March 3, 2025
Run the Day
Having a healthy mindset can aid in building a better self-care schedule. While following the typical routine advice of eating healthy, getting enough sleep, staying hydrated, and exercising can do many things for you (physically and mentally), there’s more to it! Changing up your routine, even if it were to benefit you, is difficult. Adding in healthy habits when you’re not accumulated to them, is just hard, but I have a piece of advice that helps me do it!
The other day, my friend sent me a picture at eight in the morning of the sourdough donuts she just made. Eight a.m. We’re second shifters, and we get done between 9 p.m. and midnight. How did this woman manage waking up and baking sourdough donuts before eight? So, I asked her just how she did that. Her answer?
Having an incentive.
Motivation.
For my friend, she loves the time alone. She is either reading or baking before her son wakes up and after her husband leaves for work. Her time alone is her incentive. I think that has to be the biggest piece of advice to help maintain a positive mindset: giving yourself a reason to keep going. A reason to not give up.
Incentives are hard to come by, especially when you’re simply struggling to get out ofbed in the morning. And trust me, I’m there some days, too. But what gets me up on those mornings? My dog (pictured above), who just wants to spend some time with me, to go on a walk or play. So, some mornings, my incentive is as little making sure I spend some time with her while enjoying my morning coffee.
Sometimes, there are bigger ones. My friend is in the process of starting her own sourdough business (starting with the options of cookies, donuts, and bagels), so she needs to get up and get baking if she wants her business to be successful. And for me, I want to have a shelf dedicated to my own work when I’m old and my grandkids run around me. If I want that, I gotta get a move on writing!
There’s one motivational quote that I think fits the idea of having an incentive to keep going pretty fantastically:
“Either you run the day or the day runs you.” —Jim Roh