Monthly recap : June 2021

I totally wanted to skip this month’s recap. June has been my worst month in terms of productivity. I don’t know how I managed to spend an entire month in utter confusion and anxiety. I managed to skip all my usual self care activities (meditation, workouts and journaling) for most part of this month. I did have a busy work schedule during the last week of June but that doesn’t explain my unproductive streak for the first 3 weeks. I think I needed a break from my usual routine, I wasn’t able to focus or concentrate on the good parts of my life. I took time to heal and it worked to an extent. I won’t say I’m completely back to my usual self but I don’t feel that anxious and confused anymore. I consider that a huge win.

Mental health

• Meditated for 3/30 days.
• Journaled/documented my day for 0 days.
• Practiced gratitude journaling for 0 days.

Personal Growth

This section is for a new skill or talent that I’ve acquired in this month, tried a new activity or thing that has pushed me out of my comfort zone.

• I don’t recollect doing anything special or different this month

Workouts

• Zero outdoor/indoor runs
• Worked out for 8/30 days

Education

• Zero progress with CFA level 1 curriculum.
• Zero online courses completed in June

Entertainment

• Completed reading 0 books (More than halfway through 3 books.)
• No movies/web series

Looking back at my progress this month, I could have easily skipped posting this. But the book I’m reading currently has helped change my perspective at looking things. The book goes by the name “Mindset” by renowned psychologist “Carol Dweck”. The book speaks about two different kind of mindsets that people have “Fixed and Growth”.

I wish to try new things, work hard on myself, focus on learning and growth, not let my mistakes and failure define me, take on new challenges and experience life. That will be my focus in July. Let’s see how this month treats me.

Quest to be best

“Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.”

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Day 14/30

I have been following the journey of a fitness influencer on Instagram and it makes me wonder if such people do exist in real life. She seems to be living a perfect life especially when it comes to leading a productive lifestyle. She was quiet overweight when she decided to take things into her own hands by starting her fitness journey. It’s been 4 years that she has been following it diligently and I’m in awe of her. She strives hard everyday to be the best version of herself. It has only been 2.5 years for me yet I’ve fumbled way too many times.

I don’t feel productive whenever I have issues with my mental health. I feel lethargic, lazy and end up whiling away my time doing nothing. This wonder woman works on her goals, ever day with the same determination she had when she started. This gives me hope that we can be consistent in our life. We just need to fight and win against the demons in our mind.

Working on things that don’t provide instant gratification can drain all of our energy. That’s the reason we fall off the wagon more often than we can imagine. We seek immediate reward always. Training the mind to delay gratification is the first and biggest step towards success. Finding a strong purpose will help you stick by your goals.

All things set aside, this wonder woman has inspired me work on myself, truly and faithfully. No excuses, no escapes, sheer hard work to become the best version of myself.

If any of you are intrigued by her story, please read her article below, it’s beyond inspirational.

https://iwillgetlean.medium.com/my-beginner-mindset-a77b02bcf4af

I have a strong desire to know myself in my best version. On a scale of 1-10 where 10 is my best version, I feel like I’m on 2 right now. The journey from 2 to 10 won’t be easy at all but the extremely fulfilling. I want to give it a shot. I did embark on this journey 2.5 years back but I’ve not been supremely focused and consistent about it. It’s high time I do that.

My ‘quest to be best’ begins right now!

Would I be any different?

“There is no paycheck that can equal the feeling of contentment that comes from being the person you are meant to be.”

-Oprah Winfrey

I’ve had a tough childhood and have always considered this as a good excuse for all of my failures in life. For the longest time, I have blamed my father for not giving the rest of our family the means to do well in life. I still do this at times when I feel frustrated or stressed for not having things under my control. There is a nagging thought I have every single day and that’s my lack of efforts in living life to my full potential.

I always believed that my childhood experiences have shaped my personality, the good, bad and ugly. While I’m proud of all of my accomplishments, I’m fairly unsatisfied with the importance of career in my life. While growing up my family faced a lot of financial crunch, I took up my current profession and job to give a comfortable life to my family. I never wanted to experience financial trouble ever in my life. That was my sole motivation to earn a degree and look out for a job. As soon as I achieved this purpose, my life felt empty and directionless. I started hating my profession, job and everything related to one of the biggest aspect every human’s life, my career.

I have spent a lot of time blaming my father, my childhood, our family circumstances for not being able to achieve better things in life. I have also conveniently BELIEVED that my life would have been a lot different if I had the privilege of experiencing a comfortable childhood. That was far more easy for me than taking responsibility for my life.

Come to think of it, I don’t think my life would have been any different with a better childhood. I would still be the same person, with the same level of motivation and ambition in life, maybe even less as I wouldn’t have a solid purpose to dream big. I probably would have ended up doing nothing great in my career and led a comfortable life handed over to me by my wealthy father. WOW! This realization just hit me hard! My inability to achieve my full potential cannot be attributed to my childhood! It’s because of my half hearted attempts, my laziness to plan and chase my goals, it’s all ME!

Now that I know this well, I want to know what I’m truly capable of. I want to realize my full potential. I want to be the BEST in what I do and keep learning new things in life till the end of my existence on this planet. I’m truly pumped up and excited to start this new chapter in my life. I will share my journey, learning experiences and achievements here. Eagerly looking forward to see how life looks like on the other side of regrets, self sabotaging thoughts and all things that bog me down. I promise to utilize every ounce of my strength to fight the demons of my mind.

Existential crisis

#86/100

“I don’t know if what I’m going to say will hurt or help, but screw it. Do you know what’s really happening right now? You’re learning what it is like to be human. All humans are aware of death. So… we’re all a little bit sad.”

-Eleanor Shellstrop from The Good Place

I’m watching an absolutely mind boggling American TV series these days called “The Good Place”. The show is witty, quirky, funny and the theme also involves a fantasy element which is a big win-win situation for me. What I love most about the show is the underlying philosophical interpretation of every human’s life in general. I’m drawn to philosophy and finding out the greater meaning of life, any person, show or thing that connects me over and above the basic knowledge of our existence has all my attention.

In one of the episodes of this show (I don’t want to give out any spoilers, watch it, you’ll be mind blown!), they discuss the concept of existential crisis, in a witty and funny manner of course. The show has an immortal being who doesn’t have a conscience. The concept of having regrets or guilt doesn’t apply to this being as they live on forever. They don’t have to deal with these feelings at the present moment as it disappears with time which they have in abundance.

Humans on the other hand have a fixed shelf life. Our biggest fear is the fear of non-existence. I always felt that I feared many things above death, but that’s not true. When I say I fear public speaking, I am scared to make a fool of myself and end up in an embarrassing situation. This will cause me to lose face in front of others and become non-existent in a manner that I won’t be acknowledged, respected or considered unworthy of attention. We constantly feel pangs of sadness, guilt and episodes of depression all through our life as we believe that we aren’t making the fixed time of our existence on this planet, worthwhile. At the end of each day I feel upset for not having a remarkable day, wasting my time is considered the biggest sin by my mind, I constantly fear the future, I feel like I would eventually die without living an extraordinary life.

The fear of non-existence can make us do crazy stuff at times. But it’s high time that we slow down a bit and pause to pay attention to the present. There’s no yard scale to measure an extraordinary life. You don’t have to do everything that’s considered cool or awesome by others to feel cool or awesome yourself. As long as you do every single thing that makes you happy, you are doing a great job! It’s time I lift the heavy burden of this self imposed deadline on my life and cut myself a little slack. I don’t wish to feel sad every Sunday evening for not having spent the weekend productively, upset before any big event for not having prepared well or empty at the end of my birthday for having to wait another year to feel special. I don’t know if we can truly be unbothered by fear of the unknown or regrets of our past, I will try to divert my attention to the present at every single opportunity I get. That’s what I learn in my meditation exercise every day.

Distractions are everywhere. Notice what takes your attention, acknowledge it, and then let it go.

-Headspace

Have you ever felt unsettled in life?

So I’ve been going through this phase for quiet sometime now, I guess the Covid-19 situation might have just aggravated it further. I feel very unsettled in my life. I don’t mean to say I’m depressed at the moment, might have experienced bouts of anxiety when I was asked to resume work about 3 weeks back, but the feeling of not having things under my control.

Before you guys jump to conclusions and write me off for spelling out a common phenomena that everyone experiences in their life, let me tell you I’ve been feeling like this for a long time now. It might have started roughly about 4 years back when I gradually started losing interest in my professional work. My mind kept asking me questions as to what purpose does tallying balance sheets and calculating P&L serve the mankind in general. I know it very well that it’s an important job to do, people need to know how much money they have made so that they can make more the next time. I realised in the end, it’s all about money! I really don’t know if I’m that crazy about money to spend my whole life calculating it, in different ways and forms of course!

This whole mystery of finding one’s life’s purpose has made me go through several emotions. 4 years back when I realised I need to find my purpose, this thought gave me an interim purpose of going through various content online, watching videos, talking to people to help figure out my own purpose. Then the initial excitement of being exposed to helpful content online, listening to various people who have it all sorted gradually waned leaving me with this additional burden of not having figured out my purpose yet!

Is there a rulebook or textbook or anybook that gives out the exact instructions to solve this great mystery of life? They really should have made it for atleast people who suffer from OCD. It can get annoying to the point that nothing makes sense anymore. As I said, the inital excitement and energy has completely dissapeared, my younger self might abandon me completely if she found out how I turned out eventually. I was a person who believed in the lamest of fairy tales, innocently believed and trusted people around, made a wish and really believed that it would turn true. Now, I’m just few points short in unclocking my next avatar, the cynic!

This sure seems like a very first world problem right? There are people around us who don’t know where their next morsel of food will come from and mighty me is complaining about not finding her “purpose” in life! Seriously, is that even a problem. While I’m totally empathetic towards the people who’ve had it extremely difficult in life and do whatever little I can to help them, I’m really not able to silence this nagging thought inside my head that keeps saying, this is not it, you are wasting your time, something is not right!

They say the best way to help yourself is to start by loving yourself. The question that I have now is whether I need to love myself in a manner that I’m able to forgive myself for the possibility of not EVER finding my purpose in life or should I love myself enough to keep giving myself chances when I fail to find it despite my best efforts? Does this thing called purpose even exist in life, or it’s just a ploy by the self help gurus to help sell their books and speeches?

Aah, seriously though, please share the rule book to life, I really want to go back to the person I was 4 years back who had no such thoughts, striding through life in oblivion!