 Good morning. It is a Sunday morning, September 26 2021. I want to talk for three or four minutes on the idea of having some routine in your days. Hear me out. This is why routine is a good thing. This morning on my Instagram story, I had asked everybody what they're doing today, and I'm getting all kinds of cool responses, which is great. And I posted my to do list for today. Now, normally, I would not have a to do list on a Sunday, but I have a lot going on. So today, I do have a list of things to do. Then I posted a small subset of today's to do list, which is three things that I do every day. I meditate for a few minutes, I move or exercise, I play my guitar for five or five or 10 minutes every single day. It's a routine. And I acknowledged on Instagram that I hate planning and I hate routine. But at least the little routine is a good thing. And here's why. When you are in a situation where you are confronted with anxious sensations, anxiety symptoms, scary thoughts, intrusive thoughts, those worrisome things, and they make you feel uncomfortable and afraid, they put you kind of against the wall. One of the things that we make the mistake of doing is we try to deal with thinking and feeling with more thinking and feeling. So you're going to sit and scan and evaluate those symptoms and sensations, you're going to engage in an inner dialogue, you try to fight those thoughts, you're trying to prove them wrong, trying to soothe yourself. Thinking and feeling is not a good way to deal with thinking or feeling in our situation. What really is better is to activate, like behave, move, engage with the world, do, do things. You don't have to do tremendous earth shaking things, you know, life changing things, but anything little things. So since behaving is better than thinking or feeling when we get into those situations, what what can we do? How can we behave? How can we engage with the world? What should we do? When you are in that situation and feeling stressed, afraid, anxious, confused, like you're in the midst of it, it can be really hard to come up with a doing plan on the fly right that minute. So here's where routine comes into play. I had a morning routine and I still do, you can build a little afternoon routine, you can build an evening and bedtime routine. This is little easy, simple stuff. My morning routine was literally walking to the bathroom, taking care of myself, brushing my teeth, washing my hair, combing my hair, you know, combing my hair, but getting dressed, that sort of stuff. It's very simple, basic afternoon routine might be make a cup of coffee, make a cup of tea, read half a chapter of a book, even if you're struggling to do it, text a friend, walk the dog, clean something in the house, finish some emails, whatever little tiny things your bedtime routine, get undressed, put on your pajamas if you have pajamas, brush your hair, like listen to your favorite music before bed, whatever it happens to be, build little tiny micro routines, even if you hate routine, and you use those as playbooks. So when you find that you wake up in the morning and your morning anxiety is like through the roof right away, and you've got those anxious intrusive thoughts hit you the minute you open your eyes, instead of laying there and try to fight thoughts with more thoughts, feeling with more feeling, activate do. Well, I don't know what to do because I'm anxious and I can't think clearly. Aha. But now you do know what to do. You can use your predefined little basic simple morning routine, and then you execute that routine. So that's why this morning I said, having some routine is a really good thing. Even if you're like me and you hate it. So consider that behaving is better than thinking and feeling in many instances for people like us. And if you cannot think of what to behave with what to do how to activate building little micro routines that you can go to as predetermined playbooks can be super helpful. It's a simple little thing. It doesn't it's not life changing. You're not going to go and climb Everest when you're feeling anxious, but getting up and brushing your teeth or getting up and making a cup of tea or getting up and walking your dog around the garden is way better than just sitting on the sofa and trying to fight anxious sensations and thoughts with scanning and analyzing and more thinking. So that's my little three, three, four minutes for today on routine. Hope it's been helpful. If you have comments or questions, leave them below. I'll do my best to answer them and I will see you guys in the next little video. Have a good one.