikki

20:43
And floss.

Laura

20:44
At least one tooth.

Nikki

20:45
At least.. no I’m gonna, I’m gonna do two or three. And then ideally, I’d like to do a nice skincare routine with cleanser and toner and serum and other words like that.

Laura

21:01
Wow, that’s fancy.

Nikki

21:02
Yeah, it’s fancy, but I’m old as fuck. And my eyes are puffy all the time. So then I’d like to get in bed at a reasonable hour and either read a little more or fall asleep to like a guided meditation.

Laura

21:21
Okay, so what do you actually do Nikki?

Nikki

21:23
Oh, well, what I actually do is snack all evening while I’m working until I can’t focus on the screen anymore. And then when I get up to get ready for bed, I take something for the reflux I know I’m going to have because I’m lying down 20 minutes after I just ate something. I brush my teeth really quickly. I won’t go to bed without brushing, but I can’t promise that I always do that full two recommended minutes. And I don’t floss as regularly as I need to. And then I take my combination of melatonin and Benadryl that help me fall asleep and stay asleep. Which I probably wouldn’t need to do if I meditated instead of just working until I collapse and then scroll on my phone. And then as I get in bed, I’m probably watching something mindless on TV while chatting on my phone or playing a stupid game.

Laura

22:23
Okay, so Nikki, what changes could you realistically implement in your evening routine to adjust this a little bit closer to your ideal?

Nikki

22:30
Become an entirely different person?

Laura

22:34
Aside from that.

Nikki

22:35
Okay, well, that’s probably not realistic. So I already mentioned leaving my phone at my desk when I quit working. Mm hmm. I should also quit working before I’m physically and mentally unable to focus. That would give me time to unwind by, if I’m going to watch something on TV, doing it mindfully instead of mindlessly. Or preferably reading some fiction to get me away from thinking about work right before I go to bed.

Laura

23:02
That sounds like a good plan. There’s there’s one other type of routine we should talk about today. And that is creative routines or creative rituals. And I don’t know about you, but sometimes it’s hard to switch on the flow of creativity from whatever is going on in your life in that moment.

Nikki

23:22
Well, ideally, I’d like that creativity to be my life.

Laura

23:26
Wouldn’t we all?

Nikki

23:27
Yeah, but as we talked about, in the episode we just did about finding time, in practice it’s something that I have to squeeze in.

Laura

23:35
Yeah, in reality, we have to find some sort of balance. And I find that more meditative practices can really help me sort of reset before starting a creative project. So for example, here’s some things that I’ve done to help clear my mind in the past. One would be burning sage to clear out bad energy and yes, I know that’s woo-woo Nikki. But I can find that that can be helpful or blaring my favorite music playlist into headphones and dancing along.

Nikki

24:07
Alright.

Laura

24:08
Again, moving your body getting free of you know, whatever that stagnant energy is. It could be playing an instrument like a piano or a steel drum or a thumb piano.

Nikki

24:22
That’s lovely.

Laura

24:23
Wasn’t that lovely? Just anything to help you reset and also clearing off my workspace to start fresh. Now something I want to stop doing is looking at other people’s work before creating my own and limiting my exposure to social media so that I’m not influenced by other people’s work, but I’m creating from a space and a place that is authentically me.

Nikki

24:49
Right?

Laura

24:50
How about you, Nikki?

Nikki

24:51
Those mostly sound great. However, I am not at all woo-woo so I’m not going to sage my space, but I definitely do have things I like to do to get into that studio feeling.

Laura

25:04
Okay, like what?

Nikki

25:05
Well, definitely putting on some music. It’s almost always for me, a woman singer songwriter. In fact, I have an entire series of encaustic pieces that I did for a particular show that was created to the music of Cat Power.

Laura

25:18
Cool.

Nikki

25:19
I also like to clean off my desk so I have a clear workspace and make sure that all of the things I want to use are within an easy arm’s reach.

Laura

25:29
Awesome.

Nikki

25:29
I like to have a drink ready, depending on the time of day, it might be coffee, or it might be wine or bourbon. And always water. I like to light a candle or burn some incense or oil in my oil burner – sandalwood, if at all possible, not for any woowoo properties, but just for mood and for just feeling good in the space.

Laura

25:51
I love doing that too, actually.

Nikki

25:53
And I’ll keep my phone nearby because I’m probably playing music on it. And I want to be able to look up things that pop into my head as I’m working. But I will turn off notifications.

Laura

26:03
Yes. And for anybody who doesn’t know there is a way on your phone just to flip a switch and it’ll turn off all the notifications at once. So that you can you can do that and then when you’re ready, you can flip them back on. So those are all great practices to have to help you get in the flow. Nikki, there’s a cool book you mentioned to me the other day that has some examples of famous artist rituals. Can you share more with us about that.

Nikki

26:27
Yeah, of course. So the book is called Daily Rituals, How Artists work by Mason Currey. And it actually has blurbs about the creative and working rituals and habits of visual artists, writers, philosophers, filmmakers, composers, even scientists and their routines vary widely. Unlike what you read about what successful people do, who almost always recommend waking up earlier… There are definitely some creative people who are early risers with healthy routines. But you’ll find a lot of artists with late night rituals and a lot of habits that most would consider unhealthy.

Laura

27:09
You mean like drinking bourbon?

Nikki

27:11
Oh, come on, Laura, you know, I talk about it more than I actually do it, right? At least that’s what I tell myself. Anyway, I made note of just a few different artists from this book and what their daily rituals are. So first up was Andy Warhol, who was definitely unconventional. But he had an interesting self-imposed accountability practice. Each weekday morning, he woke up and had a phone call with his friend, Pat Hackett, around 9am, to dictate the previous day’s events. It started for him as a way of tracking expenses for his taxes. He would just list off what he spent the previous day. But it became kind of his version of morning pages where he would just brain dump to his poor friend.

Laura

28:00
Yeah, I don’t think that that’s the most useful example to follow. Can you imagine the hundreds, if not thousands of tapes that exist of all that mumbo jumbo?

Nikki

28:09
Well, I mean, it’s probably not the most useful, but I found the accountability factor interesting. So another more useful or healthy practice was what Georgia O’Keeffe did. So she would get up with the sun, build a fire, brew some tea, and then get back into bed to watch the sunrise.

Laura

28:30
Nice.

Nikki

28:31
Then she’d go on a half hour walk through the New Mexico desert. And then she’d come back and have breakfast at 7am and then spend the day in the studio.

Laura

28:40
I’m sure that gave her lots of creative inspiration.

Nikki

28:43
Well, she got lots of creative inspiration in between killing rattlesnakes with a stick on her walks.

Laura

28:49
Yikes. Okay, maybe I changed my mind about that one. I’d just stick to watching the desert from bed.

Nikki

28:55
That sounds like more fun to me, too. Although I’m thinking of the snake skins and skeletons…

Laura

29:01
Oh, no, no, no.

Nikki

29:05
All right, so another one that I that I really liked Salvador Dali woke up with his own version of a gratitude or self-care practice. Okay, he wrote that, “Every morning upon awakening, I experience a supreme pleasure, that of being Salvador Dali. And I asked myself wonderstruck, what prodigious thing will he do today, this Salvador Dali?

Laura

29:32
Wow. Arrogant much?

Nikki

29:34
Well, nobody can accuse him of being self-deprecating.

Laura

29:38
That’s for sure. I’m just gonna start talking about myself in the third person, just so you know.

Nikki

29:42
Okay. Well, what would Laura Griffin do?

Laura

29:44
Well, Laura would… Okay, Nikki. So what are our key takeaways from this episode?

Nikki

29:52
All right. First, I’d say that whether or not we plan specific routines, we all have them and they can either be healthy and helpful or unhealthy and actually hinder our creative work. Right?

Laura

30:06
Right.

Nikki

30:06
So we should do our best to try to break some of the bad habits and adopt some healthier routines.

Laura

30:12
Yeah, and don’t try to change all of your routines or habits at once. Try habit stacking and make it easier for yourself by adding one small thing at a time until it becomes second nature.

Nikki

30:23
Yeah, and I’d say finally, don’t beat yourself up for not being perfect at it every time. It takes a while to break bad habits and form new healthier ones. And it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Just striving for moving in the right direction can be really good.

Laura

30:39
I agree. Now it’s your turn. Share with us about your morning, evening and creative routines. Is there a practice that you have that you find particularly helpful? Are there bad habits you’re trying to break? And do you want an accountability partner to assist you with those? Provide your feedback in our Startist Society Facebook group, and let’s help each other out.

Nikki

31:02
Ratings and reviews help Startists like you find the podcast and they keep us motivated and excited to record more episodes and share our experiences with you. So please consider leaving us a five star rating and a review that we might just share with our listeners. If you do grab a screenshot and go to startistsociety.com/reviews and fill out the form to share it with us.

Laura

31:26
You can also find the show notes for today’s episode at startistsociety.com/routines. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week.