Leaving your comfort zone is never easy. Regardless of whether you’re thinking of changing a profession, picking up a new hobby, or meeting new people, these kinds of changes can be frightening. On the other hand, it can feel exhilarating and liberating to try out new things.
Most people are stuck in routines that are slowly, but surely, sucking the vital forces out of them. Whether it is because their work consists of menial, repetitive tasks that require little to none creative input, or because their social lives are not as rich as they’d like them to be, more and more people report dissatisfaction with their current daily routine.
Breaking out of this vicious cycle and improving your life doesn’t have to be difficult. The new things to try don’t need to be listed as top 5 adrenaline sports activities in 2020 for you to feel new emotions and unlock the happiness dreaming within you.
Keep reading to find out the best ways in which you can improve your well-being while breaking out of your dull routine at the same time!
Diversify Your Meals
This piece of advice may sound a little uninspired and obvious, but millions of people around the world are eating the same meals every single day, for years on end. Not only is this extremely unhealthy, but it significantly contributes to establishing a routine that makes you feel like you’re living on auto-pilot.
Changing up the way you go about your food is the first, and easiest step on your path towards self-improvement. Try to include something new in your breakfast tomorrow. It can be anything, from a completely different dish to a dash of honey in the cereal bowl. The new flavors won’t only be a treat for your palate, but they’ll also encourage you to develop a hunger for experimentation in other aspects of your life.
Alter Your Work Environment
If you’re working from home, take your laptop and go to a cafe or a park. If you usually take your work to a Starbucks or a similar establishment, do the exact opposite and stay home. Your brain will need to adjust to its new surroundings and break out of the self-driving mode it’s usually in during the workweek. Similarly to diversifying the food you eat, making these changes to your work routine will put you in the driver’s seat of your life.
This advice may be more difficult (or even impossible) to implement if you’re employed at an office, restaurant, or retail store. In these cases, you should try and make other alterations to your weekday. For example, you could take a different route to reach the office or a completely new method of transportation.
Cancel Your Netflix Subscription
When looked at from the outside, the majority of people’s lives are incredibly boring. They go to work, go back home, and spend the rest of the day in front of their TVs or laptops. If you want to clear your mind of the binge-watching state, you should quit your usual entertainment right away. Cancel your Netflix, Hulu and HBO Go subscriptions and think of other things to do instead.
Pick up a book, or call up that friend of yours you’ve meant to catch up with for ages. Streaming services are great if you’re sick and bound to your bed, or if you need to keep yourself busy during a long flight. If you binge-watch every day after getting home, all you’re really doing is fast-forwarding time until you have to go to bed and repeat the soul-crushing routine all over again.
The Bottom Line
One of the most common misconceptions about dropping routines is that it has to entail picking up an extreme sport, or exerting yourself to feel alive. Well, physical activities are indeed a good way to increase your level of endorphins and, therefore, make yourself happier, but if you want to break the routine and get out of the vicious cycle of dullness and boredom, the changes you need to make don’t have to be drastic. Once you start disrupting the structure of your week in the small ways mentioned above, you’ll have more energy and brainpower to live a better, fuller life.
Maciej Grzymkowski – an avid traveler with a particular affinity for Southeast Asia. During my travels, I spend most of the time studying interpersonal relationships and how we, as humans, differ in our understanding and symbolism of love, hate, and everything in between.