Written by: Kyle Riley BSc (hons) Ex Science
Therapy Co-Founder
If you’ve ever felt that keeping up with your wellness routine is starting to feel like a full-time job, you’re not alone. Many of us load our days with healthy habits, whether it be journalling, meditation, 10-step morning routines or endless supplements. All in pursuit of feeling better.
For many, wellness has started to feel like a full-time job. And as a result, people are burning out in the name of self-care.
So this month we explore the question.
Are you actually feeling better from your wellness routine? Or are you just doing more?
Wellness is supposed to enhance your life, not overwhelm it. yet overwhelm has become surprisingly common. In fact, an article from Les Mills highlighted a recent global survey of 16,000 people, that found 60% felt pressure to appear “well”, and almost half reported experiencing “wellbeing burnout,” a state of exhaustion from excessive stress. Ironically, despite everyone’s heightened focus on health, overall wellbeing scores haven’t improved in years. As one report put it, “the more pressure there is to feel well, the harder it is to be well”
One reason is the sheer information overload in modern wellness culture. We’re bombarded with an endless stream of advice and trends, whether it be the ‘healthiest’ way to eat, through to ‘biohacking’ and anti-aging treatments, morning routines to de-stress and everything inbetween. The sheer volume and often contradictory information available to us leaves us confused, prone to analysis paralysis and rather than feeling better, we feel behind.
When staying healthy turns into a never-ending checklist, it becomes less enjoyable. You might start to dread your elaborate morning routine or feel guilty on days you only did a workout because you missed your sauna session. Piling on too many wellness activities (especially all at once) can lead to cognitive overload, essentially maxing out your brains bandwidth and instead of improving your wellbeing, an excessive routine can become another source of anxiety.
At Therapy, we talk a lot about ditching the all-or-nothing mindset when it comes to wellness. So this month we have launched a Bingo Card Challenge, switching wellness from pressure to play. It isn’t about being “perfect” or ticking every box like a rigid routine, it’s about exploring new ways to feel good and maybe surprise yourself along the way.
You might try a new class, say hi to someone new, or even start a towel whip in class to create those feel good vibes. It’s not about being the “most committed” or proving anything. It’s about bringing some fun and curiosity to your wellness routine. Want to get involved? Grab a bingo card from the reception team on your next class, the challenge is free!
And if its your first time with us, we have an unlimited class special for the month of June for you to get involved.
Another hidden culprit in wellness overwhelm is decision fatigue. This is a psychological phenomenon where the more decisions we make in a day, the worse our decision-making gets as our mental energy is drained. (By bedtime, the average person has made an astonishing 35,000 decisions in a single day, big and small!) Each choice: what to eat, when to work out, which advice to follow, requires cognitive effort.
Eventually, our brains look for shortcuts or just start avoiding decisions altogether.
Research shows that when people are confronted with too many choices or decisions, they’re actually more likely to lose willpower and give up on the task. In a wellness context, that means if you’re constantly agonising over a dozen diet rules or which of 10 new self-care practices to do tonight, you may end up doing none of it. Decision paralysis (“I’m too overwhelmed to choose, so I can’t choose anything”) or impulsive choices (“I’ve been so good all week, I deserve to eat all the ‘bad’ foods now!”) are common symptoms of decision fatigue.
The key to breaking this cycle is to simplify and automate through routines and habits. When something is a true habit, you don’t debate with yourself about it – you just do it, like brushing your teeth. For example, planning the same three breakfast options for the week or scheduling workouts at a regular time can remove a lot of daily guesswork. By streamlining your wellness routine, you give your brain a break. Instead of treating every day like a new maze of choices and ‘majoring in the minors’ (“Is this the ‘perfect’ time to take this supplement vs “I’m taking the supplement when it is easiest to fit into my routine”).
It might feel counterintuitive, but doing less can sometimes help you gain more. Rather than trying to incorporate every healthy habit you read about, focus on a few high-impact practices that you enjoy or value most. Free yourself from the pressure to be a “wellness perfectionist”. You have nothing to prove to Instagram or anyone else. By giving yourself permission to do less, you create space to focus on creating routines and habits around the things that actually make a meaningful difference in your health and quality of life.
If you tend to be a perfectionist, the wellness trap can be even trickier. Many fitness enthusiasts and health-conscious folks have an “all-or-nothing” mindset: I must do my entire routine perfectly, or I’ve failed. But aiming for perfection in your healthy habits is a fast track to burnout. Psychiatrists have found that perfectionists are at particular risk of burnout. They bring extremely high standards and pressure to everything they do, which eventually exhausts them. As Dr. Gordon Parker of UNSW explains, when a perfectionist faces continuous stress, “burnout is likely to sprout”
In the wellness world, perfectionism shows up as rigid rules and self-criticism: never allowing yourself a rest day, or feeling like you failed because you only managed 10 minutes of meditation, or had to eat out when life got busy. This mindset not only sucks the joy out of healthy activities, it can also cause you to abandon habits entirely after an inevitable slip. One missed 5:00am workout or a week off due to illness, and the perfectionist brain says, “See? You blew it. Why even continue?” This all-or-nothing thinking undermines long-term success.
In reality, consistency beats perfection. It’s far better to do something 2–3 times a week over many months than to do it “perfectly” every single day for a short burst and then burn out. Interestingly, research by behavioural scientist Katy Milkman demonstrated the value of flexibility over rigid perfectionism. In a study of 2,500 people trying to build an exercise habit, one group was told to work out at the exact same time every day, while another group could go any time each day (with a reward for daily exercise). The hypothesis was that a strict routine would create a stronger habit , but the opposite happened. Those with the ultra-rigid schedule often skipped workouts entirely if they missed their set time, whereas the flexible group simply found another time that day to exercise. Forty weeks later, the flexible group was exercising more than the rigid group.
The takeaway?
Being too strict can sabotage you; life is unpredictable, so it helps to give yourself some wiggle room. If you miss your morning run, you can take a walk at lunch. It still counts!
At the end of the day, wellness should feel empowering and nourishing, not like a pressure cooker. If you’ve been stuck in the wellness trap, constantly doing more but not feeling better. Give yourself permission to step back and breathe. Health is a lifelong journey, and it’s meant to support your life, not consume it. Real wellness is built on consistent, manageable habits that uplift you, even if they’re small and imperfect. And, if you would like more support on setting goals that stick, you can check out our previous blog post.
Remember that rest and recovery are part of the equation too. Sometimes the most “productive” thing you can do for your wellbeing is to do nothing, sleep in, take a lazy Sunday, unplug from the wellness podcasts and listen to what your body and mind need. Ironically, when you allow yourself to do less, you often gain more in terms of mental health and motivation. You start to actually enjoy your yoga class or evening walk again, rather than treating it like an obligation.
Don’t let wellness become just another to-do list. If you find yourself asking, “Am I actually feeling better, or just doing more?”, it might be time to simplify. Prioritise what truly matters to you, let go of the rest (at least for now), and rebuild a routine that is sustainable and joyful. Use the principles of habit science; small steps, reducing decisions, making it enjoyable to make changes that stick. And approach yourself with the same compassion you’d give a friend: you deserve credit for caring about your health at all, and you don’t have to get it “perfect” to benefit.
By escaping the wellness trap of overload and perfectionism, you can rediscover the whole point of wellness: to feel better in body and mind. When your healthy habits are simple, consistent, and emotionally rewarding, you’ll know it because you’ll actually feel well. And that, ultimately, is what real wellness is all about.
Don’t forget to join us on this month’s bingo card challenge. When something feels fun, social, or satisfying in the moment, your brain is more likely to say, “Let’s do that again.”
And that’s what this month is all about, it’s not a performance metric. It’s a permission slip to play with your routine, and to loosen the grip.