Routine Break

Routine Break Breaking destructive routines to unlock recovery, identity, growth, and freedom. Addiction | Porn | Food | Gambling | Anxiety | Tech | Unhealthy habit

09/02/2026

…. My past pales in comparison to the promise God has for me… But I can believe God has something ahead of me and still choose to be held hostage by what happened behind me… If I’m still holding on to things I caught yesterday, then yesterday might still be holding on to me… That’s why some of us feel like we can’t move forward… We keep asking God for what’s next with hands that are still full of what was… Full of the hurt… Full of what they did… Full of what we did… Full of regret, resentment, shame, disappointment, guilt, memories, unanswered questions, etc etc (FILL IN THE BLANK)… Then what do we do? We say we’re ready for a new season, but every morning we reach down and pick up the same pieces from the old one… Then we pray, “God, give me what You have for me…” But…. how do we receive something with a closed fist?

That’s what holding on does… And eventually, you stop realizing how tightly you’re gripping it… There are things God has for you that require empty hands… And no, your past doesn’t disqualify you… just sometimes receiving what’s next requires releasing what you keep dragging with you… You cannot keep one hand wrapped around yesterday while reaching toward tomorrow with the other and wonder why you never feel completely free… What did Paul say?… Paul said, “forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before…” There’s movement in that… There’s release before there’s reach… And maybe that’s the word for somebody today… You don’t need to understand everything that happened before you put it down… You don’t need an apology from everybody who hurt you… You don’t need another conversation, another explanation, another chance to rewrite the ending… Some things will never make sense enough to make carrying them worth it… And no, open hands isn’t saying what happened is okay, BUT…. it is saying what happened no longer gets to decide what you’re able to receive… So…. Open your hands…

💙

08/30/2026

I think we’ve made “leveling up” sound a little too exciting….. I say this, because leveling up usually doesn’t feel like you’re going up while you’re doing it… I mean, what’s exciting when leveling up sometimes means losing people you thought would always be there… Sitting at home while everybody else is doing what you used to do… Coming to a realization that a version of you that once kept you comfortable is now the exact version of you that’s keeping you stuck… That’s why I don’t put a whole lot of stock in motivation… Motivation feels amazing when it shows up, but it’s a horrible employee because you never know when it’s coming to work… Discipline however, is different… Discipline says, “I already made this decision, so I’m not asking myself again.”

I believe that’s one of the biggest misunderstandings about “leveling up”… We think the next level is always waiting on us to add something, when sometimes it’s actually waiting on us to remove something… Maybe it isn’t always, “What else do I need to start doing?” Maybe it’s, “What do I finally need to stop allowing?” What still has access to you that shouldn’t? What keeps receiving your time that hasn’t earned it? What habits keep taking something away from the person you say you’re trying to become? What environments keep introducing you to a version of yourself you’re trying to leave behind?… Sometimes the discipline required to level up isn’t found in doing more, it’s found in refusing to keep carrying things that cannot go where you’re trying to go…

Now, that doesn’t mean discipline should turn into punishment… You’re going to have tired days, days when life genuinely hurts, there will even be seasons when simply getting through the day requires more strength than anybody around you realizes… Discipline should never become another weapon you use to beat yourself up, but there is a difference between giving yourself grace and continuously giving yourself permission… Let’s distinguish the two… Grace may say, “Today was hard, so I’m going to recover and continue.” Permission says, “Today was hard, so everything I promised myself is negotiable again.” That difference may look small, but live inside of it long enough and it can completely change the direction of your life…

Leveling up isn’t becoming perfect, it’s becoming somebody you can trust…. so…. when you say you’re going to do something, you begin doing it… When you fall off, you stop turning one bad decision into seven bad days… When you recognize something is destroying your peace, health, relationships, finances, future, or character, you stop asking how much longer you can get away with it and start making a different decision, then you make it again and again, until what once required tremendous discipline eventually becomes part of who you are…

And here’s something else you may have to accept… Everybody isn’t going to understand the changes you make, especially when the old version of you was more convenient for them… Some people benefited from your lack of boundaries, your availability, your bad habits, your need to be accepted, or the fact that you could always be talked back into something you said you were done with… So…….when you start changing, don’t be surprised when somebody calls the change “different” like it’s a bad thing… It is different… That was the point. You can’t keep asking for a different life while protecting everything that created the one you have now… At some point, something has to change, something has to be left behind, something has to lose access, and sometimes that “something” is simply a way of living you’ve outgrown… Leveling up has a cost, but so does staying where you are… Pay attention to which one you’ve been paying for…

💙

08/28/2026

Your tears are liquid words…….. There are things inside of you that have never had a name... You’ve felt them, carried them, lived with them, maybe even tried a hundred times to explain them, but every time you reached for the words, they seemed too small for what was actually happening inside of you… I mean, what word explains being tired when you’re not sleepy? What word explains grieving something you never actually had? What word explains loving someone and hurting because of them at the same time? What word explains being thankful for your life while quietly struggling with parts of it? What word explains looking completely normal on the outside while fighting something nobody can see?… We keep thinking everything we feel should be explainable… Maybe, just maybe, there are places inside the human heart that language simply cannot reach and when words reach their limit, tears take over… And maybe that’s why sometimes we can talk about something a hundred times without crying, then one day somebody says ONE sentence, and your eyes fill before you even understand why… Our mouth didn’t have an answer, but our heart did, and it came out in a language that didn’t need one…Your tears are liquid words… Ya know, we spend our entire lives learning how to speak, how to explain ourselves, how to hold conversations, how to find the right words… but nobody ever tells us that some of the truest things we will ever say won’t be spoken at all, yet fall from our eyes...

And to the men reading this, somewhere along the way many of us were taught to swallow that language... Hold it in, toughen up, don’t let anybody see you cry, as if strength meant becoming so good at carrying pain that nobody could tell it was heavy… No, my friend, sometimes strength is finally allowing yourself to feel what you’ve spent years pretending didn’t hurt, so cry, cry when you need to cry… They mean something inside of you finally stopped being silent… We need more of that… More men who aren’t afraid to feel deeply... More fathers whose sons have actually seen them cry... More friends who can sit across from one another and say, “Man, I’m not okay,” without feeling the need to laugh it off five seconds later… More husbands who can let their wives see what hurts instead of believing their only job is to carry everything quietly… More human beings who understand that being strong and being affected by life were never opposites… Maybe the strongest person in the room isn’t always the one who can hold it together… So when the words won’t come, don’t be ashamed when the tears do… Let them speak…

💙

08/26/2026

Alright… let’s tie this anxiety series altogether… We started this series talking about the alarm… That feeling that something is wrong, even when you can’t quite tell yourself what’s wrong… Then we started pulling it apart… We learned that once the alarm sounds, we naturally look for relief, and sometimes the things giving us relief today can accidentally teach our brain what to fear tomorrow… We talked about worry, and how easy it is to spend hours thinking about something and call it problem solving, when really, we’re trying to force an answer out of something that doesn’t have an answer yet… We talked about becoming afraid of anxiety itself, when the heartbeat, the dizziness, the strange feeling in your chest or that rush through your body becomes the next thing you’re watching for… Then we talked about avoidance, and how anxiety can slowly start making decisions for us without us even realizing it… One thing gets changed, another gets avoided, something gets canceled, something else gets delayed, and eventually we can build an entire life around trying not to feel anxious.

So now what?..

I think this is where we stop asking the question we’ve probably been asking for years… “How do I make anxiety go away?” Look at everything we’ve learned in this series over these last several days… It all brings us back to awareness… So maybe we don’t figure out how to make it go away, rather we ask, “What do I do when anxiety shows up?” First, recognize what is actually happening………There’s the alarm… Before you automatically respond to it, take inventory… Is there something actually happening right now that requires me to act, or is my mind asking me to solve a possibility? If there’s something to do, do it… If there isn’t, maybe we leave the question unanswered for now… Then pay attention to what anxiety is asking from you…

Is it asking you to check again?.. Ask for reassurance?.. Cancel?.. Leave?.. Avoid?.. Search?.. Replay the conversation for the fifteenth time?.. You don’t have to immediately do any of it… And yes, anxiety may get louder when you stop giving it what it normally gets… If you’ve taught your brain over hundreds or thousands of repetitions that a certain response brings relief, doing something different may feel wrong at first… Different does not always feel better immediately, sometimes different feels uncomfortable, but remember what we’ve been learning… We’re not measuring progress only by how quickly we can make anxiety disappear anymore… We’re giving the brain different experiences… I had the thought and didn’t investigate it for an hour, felt uncertain and didn’t demand an answer, felt anxiety and didn’t immediately change my plans… I noticed something in my body and didn’t automatically turn it into an emergency, I wanted to avoid something safe, but this time I stayed, etc etc FILL IN THE BLANK)… That’s the work….. It’s hundreds of smaller moments where anxiety shows up, asks you to follow the same routine, and little by little, you start responding differently, and eventually something changes… And it’s not necessarily that you never hear the alarm anymore, maybe just stop treating every alarm like there must be a fire… That’s what I hope you take away from this series… You don’t have to solve every thought and you don’t have to eliminate every uncomfortable feeling…

Start taking inventory today… What is actually happening? What is anxiety asking me to do? What do I normally do next? And what could I do differently this time? AND right there, that space between what you feel and what you do next… That’s where we’ve been trying to get this entire series…

💙

08/21/2026

Quick recap as we enter Day 5 of our anxiety series….. We’ve talked about recognizing the alarm, understanding what we do to get relief, separating worry from actual problem solving, and yesterday we talked about becoming afraid of anxiety itself… Now I want to show you something that can happen after all of that has been going on for a while… Yep, you start changing your life. Of course, not all at once, because if anxiety walked into your life and said, “Give me your freedom,” you’d probably tell it where to go… It’s much quieter than that… It usually starts with something small….for example, you notice there’s something that makes you anxious, so naturally, you start finding ways around it… Maybe you don’t go, maybe you don’t answer, maybe you wait until somebody is with you, maybe you stay close to home, maybe you avoid certain people, places, conversations or situations etc etc (FILL IN THE BLANK)…

Maybe your version looks completely different… That’s the point… Because anxiety doesn’t care what the thing is, it learns what makes you uncomfortable and then starts helping you build ways around ever having to feel that discomfort again… And yes, at first, those decisions can feel harmless… And it’s the go-to things, right; that we say… “I just don’t feel like going today.” “I’ll do it another time.” “I’d rather not deal with that.” “I’m more comfortable if someone comes with me.” “I just want to make sure first.”.. When you look at the surface, none of those decisions, by themselves, sound like anxiety taking control of your life, and that’s what makes this so difficult to recognize… There usually isn’t one giant moment where you decide to stop living freely… There are hundreds of little negotiations, and anxiety can win those negotiations without you ever realizing you were negotiating…

You give up this one thing because it makes you uncomfortable, change that one routine because it makes you feel safer, avoid this conversation because you don’t want the feeling that comes with it, and eventually you start looking around at your life wondering… When did I stop doing all of this? That’s where I want us to get to the root of avoidance… Look, I get it, avoidance works, but only for a little while… Yes, the thing making you anxious is gone, yes, your body settles and your mind quiets down and you finally get some relief… But, remember what we learned on Day 2? Your brain is paying attention… I avoided something that made me anxious, and afterward I felt better… So my brain has every reason to believe avoiding it helped keep me safe…

And every time we repeat that pattern, we can make the thing we’re avoiding feel a little more dangerous and our ability to handle it feel a little smaller… It’s sneaky and that’s how anxiety can slowly build a life around itself, by convincing you to give things up one at a time… But there’s something the brain never got the chance to learn… What would have happened IF I stayed? Maybe the anxiety would have climbed for a while… Maybe I would have been uncomfortable, maybe my heart would have raced, maybe I would have wanted desperately to leave… But maybe, if the situation itself was safe, I would have eventually discovered that the feeling could change without me escaping from it… That lesson never gets learned if I’m always gone before my body has the opportunity to learn it… And this is why I don’t want you beating yourself up over everything you’ve been avoiding… I want you to inventory it…

Look around your life and ask yourself an uncomfortable question… What have I stopped doing, changed, delayed, needed somebody else to do with me, or completely removed from my life because I’m afraid of how I might feel? Don’t fix all of it today, seriously, don’t… Just find it… You cannot take back territory you haven’t realized you surrendered, and when you find one, we’re going to start small… Not the biggest fear, something manageable… The goal isn’t to do it without anxiety… That would put us right back where we started, waiting to feel better before we live… The goal is to give your brain a new experience… You felt anxiety, you stayed, nothing required me to escape, and eventually the feeling changed… Do that enough and we begin teaching the same brain that learned the fear, something new…

How much of your life are you actually choosing, and how much of it has anxiety quietly been choosing for you? Allow the brain different experiences…

1% Better. On Purpose. For Purpose. 💙

08/19/2026

Before we move forward, I want you to see what we’ve actually been doing here, because each day has been building on the one before it…So, we had day 1, Recognize the alarm, then day 2, Recognize the response and relief cycle and day 3, Recognize worry disguised as problem solving… Now, on Day 4… We need to talk about what happens when you become afraid of anxiety itself… This one can get rough, because at some point you may not even need an anxious thought to start the cycle anymore… your body can do it for you… And it’s always a repeat, that’s why we know it’s about to happen before it happens, your heart skips a beat, your chest feels strange, you get lightheaded, your stomach drops, your hands feel shaky, you suddenly feel hot, or maybe you just feel… off. And almost immediately you think, wait, what was that? Now you’re heightened, paying attention…. You feel it again, except this time you’re waiting for it, and because you’re waiting for it, you notice everything… This…. This is where understanding your body matters… When your brain detects a threat, your nervous system begins preparing you to respond, and it will EVERY time... Your heart can beat faster to move blood where it’s needed, your breathing can change, muscles tighten, digestion can slow, adrenaline can make you shaky or sweaty… Your body is preparing to protect you… That makes perfect sense when there’s an actual threat in front of you. But remember what we learned on Day 1… The alarm doesn’t always need a fire… Sometimes you feel a sensation in your body, become frightened by the sensation, and that fear tells your body there may be danger… so your body produces more of the very sensations that frightened you in the first place.

Think about that… My heart feels different, so I get scared… getting scared releases more adrenaline, now my heart is beating harder… I notice that, become even more afraid, and suddenly I’m using the symptoms of my fear as evidence that I should be afraid… That cycle can become powerful and eventually, you can start fearing the next episode before it even happens… What if it happens while I’m driving?.. What if it happens at work?.. What if I’m somewhere I can’t leave?.. What if I have another panic attack?.. And look what it did, now anxiety has moved beyond the moment… You’re arranging your life around making sure you never feel that way again… Okay, you remember Day 2?.. That’s where avoidance can sneak right back in… Maybe you stop driving certain roads, going into certain stores, sitting too far from an exit, being alone, traveling, exercising because you don’t like feeling your heart beat hard… FILL IN THE BLANK… The world starts getting smaller, not necessarily because those places are dangerous, but its because you’re afraid of how you might feel while you’re there.

Okay, so how do we start breaking this one? First, we stop automatically treating every uncomfortable sensation like an emergency… No, that doesn’t mean ignoring legitimate medical concerns, and it doesn’t mean deciding every symptom is anxiety… It means that once you know anxiety is what you’re experiencing, you begin changing your relationship with the sensations… My heart is beating fast… okay. I feel shaky… okay… This is uncomfortable… absolutely… But, uncomfortable and unsafe are not the same thing… Instead of immediately checking, escaping, fighting the sensation or begging for it to stop, maybe we give our body a chance to finish what it started… Let the wave rise, let it be uncomfortable and then notice something anxiety really doesn’t want you paying attention to… The wave, it comes down… Your body cannot maintain that peak forever… This takes practice, and for somebody who has been dealing with panic for years, I’m certainly not going to insult you by pretending one post makes this easy… I have been here and still days where I am… But we’re not looking for easy… We’re looking for the next Routine Break… And maybe today, that break is recognizing this… I don’t have to become afraid just because I noticed anxiety in my body… many times, the second alarm is us sounding it ourselves...

You can always, 1% Better. On Purpose. For Purpose. 💙

08/18/2026

Day 3 of speaking on Anxiety… Let’s talk about worry, we give that word “worry” way more credit than it deserves… There’s a difference between thinking about something and actually solving something, but when you’re anxious, those two can start feeling exactly the same… Something is bothering you, so you think about it… then you think about it from another angle, go back through what happened, think about what could happen next, what you’ll say if this happens, what you’ll do if that happens, and before you know it, an hour has passed… Me personally, the question I started asking myself… Did I actually solve anything? Or did I just think about it for an hour? Think about it, those are two very different things… Worry has this way of making us feel productive when we’re really just mentally circling something we cannot resolve right now… Now think about how many times you’ve said, “I just need to figure this out,” when there was literally nothing available for you to figure out yet… You’re waiting on an answer, test results, waiting to see what somebody decides, waiting on a conversation, waiting to see how something turns out, (FILL IN THE BLANK) etc etc etc… The information you need does not exist yet, but your mind doesn’t like that answer, so it keeps working anyway… Worrying can absolutely become brutal… The brain would rather give you ten terrible possibilities than sit quietly with “I don’t know.” At least a possibility feels like something you can prepare for… So, we prepare for conversations that haven’t happened, problems that haven’t happened, losses that haven’t happened, and outcomes that may never happen… then wonder why we’re mentally exhausted by dinner. We’ve been working all day… Just not on anything that could actually be finished, think about that…

That’s something I had to learn about worry… Worry wants an answer, even when life doesn’t have one yet… So instead of asking myself, “How do I stop worrying about this?” I started asking… “Is there something I can actually do about this right now?” Right NOW? If the answer is yes, then okay… what is it? Handle what is actually available to be handled… But if the answer is no… That changes things, because now I’m not problem solving anymore, I’m rehearsing possibilities… And I can rehearse them for six hours and still know exactly as much as I knew when I started… Now, that doesn’t mean I magically stop caring, and it definitely doesn’t mean the thought won’t come back five minutes later… It probably will. But when it does, I don’t have to reopen the entire case every time my mind brings it back to me… I already know the answer… There is nothing for me to do with this right now. That sentence has become important to me. Just… There is nothing for me to do with this right now… And if there is nothing for me to do, then I’m allowed to return to what is actually in front of me. That’s not ignoring the problem… It’s refusing to spend today solving a tomorrow that hasn’t happened yet… Worry will gladly take every hour you give it, and if you think about it, we’re just suffering through the same uncertainty over and over again, hoping one more round of thinking will finally make uncertainty disappear… It won’t. So today, when you catch yourself going around that same mental circle again, ask yourself… “Is there something I can actually do about this right now?” If there is, do it… If there isn’t… Maybe the Routine Break today is learning to leave an unanswered question unanswered. 💙

08/16/2026

I’m staying on anxiety for a little while, because I know there are people reading this who are absolutely exhausted from fighting their own mind every day… And maybe nobody around you even knows how bad it’s gotten, because you’ve gotten pretty good at functioning while anxiety is tearing you apart inside… So, for the next few posts, I want to help you understand what’s actually happening, and more importantly, start learning how we take some of that control back…

I spent a long time thinking the way out of anxiety was to calm myself down… Makes sense, right? If I feel anxious, get rid of the anxiety… but, there’s a slight problem with that… Every time I make feeling better my immediate goal, I start paying attention to whether I feel better… How’s my chest?.. still tight… Okay, how’s my breathing?.. still thinking about it… Am I calmer than I was five minutes ago? Maybe, wait… let me check again… And now, the very thing I’m trying not to focus on has my full attention… This is where we need to understand anxiety instead of just being afraid of it, yeah?.. Anxiety is built around protection, and your brain and body have systems designed to notice possible danger and prepare you to respond… But we need those systems… If a car crosses the center line coming toward you, I don’t want my body holding a meeting to decide whether adrenaline is appropriate, I want it moving… The problem is, that same system can respond to possibility too… A thought can do it, a memory can do it, uncertainty can do it, even a sensation in your body can do it, and once that alarm sounds, we naturally want relief… So we escape, avoid, check, ask somebody if everything is okay, search the internet, replay the conversation, cancel something, self isolate… etc, etc, etc… Eventually, we get a little relief, and this is where I really want you to pay attention… Your brain is learning from what just happened… So, it’s I felt danger, I did something about it, and afterward I felt better, so whatever I just did must have helped protect me, right? That relief feels like the solution, but sometimes the thing giving us relief is also teaching our brain what to fear next time…

If I leave the store when anxiety hits and feel better in my car, my brain may learn that leaving kept me safe... If I need reassurance every time something feels wrong, my brain may learn that I need somebody else to tell me I’m okay before I can believe it myself… Repeat these routines enough and your world can slowly get smaller while you’re doing everything you can to feel safer… That’s why telling somebody drowning in anxiety to “just relax” completely misses what is happening… They’ve probably BEEN trying to relax… Trying to feel safe, trying to make absolutely sure, trying to prevent another episode, trying to control every variable they possibly can… Also, that’s why you’re so tired… You’re not only exhausted from feeling anxious, you’re exhausted from everything you’ve been doing trying not to feel anxious… So, how about we try something different… We’re going to stop making immediate relief the measurement of success… If I normally check something five times, maybe today I check it four… seriously, it’s doable. If I need reassurance immediately, maybe I wait ten minutes… If anxiety tells me to leave a situation I know is safe, maybe I stay a little longer... If my mind gives me a frightening possibility, maybe I let it sit there without immediately trying to solve it… You can fill in the blank as to what your situation may be… We’re teaching the brain that uncertainty does not always require action, discomfort does not always require escape, a thought does not always require investigation, and anxiety does not always require a response...

Some days you’ll catch the routine immediately, other days you’ll realize you’ve been feeding the same thought for forty five minutes before you notice… And that’s fine… notice it then… That’s where you start… We’re not trying to become people who never feel anxiety… But we can learn when the alarm actually needs our attention, and when it doesn’t… Because the alarm can ring, and we don’t have to run.

1% Better. On Purpose. For Purpose.

💙

08/14/2026

The house was quiet, not frightened quite, but just regular quiet… The TV was on, but I couldn’t tell you what was playing… I had been staring at it for probably twenty minutes without hearing a word… My phone was beside me, I picked it up, nothing… Put it back down, a minute later, I picked it up again… Still nothing… I don’t even know what I was expecting to see… And that’s the part that’s difficult to explain to someone who has never felt this way… Nothing was wrong, BUT, something was wrong… I could feel it. My chest felt different, no pain, just enough pressure to make me notice it…so I noticed it… Then I noticed myself noticing it…. My heart felt a little faster. Wait, was it faster?.. I checked, now it definitely felt faster… I stood up and walked into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, stared inside like I needed something… Closed it… Walked back into the living room… Picked up my phone again… Nothing….. Everybody I loved was okay, the doors were locked, there was food in the refrigerator, there wasn’t an argument happening, wasn’t an ambulance outside, weather sirens weren’t going off, nobody had called with bad news… There, was no emergency… So why did my body feel like it knew something I didn’t?… That question is where anxiety gets you… Because once you believe the feeling must mean something, you start looking for what it means… Maybe it was that conversation earlier, said something wrong, someone is upset with me, maybe something is about to happen, or this feeling is trying to warn me… And before long, I wasn’t sitting safely inside my house anymore, yet inside things that hadn’t happened… Conversations nobody had spoken, losses I hadn’t experienced, problems that didn’t exist yet… I was trying to survive tomorrow while sitting on my couch tonight, and my body couldn’t tell the difference…. That’s what I wish somebody had explained to me… I thought anxiety meant I was afraid and sometimes it does, but most times, anxiety is stranger than fear… Sometimes you can’t find the thing you’re afraid of… You just don’t feel safe… So what do we do, you search… Search your body, people’s words, people’s silence, search tomorrow, search yesterday… You search until eventually you find something your anxiety can use as an explanation… And then you say, “There. That’s why I feel this way.” But… what if that wasn’t why? What if the alarm came first… and your mind went looking for the fire? If we can take stock inventory of ourselves, I believe we can change the conversation… Because maybe tonight doesn’t need to be solved, maybe tomorrow doesn’t need to be figured out, maybe that text doesn’t need to be read one more time and maybe nothing is asking you for an answer right now… You’re sitting on the couch, television is playing, phone is beside you, the house is quiet… And for this moment, that’s all that’s actually happening. 💙

Address

Evansville, IN

Website

, ,

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Routine Break posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share

Category