RECLAIM YOUR ROUTINES: 🔄 Why “Getting Back on Track” Isn’t Working
We hear so much about creating the perfect routine, but we rarely talk about the grief that surfaces when a routine that once made us feel like ourselves no longer fits. Brittany calls this routine grief. Sometimes we keep trying to recreate an old schedule because we are trying to recover the woman who once lived inside it. In this episode, Brittany shares how opening Crave changed the conditions surrounding her long-held morning routine, why forcing herself to remain the "win the morning" girl left her depleted, and what happened when she finally built support for the woman who had to live that day.
In this post we'll chat through the identity hidden inside our routines; why "getting back on track" may be sending us toward a life that no longer exists; how to recognize what has changed without turning it into criticism; what support the current season actually requires; and three simple questions for rebuilding one rhythm that fits now.
LET'S DIVE IN. 🖤
Hey hey friend. Welcome back to The Self Care Sisterhood and to the final month of a summer series I’ve been sharing called RECLAIM YOUR SUMMER. I’m so glad you’re here.
Each month in the series I’ve given us a bigger theme that overarchers each weekly theme and this month is all about rooting and rising. We’re rooting into what matters, building support around the lives we’re actually living, and allowing those choices to shape the way we rise into our best selves.
Last week, we reclaimed our focus and talked about the willingness to decide what isn’t going to receive our attention right now. Today, we’re looking at how we build support around what we chose.
And that’s where RECLAIMING YOUR ROUTINES comes in.
And whether you’ve been with me throughout this entire series or this is the first episode that found you, you are joining us at exactly the right time. We are entering that part of the year when so many of us begin craving a little more structure. Summer isn’t quite over, but school is on the horizon, calendars are begining to fill, and we can feel the pull toward a new season.
This is usually when we start saying things like, “I need to get back into a routine. I need to get back on track. I need to get back to normal.”
But what if “back” isn’t actually where we need to go?
Because I don’t want to give you another episode about the perfect morning routine or the five habits you need to follow to finally become consistent. We have plenty of those. We know how to search for someone else’s schedule, buy the new planner, create the checklist, and convince ourselves that this time we’re going to follow it perfectly.
I want to talk about the deeper work underneath all of that.
I want to talk about what happens when the routine that used to work for us no longer does—and why we so often interpret that change as a personal failure.
Because sometimes we haven’t failed our routines.
Sometimes our routines have failed to change with us.
OLD ROUTINES THAT BELONGED TO HER
Let me start by saying that I love routines. If you’ve been around here for any amount of time, you already know that. I love thinking about the small choices and rhythms that help us feel grounded in our lives. I love a fresh planner, a Sunday reset, a morning rhythm, and the promise of getting back into the swing of things.
I also cannot tell you how many times I have looked at a routine that used to work for me and thought, “Why can’t I do this anymore?”
I have asked that question after seasons of mental-health struggle. I have asked it as my body and energy have changed. I especially asked it after we moved to Tampa and opened Crave. Suddenly, the way I worked, rested, exercised, created, maintained our home, and moved through my days had to change.
But I didn’t immediately recognize that I was living a completely different life. I kept comparing myself to the woman who lived in the previous one.
I told myself I used to wake up earlier, work out longer, create more consistently, have more energy, and juggle everything without it feeling quite so hard. Then I would look at the current version of myself and wonder why she couldn’t seem to get it together.
Maybe you’ve had your own version of that thought.
I used to be so good at this.
That phrase—“I used to”—can carry so much weight because sometimes we aren’t only missing the routine. We’re missing the version of ourselves who lived inside it.
We miss the woman who had more energy. The woman whose mornings belonged to her. The woman who felt disciplined, organized, creative, motivated, or capable. The woman who seemed to know exactly how to care for herself and keep the rest of her life moving too.
So we try to rebuild the structure that once held her, hoping it will help us feel like her again.
We set the same alarm. Return to the old workout schedule. Recreate the morning checklist. Pull out the planner system that used to work. We tell ourselves that if we can become consistent with those things again, maybe we’ll finally feel like ourselves again too.
But the woman who created that routine was living a different life.
She may have had a different schedule, a different body, different responsibilities, different energy, different relationships, and a different understanding of what wellness or success was supposed to look like.
We cannot change the entire life surrounding a routine and expect the routine itself to remain untouched.
so LETS TALK ABOUT ROUTINE GRIEF
I want to call what we experience here routine grief, because I think that’s what some of it is.
Routine grief is the feeling that comes when something that once made us feel like ourselves no longer fits. It might be the workout practice our body no longer responds to in the same way, the morning routine that no longer works with our schedule, or the creative rhythm that made sense before our job or family life changed.
It can be the way we managed our home before our responsibilities expanded or the social routines we had with people who are no longer part of our everyday lives.
The routine may seem small from the outside, but it carries evidence of who we were during a particular season. When we struggle to recreate it, it can feel as though we have lost something essential about ourselves.
And instead of acknowledging that loss, we tend to move directly into self-criticism. We wonder why we can’t get it together, why we keep starting over, or why something that used to come naturally now requires so much effort.
But maybe we aren’t beginning again because we failed.
Maybe we’re simply beginning again because life has changed.
Friends, routines hold more than tasks. They hold memories, identity, and the familiar shape of a life we once understood. It makes sense that changing them can feel tender.
We can honor the woman who lived inside the old routine. We can be grateful for the ways that structure supported her. We can even miss her.
But we do not have to keep forcing her routine onto the woman we are now.
name WHAT CHANGED
Before we try to fix a routine that isn’t working, I think we need to pinpoint
WHAT CHANGED?
Maybe your work schedule changed. Maybe you became a parent, started caring for someone you love, moved, entered a new relationship, ended one, or began building a business. Maybe your health changed. Your body changed. Your hormones changed. Your mental health changed. Your priorities changed.
Maybe nothing dramatic happened at all. You simply entered a different season and no longer need the same things in the same ways.
Sometimes we keep looking for a motivation problem when we are actually experiencing a mismatch. The routine was designed for a version of our life that no longer exists.
That does not mean the routine was bad. It may have served us beautifully. It may have helped us become who we are. But something can be good and supportive in one season without remaining the right fit forever.
I think that is why the phrase “get back on track” can become so complicated.
Which track are we trying to return to?
Who created that track for us?
What was happening in our lives when it worked?
And does that track still lead where we want to go now?
We do not always need to get back to something. Sometimes we need to move forward with a new rhythm.
ask: WHAT DO WE NEED NOW?
Once we recognize what has changed, the next question becomes:
What do we need now?
This is where we stop building routines as proof that we can still be the women we used to be and start building them as support for the women we are.
Somewhere along the way, routines can become a standard we organize ourselves around meeting. We judge the day by whether we followed the plan rather than whether the plan actually supported us.
A completed routine makes us feel disciplined and successful. A disrupted one makes us feel as if we have already fallen behind. We keep pushing ourselves to follow the plan because it looks healthy on paper, even when it is quietly depleting us.
But our routines are supposed to serve us. We are not supposed to spend our lives serving them.
The purpose of a routine is not to prove that we are disciplined, organized, or healthy enough. It is to make our lives a little more supportive to live inside of.
So rather than beginning with everything we believe we should do, I want us to ask what we want the routine to give us.
Do we need energy?
Peace?
Less decision fatigue?
A steadier start to the day?
A smoother transition out of work?
More connection?
A little room to create?
A gentler way to land at night?
The support we need can help us choose the routine that fits.
If we want our mornings to give us peace, packing seven habits into the first hour may be working against us. If we want our evenings to create connection, spending the entire night preparing for tomorrow may leave no room for the person beside us. If we want movement to give us energy, choosing the hardest workout available every day may not be the most supportive response.
A routine can look impressive and still fail to give us what we actually need from it.
The question is not, “What would the most disciplined version of me do?”
The question is, “What would support me here?”
BUILD it FOR THE WOMAN WHO HAS TO LIVE IT
I learned this one the hard way when we opened Crave. For years, I had been the girl who “won the morning.” I had built an entire brand around it. My morning routine was part of how I cared for myself, but it was also part of how I understood who I was. So when we opened the coffee shop, I white-knuckled that routine because surely I still had to be that girl.
I would set my alarm for 4:30 in the morning so I could complete the routine before heading into a 10-hour day of trying to get a brand-new brick-and-mortar business off the ground. By the end of the day, I had nothing left. I would come home in tears, feeling like I had worked all day but somehow still hadn’t done enough.
Meanwhile, I was gaining weight, I had stopped making the nourishing meals that once made me feel good, and I wasn’t even enjoying the morning routine the way a previous version of me had. I had become resentful toward myself for not being able to maintain it and resentful toward this new season of coffee-shop ownership because it seemed to be taking that version of me away.
But the coffee shop wasn’t the problem, and the routine itself wasn’t bad. I was trying to force a routine that belonged to a different life into a season that was asking something completely different from me.
What I needed was more rest. Period.
On the days when I was going to spend 10 hours at the shop, I did not need to get up at 4:30 in the morning. I needed the extra 60 to 90 minutes of sleep. That was the routine that supported the woman who actually had to live that day.
And friends, that realization sounds so simple now, but it required me to loosen my grip on an identity I had spent years building. I had to accept that caring for myself in this season might look different than it did before. Sleeping later did not mean I had stopped caring about my mornings, my health, or the woman I wanted to be. It meant I was finally responding to the life I was actually living.
So as we begin rebuilding, I don’t want us to overhaul every part of our lives. I want you to choose one routine you have been struggling with. Common routines could be: morning, bedtime, movement, meals, workday, creative practice, or the way you transition from work back into the rest of your life.
Start by asking:
What was happening in my life when this routine originally worked for me?
Think about the schedule you had, the responsibilities you carried, the energy available to you, and what the routine gave you during that season.
Then ask:
What has changed?
This is where we tell ourselves the truth without turning it into criticism. Our capacity may be different. Our current season may ask more of us. Our bodies, priorities, responsibilities, or needs may have changed.
Finally, ask:
What small rhythm would support the person and season I am living in now?
Maybe you keep part of the old routine because it still feels grounding. Maybe you change the time, duration, intensity, or expectation. Maybe the routine needs more than one version so you have a way to care for yourself on both spacious days and full ones.
This isn’t about lowering every standard or building our lives around our hardest days. It is about leaving ourselves a doorway back in. A supportive routine should help us return. It should not require us to be at our best before we are allowed to begin.
The RECLAIM YOUR SUMMER workbook takes this practice deeper by asking you to consider the bookends of your day like the takeoff and landing of an airplane. Your morning helps set the direction and energy of the day. Your evening helps your body and mind come back down, settle, and prepare for rest. There is also space to consider the middle of the day—when plans change, energy dips, and we may need a moment to recenter.
You can use that exercise to create rhythms for your morning, midday, and evening and I’ll link the workbook in the show notes. But I want the starting place to remain simple:
What has changed?
What do I need now?
What small rhythm would support that?
Build the routine for the woman who has to live it tomorrow—not the woman you miss, the woman you think you should be, or the woman you hope to become six months from now.
Routines matter because life will continue to change. Motivation will rise and fall. Energy will shift. Plans will get interrupted. We cannot create enough structure to prevent life from being life.
But we can create a few steady places to return.
That is why I think routines are such a beautiful part of this month’s Root + Rise theme. Our routines can become our roots. Their job is not to hold us rigidly in place. Roots create stability while allowing the life above them to keep growing and responding to the season.
Our routines should help us feel more like ourselves—not more disappointed in ourselves. They can remind us what matters, reduce some of the decisions we have to make, and offer a pathway back when the day does not go according to plan.
When a routine stops doing that, we are allowed to adjust it.
We are allowed to grieve what it once gave us. We are allowed to miss the woman who lived inside it. We are allowed to honor what worked for her without forcing it to work for us now.
We are not betraying a previous version of ourselves by choosing something that supports us today.
We are learning how to care for the women we have become.
Sometimes we haven’t failed our routines.
Sometimes our routines have failed to change with us.
Next week, we’re closing out RECLAIM YOUR SUMMER by reclaiming our intentionality. We’re going to talk about the part of intentional living that isn’t especially fun, pretty, or convenient: knowing what matters is only the beginning. Eventually, what matters has to be allowed to change what we choose and I can’t wait to have that conversation. But in the meantime…
I love you so much. I’m rooting for you. And I will see you right here, next week, on The Self Care Sisterhood podcast.
PS…This website includes affiliate links. If you click and purchase, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend products + tools that I have personally reviewed, love, and/or use. You can read the full statement HERE.
