Habits That Help You Escape
Time to read: 2-3 mins
Once you have established your new identity and habits to support this, the next step was identifying how I could maximise space and time for myself. This space felt critical for my own wellbeing, to recharge, think and also to escape the grind of the parenting monotony.
Now clearly just pissing off for hours upon hours isn't realistic or fair on your family, so I started a long process of working out what I needed and how to fit it in. I've outlined the process below.
Step 1: Establish what I wanted from that time. Was it alone time or just a chance to reconnect with activities I had less time to do since becoming a Dad.
Step 2: Be realistic about whether the habits helped or hindered me. It's easy to escape into an all day bender but that leaves you at a huge disadvantage when returning to the family routine, creates resentment and just isn't healthy behaviour if carried too often.
Step 3: Create new habits that help me maximise the routine I already have.
One example of a new habit that formed was during the work commute. Two days a week I would commute via train into London and in this 90 mins per day, what formed was a perfect amount of time to escape. So I started getting systematic about using this time to best impact. In the mornings I would listen to podcasts or read a book that helped me relax before work and prevented the incessant scrolling through social media. The evenings I would either listen to music and wind down from work, or later on I started to run to commute home. This had the added benefit of stacking my habits by getting my exercise done for the day + unwinding from work + without taking up anymore time. After a few weeks of doing this the habit formed and it became a really useful tactic to escape and get mental space (for more on finding time to exercise read this article).
The steps you take to build these habits don't need to be big, you are looking for daily 1% increases in happiness through simple systems that fall into your life routine seamlessly. It might be a 20min walk for a coffee on your own or just 5 minutes of sitting in the sun, all of these habits can add a lot of energy and positivity to your parent routine.
Zoe’s response
I’m a huge fan of habit stacking so very much aligned to this and have even started mirroring this with using a running backpack to take parcels to their drop off points or run errands.
It’s the guilty pleasure type activities that always seem to take a hit; Greg mentioned an all day drinking session which I can totally relate to. Boozy brunches are suddenly a lot calmer when you realize you're going home to a child that needs you and a partner who's been slightly under it all day. I think a lot of self- help / development content providers would say that this type of activity doesn’t serve you, but I actually think these types of guilty pleasure habits are important too (doesn’t have to be centered around drinking, getting a massage or a shopping day falls into the same category for me). You might not be able to do these types of activities as often, but make sure you still have something like this now and again to enjoy.
TAKEAWAYS:
Time for myself was critical. But I needed to find ways to create this every day in a sustainable way.
Forming new habits on my existing routine helped greatly. Even a work commute can become valuable.
Small incremental gains beat big wholesale changes. Look for the 1% every day.
