Why Powerful Habits are Like Finding Your Way in the Dark With No Torch

How effective routines can lead to empowering habits

Living in rural France on the edge of the woods was magical.

I was living at the end of one track and at the beginning of another. Strictly speaking, they were one single track but one section was in such bad condition that even a tractor couldn’t drive right through.

So there was no passing traffic whatsoever. And it was much more practical to get around by foot than to ever bother getting in the car to go anywhere in the immediate locality.

I would go and visit friends by taking paths through the woods, since the driveable trackways to get to their places were that much longer in distance.

My friends and I always ate dinner together and so we were always walking those paths through the woods. We would sit and chat until late and then wander back along those paths through the woods to go home and sleep.

It wasn’t unusual for me to forget to bring a torch with me when I went out in the evening, or for my torch battery to have run out. So the next best thing was the light from my phone screen. It was in the days before phones had inbuilt torches so I made do with the mediocre light I could get.

That was until I started to realise that I didn’t need anything to light my way. My memory and my body worked together to enable me to know exactly where to place my feet in the pitch black of night and I felt empowered and in tune with the land.

It’s one thing to become so comfortable with your routines and habits that you don’t need to even question anything. It’s another when you are thrown out of those habits.

After spending more than two months back in England over the summer, I returned to my rural pad in France and resumed my old routines. The nights had drawn in and now there was more scope for those dark walks through the woods.

But my body and brain had forgotten the paths and I no longer knew where to place my feet as I walked. I began stumbling on uneven, rocky terrain, and, once, I slipped down a steep bank.

This was not what I expected and I feared I had lost my connection with the land.

The truth was that I had just lost the habit.

Within a few weeks, I was back to knowing every twist and turn in that path without being able to see a thing and there had been nothing to worry about.

Losing any habit is like fumbling and tripping through the dark.

We all do it.

We establish some great habits — eating habits, exercising habits, creative habits, reading habits, writing habits, skill-building habits — and then we let them go momentarily, only to find that we struggle to resume them.

And the fact is that when we start to drop habits like these, it can be much harder than just going for walks in the dark through the woods to pick them up again.

Life is full of distractions and changes, and they aren’t always welcome.

During 2020, I established a great morning exercise routine that quickly became habit.

No one else was up and no one needed anything, because no one had to do anything at any particular time. Well, no one except for me.

I still had zoom appointments but had no one else’s timetable to pander to, other than when my son needed his meals. That was it.

I loved that about lockdown. I really did. I could have spent the rest of my life not having to spend my mornings making packed lunches and doing the school run but sadly (for my lovely routine, at least) the world started up again.

I worked really hard to keep that morning exercise habit even after the kids went back to school and I did pretty well until other changes happened in my life and I could no longer do everything.

Today, it’s my writing habit. I find myself struggling to write anywhere near as much as I was doing a few months back.

Summer came and turned life on its head. I knew it was going to happen and so, at the time, I was happy enough to let my writing go a little. After all, I would get back into my routines again soon enough.

September arrived and the kids returned to school and I could resume my old routines and habits. On certain days of the week I have less time for writing and on others I have more.

In the past, on a day on which I had several hours in one block to just write, I could easily knock out three essays of my own and edit a bunch of others. Today, I am struggling to finish one.

The mornings have been turned inside out. Whereas previously I had the kitchen to myself between 6 and 7 am, a time filled with silence when I could make a coffee and sit at my laptop undisturbed, and write, the teenagers are now using that hour to get ready for school.

With an extra person in the house — my nephew who has come to live with us — my routines have all shifted. And with the two teenagers doing some half days at college rather than five full days per week, there’s more distraction.

They come in and spend some time telling me about their day. I might then end up eating lunch with them rather than eating while I keep at my own stuff. As a result, the day gets all the more broken up, rather than the long, focused time I was used to before.

The fact is my old writing habits are gone and I am struggling to establish new ones.

Meanwhile, I am establishing better habits in the home. Again, as a result of my nephew’s arrival, I have become more disciplined at staying on top of the housework, the shopping, and at making sure meals are served early and cleaned up after in good time.

More people means more potential mess or build-up of work, and that would be more detrimental to my state of mind and creativity.

The fact is that I have never found it so easy to get into such a good habit when it comes to keeping an orderly home. But if I am honest, it’s because my creative spirit would always win over.

My writing habit was so well-oiled that I would often just write and leave the housework and the cooking. Or, before the evening passed by completely, I would quickly prepare a meal that needed barely any attention whatsoever.

And then the washing up would be left until the morning.

I remember spending a few months staying with a boyfriend in Glastonbury, Somerset.

If you don’t know about Glastonbury, think crystal shops, Arthurian legends, magic, tarot cards, astrology, and lots of artists and musicians, and you will get the picture.

It was before I had any children of my own but was helping out with a group for home-educated kids. The general ethos of the parents was a child-led approach to education and, well, everything.

Let the children decide what they want to eat, what they want to learn, and how to sort out major fights with their friends with no adult intervention. You take a guess at how well these principals played out practically.

One of the mothers, with whom I became good friends after joining a band she formed for a one-off performance, told me how she believed that routines are very bad for anyone and that she refused to instil any notion of a routine into her daughter’s life.

She believed that when you make anything habitual, it then can lead to obsessive behaviour and inflexibility.

Needless to say, these poor kids had no idea how to deduce what the “right” thing to do was when two of them started squabbling to the point of tears over a toy, or how to self-regulate and self-discipline.

Psychologists Agree That Routines are Vital to Mental Health

There are many scholarly articles praising the power of a daily routine for both physical and mental health as a result of establishing good habits.

Regular bed time routines will lead to healthy sleep habits.

Routines for getting up and dressed in the morning can reduce the need to make decisions, thus eliminating potential stress.

Routine mealtimes and routine inclusion of certain food types lead to healthy eating habits and healthy attitudes towards food.

Generally, routines lead us to living a happier life.

“They help us cope with change, create healthy habits, improve interpersonal relationships, and reduce stress. Studies have shown that daily routines have far-reaching mental health benefits, from alleviating bipolar disorder and preventing substance abuse to managing the symptoms of other mental disorders.” — Therapy Group of NYC

Good Routines = Powerful Habits

It seems that a routine can be a surprisingly simple effort to establish and yet have dramatic impact on our lives.

While I am effectively creating healthy routines and habits when it comes to the cleanliness and orderly running of my home, when it comes to my writing, I need to do better.

But it may be far simpler to establish than I realise.

Perhaps waking ten minutes earlier every morning to use the kitchen and thus avoid getting caught in conversation, in order to regain my 6 am writing time.

Or creating meal prep routines that everyone will play a part in, giving me time to focus on my own creative endeavours rather than the household tasks.

Tiny efforts can lead to powerful results.

A bit like walking sure-footed through the dark woods at night without the need for a torch.

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