Day 7 Implementation: Evening Routine

Home Sweet Home!

Sebastian Michaels emphasizes the importance of having a good morning routine to start your day in the direction of what you want to create. I agree completely.

However, what I am finding even more important is my Evening Routine. Before this 21days … plus 9 days of implementation … program, my evening routine was a typical email-facebook cycle until time to go to bed, leaving dishes in the kitchen sink and bits of clutter here and there. Nothing dramatic, but leaving about 20-30 minutes of busy work to be done before starting my “real” day the next morning.

Now, I realize that my evening routine is critical for protecting my morning creative energies and setting up the next day. My evening routine starts at 9:00 pm with a phone alert to update my "Way of Life" app and shut down my computer. That gives me an untethered-to-technology hour to wind down, read, relax and get ready for sleep.

To support both morning and evening routines, I have created a two-sided refrigerator card … one side for the morning routine, one side for evening. In the evening, after I finish cleaning the kitchen, clearing clutter, putting my gratitude journal on the table where I sit with my morning coffee, and laying out my yoga mat on the floor, I turn the card over to Morning Routine so I will be ready for the new day.

I’ve always thought I must be a bit simple-minded. I definitely need simple routines. My fridge card gives me the reminders I need to do mundane, but important, things like charging batteries and asking myself every day what I truly want to create.

My first husband once told me I had no bad habits. I thought, “how nice …” until he continued, “you have no bad habits … you have no good habits … you have no habits.” It took me awhile to realize I was driving his engineer-self crazy with my unstructured approach to life.

It took me even longer to realize I was driving myself a little crazy, also. Now I know that I’ll always find it easy to break habits as I go wandering off the path following a bright blip on the horizon. That’s okay. With my Evening/Morning Routine card, I have a gentle spirit sitting on my shoulder saying, “Come back … wake-up … create the life you want."

One of the fun things I’ve been doing is going back through old art rejects and applying new tools to them. “Home Sweet Home!” above comes from a photo of an abandoned house found in Arkansas. I never could quite get the image to work … but, now I have a new toy box and I think this one is fun. 

 

This post was prompted by Sebastian Michaels' "21 Days to Creative Living" and "Photoshop Artistry" programs. More information here.