Wish I knew this earlier

“The past is a place of reference, not a place of residence; the past is a place of learning, not a place of living.”

–Roy T. Bennett

Although I haven’t ran the whole course of my life yet, there are some lessons I learnt pretty late. When we are young, we are filled with confidence and optimism about the future and believe that we can move past any challenges in life. However, we end up giving up the reins of our life to fate during the later stages in life. As we grow older, we realise that we could have channelised that high amount of confidence and optimism into something productive and fruitful that would help us be more in control of our life.

These are some lessons I’ve come accross either through internet or bitter experiences or analysing the life led by people around me. Although I wish I knew this earlier, I’m really glad that I’m aware of it now and have worked on it to improve the overall quality of my life.

• Join a sport or participate in that extra curricular event :- I was a big time nerd and truly believed studies are the only thing that I should be doing as a student. I was horribly wrong. I realised the importance of fitness and communication much later in life. Learning a sport helps not just in developing strength and stamina but also becoming more disciplined, learning from our failures and facing challenges headstrong. We live in a very sheltered environment as far as school and college is concerned and have people around to help with our requirements. Once we are thrown into the real world, every new situation seems life threatening and we fail to blend in with the crowd. Learn to make new friends, talk to more people, learn about their experiences, participate in events that force you out of your comfort zone. That’s how you realise that every single person on this planet is dealing with their fear and insecurties and you learn to feel less intimidated by people, especially strangers.
• Be financially independent : It’s very important to chase our dreams and passion and figure out the purpose of our existence. However, we also need to find a way to be financially independent along the process. Unless we have unlimited financial resources left to us by our ancestors, everyone needs to work for their survival in this world. Make sure you incorporate the golden habit of saving early on in your life, learn about financial planning, take advise from experts to grow your corpus, make financially sound decisons when it comes to material purchases, know your long and short term financial goals. Once you feel financially sound, you can take all the big decisions in life with more confidence.
• Make meditation a part of daily routine : We all know the wonderful benefits of meditation however it can take a painfully long time for us to visibly see the changes in our life. Till that time, we are required to meditate cosistently without expecting any instant gratification. And that my friend, is an extremely difficult task. It’s better to think of it as a part of daily routine that we need to follow without fail like brushing our teeth or taking a bath. Yes, meditation is undoubtedly the best tool available within our control which can help in maintaining a sound mental health. And making it a daily routine is the best way to reap it’s rich rewards later on in life.
• Everyday is equally important : Most of the days in my life are a waitlist for the special ones/the D days/an important day to look forward to. We feel happy on these special days and dread to get back to the “normal routine” to be followed on the other days. If we can learn to tweak this mindset, there will be a visible change in our happiness levels. The best way to do this is by maintaining a daily journal. It’s just a 5 minute daily practice that requires you to revisit your day and write down whatever made an impact on you that day. This small practice can help you be more grateful and pull your attention back to the present moment. Document your day, focus on making daily progress, make memories, click pictures, life certainly isn’t about those few special days, everday is equally special.

And that’s all I’ve learned and try to implement in my day to day life to feel at peace and more happy in general. Hope it helps you too!

Break the chain

“And once you understand that habits can change, you have the freedom and the responsibility to remake them.”

-Charles Duhigg

Day 21/30

Ever since I started this challenge of blogging everyday in the month of April, not once have I been able to upload the blogpost during the course of the day. I procrastinate till the end of day, convince myself that “end of the day” is when my mind is at it’s creative best and somehow anxiously manage to upload the blogpost in the 9th hour. Same pattern goes with my reading habit too, I have been meaning to get in 50 pages of a book everyday but I procrastinate it every single day. I have been following a similar pattern with my goal of waking up early as well. My goal has always been to wake up at 5 am but these days I’ve got into the habit of sleeping late and eventually waking up between 7.30 am to 8.30 am in the morning.

When I think back to how I was able to consistently follow my fitness journey back in 2018, it was a deep resolve to lose weight and one decision that I stuck with the very next day, the decision to eat clean. I thought about it, planned to start with clean eating right away and broke the chain of junk food that very instant. The reason I was able to stick by it for a long time is because I gave my mind the confidence that I could do it by following that single thought of eating clean. I broke the chain of negative thought loop by one positive action.

It’s time that I make a change to my lifestyle once again. I’ve fallen into the loop of certain habits that are digressing me from my goal to alleviate my life to the next level. It’s time to break the chain by posting this blog during daytime. This is just the beginning, my aim is to get into a focused and goal oriented routine as soon as possible. This is my attempt to start the process of a lifestyle change. I’m super inspired by a fitness influencer named “Tanvi Parikh” who managed to change her life for the better and stuck by that decision for over 4 years now. Of course there are days we fall off the wagon but she has been consistent for most part of these 4 years. I wish to do the same, starting today.

I’m excited to begin this new journey. Here’s a post by Tanvi that I found to be extremely empowering. Hope it helps you too. This doesn’t just apply to fitness but any big lifestyle change that you wish to bring about.

24 hours

“Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.”

–Wayne Dyer

Day 5/30

How to make the best use of your time? Start living in the moment. I know, I know! It’s easier said than done. I am never in the moment. When I was a kid, I used to perpetually live in the past. I used to keep rewinding my life experiences and regret everything that I felt was wrong with it. I always wanted to do better, be better. Nothing was perfect enough for me.

When I grew up and started working, I started living in the future as well as past. I used to day dream about my bucket list and dream of achieving them. Again nothing in the present moment felt right. I kept my expectations high and mentally strained myself to achieve all of them in order to feel happy.

It was in lockdown last year when I discovered the foolproof way of being happy. I started applying this trick in my life and it effortlessly made me happy, every single time. At a time when I felt that everything was going wrong with my life, I found it very easy to find things that made me happy, effortlessly. How did I do it?

I started paying attention and found happiness in small things!

From getting a window seat in bus to listening to my favorite BTS song, these tiny actions made me happy than I’ve ever felt in my life. It was a tough time to deal with and under usual circumstances, I would have succumbed to the negativity in my life. But I was so tired of being anxious, scared, unhappy and bored with my life that I was willing to try anything.

I have been feeling very bored and useless since the last 2 weeks. Though I don’t know the reason behind it, I am extremely tired of it. I am FED UP. I want to feel alive, energetic and happy again. I never want to feel like this in my life again. I have taken time for granted. I purposely waste my time for no reason and wait for the day to end. I while my time doing things that I don’t actually wish to do. I sense a huge loss of control in my life and I desperately want it BACK.

I am going to take life, ONE DAY AT A TIME. Ever day is beautiful and I wish to live each day to the fullest. I know rest days are important and help you recharge and rejuvenate. However, I have never felt “rejuvenated” after prolonged period of rest. I am extremely low on energy and motivation. Consistent efforts on our goals are always better than going all out on important occasions. Good habits require regular practice and consistency, in short, our efforts!

These are few good habits that I wish to incorporate in my life :-

• Plan your new day the night before
• Wake up at 5 am daily
• Meditate for 20 mins daily
• Workout for 30 mins minimum
• Gratitude journaling/ daily journaling
• Read 40 pages daily
• Study for your career progression
• Revisit your goal progress at the end of each day

This is the first challenge of my “Lifestyle transformation” journey. I am on my way to make every day worthwhile and earn my leave. Let’s do this!

A close call

Today has been adventurous to another level. I travelled all the way to my office in the morning hoping to have a normal work day today. When I reached office, I had to go through the normal workplace protocol of showing my identity proof and the status on a government based mobile app (Aarogya Setu) which tracks the coronavirus infection of users who have downloaded the app on their phone. This app collects details of infection of everyone who uses it makes it easy to conduct contact tracing process. When I checked the status today, it showed I had a “high risk” of infection as I had come in contact with an infected person about a week back. I was surprisingly calm throughout as I had experienced no symptoms till then. I was asked to go back home and check with the helpline on the app for further process.

Once I reached home and told my parents about it, they freaked out. My parents are complete opposites of each other and their reaction to this news was also poles apart. My mother was very scared but kept it within herself and showed a brave front. My father called a friend, brought me medicines which I had no clue about and asked me 10000 questions within a span of 10 seconds. Mind you, they went through all this stress only with the news of me coming in contact with an infected person. I hadn’t even tested positive by this time. After talking to my friends and contemplating on the situation for a long time, I decided to get myself tested. I went to a diagnostic center near my house and my swabs samples were taken for the tests. Let me give a heads up here, the process of taking the nasal swab samples is extremely creepy and weird. The swab is inserted deep inside the nose and for a moment I felt that it had reached my brain!!

Then came the somewhat long wait. The antigen test results are quiet rapid and come out within a span of 15 mins. The results for the antigen test are inaccurate at times and hence I got myself swabbed for the RT-PCR test as well which is the most accurately used testing method. Within few minutes of taking my swab samples, my antigen test results were out. Fortunately it was “Negative“. The RT-PCR test results will be out tomorrow. My life changed within a span of few minutes after I came to know about the status on my Aarogya Setu app. Most of the times the stress of the actual situation is more troublesome and frustrating than the situation itself.

I’m glad I decided to take test after all and find out about my condition today itself. My initial plan was to self quarantine for a week or so before getting tested. I am extremely grateful for my meditation habit which helped me be calm in this situation. I’m really glad that I worked on making it a habit and spent 20 mins everyday on healing my mental health. It came a lot handy in today’s situation.

Fingers crossed for my RT-PCR test results tomorrow!

Just breathe it out

#89/100

“Life is short. We can live it lost in thought or we can choose to be present as life unfolds around us.”

-Headspace

Meditation! I must have ignored this important and extremely powerful habit for a happy mind all my life. I just couldn’t bring myself to stay still at one place and concentrate on my breathing. It made absolutely no sense to me. The biggest misconception that I had in my mind was that meditation was supposed to immediately calm me down and clear my anxious thoughts. That’s not how it works. About 4 years back I encountered a difficult situation at work. I had made a huge error and was petrified of the consequences. I was constantly anxious and my mind didn’t leave any stone upturned to churn out one negative thought after another. There was no respite even at home as my mind continued the negative thought pattern. That’s when I decided to give meditation a shot at calming down my mind. I could see a positive result from barely few days of consistent practice. While the thoughts continued to disrupt my mind, I was slowly learning to acknowledge them and let it go. I didn’t even realize when I did it. My anxiousness subsided eventually when everything got sorted out at work and not one of my negative thoughts manifested into reality.

I stopped practicing meditation the moment situations got better in my life and I technically didn’t ‘need’ it anymore. That’s where I went terribly wrong. Meditation helps in improving our overall physical and emotional well being if practiced daily. I have tried making it a habit few times in the past and failed terribly. In the past, I scheduled my meditation session at a time during the day which made it easier for me to delay it indefinitely. I made a small change in my daily routine to incorporate my meditation session, first thing in the morning. I start my day with a 20 min meditation session every morning and carry on with my daily activities after that. This schedule has worked pretty well for me in the last 12 days and I feel great. I’ve noticed a decrease in my junk food cravings as I am able to not dwell on those thoughts for long. I’m pretty excited to experience the long term benefits of this powerful new habit in my life.

There are various ways to meditate, I personally use a guided mediation application called ‘Headspace’. The techniques shared in the application are easy to follow and the video animations are catchy enough to sustain my attention. In the initial days I had to force myself to sit at once place quietly and meditate. It sure has gotten easier over time and scheduling it first thing in the morning has been extremely beneficial in being consistent at it.

Apart from reducing anxiety, stress and calming the mind, the long term benefits of meditation include better emotional health, an increased sense of self awareness, improved attention span, helps in fighting addictions as well as improved sleep. This habit seems like a long term investment with no immediate rewards but I surely want to continue long enough to reap it’s benefits in the future. Making it a daily habit surely helps in being consistent.

My fickle mind

#79/100

“The most powerful control we can ever attain, is to be in control of ourselves.” 

–Chris Page

My weekends are turning out to be the most unproductive days of my life at the moment. There are a 100 things I wish do during the weekend and I wish to do all those things at the same time. Yesterday I sat down to watch a YouTube video, it was a really engrossing video about the “neuroscience of love”. The video had a neurologist explaining what happens in the brain when a person is in love. 5 minutes into the video, my eyes fell on an unread book besides me and I somehow desperately wanted to start reading the book. I picked up the book, went through a page when my phone beeped, it was a comment on my instagram post. I ended up spending almost 30 minutes scrolling through random feeds on instagram right after that. I hope you get the idea by now, my mind is a like a kid in a candy store during the weekends. It wants to do everything at once.

This reminds me of my childhood. I’ve always been a day dreamer. My primary school teacher had the same complaint about me during the parent teacher’s meet, she mostly found me gazing at the sky outside the window in the middle of a lecture. I’ve consistently found it difficult to concentrate on one thing for a long time.

I still haven’t found a way out to deal with my hyperactive mind. It might be because I’m yet to work on myself to get past this limitation thrown by my mind. I guess it’s high time I take up the challenge to control my attention deficiency and use it fruitfully to get my work done!

I tried researching on the best ways to counteract lack of focus (I am not calling it Attention Deficit Disorder/ Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder yet because I haven’t been diagnosed by a certified psychologist but most of my symptoms point right at it). I’m planning to consistently try out these techniques for 90 days starting tomorrow (I’ve never been able to form a habit in 21 days) and post my experience about it after the end of this experiment (January 9th, 2021).

As per the internet, YouTube videos and TedX speeches by people diagnosed with ADD/ADHD, below listed techniques have helped them immensely to make ADD/ADHD their superpower :-

• Nutrition : Eat wholesome organic food and drink more water. Quitting food that drains our energy and makes us feel hazy. (Sugar, processed food, junk etc)
• Sweat everyday : Workout everyday, even if it’s just for 10 mins.
• 8 hrs of sleep everyday
• Morning routine : Meditation + Gratitude journaling + Workout
• 30 mins POMODORO : Break your to-do list into smaller tasks, set up a timer for 25 mins, work non-stop for 25 mins against the timer, take a 5 min break
• Music : Use music as a backdrop to avoid any background distraction while you work
• Block Time : Schedule time for each activity during the day. Set up a to-do list for the next day and review it by the end of the day.

Hope to see a positive change in my life (possibly a transformation) by the end of my experiment.

The importance of gratitude

#75/100

“When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.”

-Willie Nelson

I didn’t believe in this before. I was thankful for all the help and support I received from the kind people around me. But I’ve never actively counted my blessings and practiced being grateful in my life. Whenever I read or saw videos about ways to bring joy in life, turn our life around, better our relationships at work and home, the art of practicing gratitude tops the list. I once heard a podcast on topic of finding our dream job. The first technique told to us in the podcast was to “be grateful for the job we presently have and try to enjoy it”. This sounded absurd and made absolutely no sense to me. How do I enjoy the job I absolutely despised?

It took a long time to understand the power of being truly grateful for everything in life. Imagine a situation where you hate everything in your life. You can’t find a single thing to be happy or thankful about. Try to think of a person who doesn’t even know where the next morsel of his food will come from. We are a small part of this planet. No matter how hard you find your life at the moment, there will be someone who has it harder than you. Yet, they might find a better way to deal with their hardships.

There was a time when I wrote down 3 things I was grateful for in the morning and 3 things that I liked about the day before I went to bed. This was suggested to me by a counsellor at a time when I found every part of my life painfully difficult. At first this practice felt superficial. But I didn’t even realize how happy it made me feel within a matter of days. I quit this practice right after I felt better about my life. These practices ought to be made a habit. Our subconscious mind needs to be constantly reminded of our blessings in life so that it gives us the motivational boost when it’s necessary in life.

The ultimate goal of my life few years back was to be happy with every part of my life. I considered happiness a destination back then. Had I been grateful for every thing I had in life at that time, happiness would have been a journey instead of an unachievable dream. You can always turn around every situation if you think of reasons about how it could have been much worse. To be grateful for our life and everything in life is the best manner of loving ourselves and finding joy in the mundane and basic things in life. After all, life is not as bad as we think!

My ideal daily routine

#72/100

“Successful people aren’t born that way. They become successful by establishing the habit of doing things unsuccessful people don’t like to do.”

―William Makepeace Thackeray

I was going to talk about my dream life today but thought that’s too vague a topic to discuss. For some people, their dream life would be to own a mansion and live like a princess for the rest of my life (people like me!). Let me narrow my thought process to a daily routine, the ideal one. What do you absolutely need to do in a day to have a feeling of fulfilment at the end of it? Have you been struggling to implement certain habits in your routine that’s sure to benefit you in the long run? I sure have. What makes you struggle with these habits and you end up delaying it every single day? In my case, the regret of not following a good routine piles up every single day and ends up frustrating me one fine day to the point of absolute resentment towards my lack of discipline.

Since we have established, motivation does little to achieve our goals. Pushing ourselves to have disciplined life ensures a happy life, fulfillment of goals (short and long term) and increased self esteem. These sound great, yet I’m unable to be consistent with my routine, what should I do? Try to recollect the first time you tried to imbibe a new habit into your life. The first few days are a struggle, once we get past the first month, our body reacts to the activity on an auto pilot mode. Once we reach that stage, absence of that activity in our routine makes us feel incomplete.

Although I’ve read many articles on the exact number of days to create a new habit. As per research it’s 21 days. However, I’ve quit many activities even after consistently following it for 21 days. My exercise schedule was set after a month. Blogging daily also became a part of my routine after a month. I guess, a month works best for me.

Now comes the struggle part. The first month is filled with doubts, confusion and irritation. After few days, we really begin to question ourselves if we actually need to put ourselves through so much trouble to stick to a routine. This is then time we need to distract our selves, use positive self talk, use any/all tricks in the book to continue the routine next day. What really works for me is to take each day as it comes. The big goal looks humungous when we are struggling to follow it every day. We need to take each day as it comes and just try to stick to completing the schedule set for the day.

I wish to achieve the below long term goals in life :-

• Early riser
• Reader
• Best shape of my life (Mentally and physically)
• Knowledgeable
• Happy with my job

I intend to stick to a routine for the next 30 days to make powerful habit beneficial in achieving the above long term goals. I’ll see you at the end of 30 days to discuss my experience and outcome of this routine.

There’s always a way out

“When someone points a gun at your face, “you take the gun, or you pull out a bigger one. Or, you call their bluff. Or, you do any one of a hundred and forty six other things.”

-Harvey Specter

#27/100

I watched the show “Suits” recently and was hooked till the last season. When Harvey Specter, one of the main characters in the show, suavely uses the above dialogue, the only thought I had in mind was, “Yeah, good for you, you are a fictional character, your writer will always have a way out for you!” I firmly believed that it’s diametrically different in reality. If you have a gun pointed to your head in real life, YOU DIE!

However, after experiencing a bit of life, I have come to realize that this might not be the case always. There have been many instances in my life where I felt like I had my back against the wall. However, with time, not only was I able to get out of the situation, it didn’t really seem as hazardous as I imagined it to be. Over time I was able to completely erase these kind of perilous situations from my memories that once gave me anxiety and panic attacks.

The basic instinct of every human being is to survive, non-existence is our biggest fear. Whenever we face a situation that is beyond our control, our brain immediately sends out fear signals to avoid it completely. But if we get past the initial inertia, we can come out with some way out for every situation. I’m not talking about a situation where you have a gun pointed to your head, I wouldn’t know what to do either. I am talking about the smaller, more relatable situations.

Like, you have been given a project to complete at work and haven’t been finding time to pursue your other interests. Eventually you give up on the hobbies that truly gave you happiness and push yourself to the brink of constant sadness. As you can see, the initial few days of handling any kind of change in your life is overwhelming, post that once you are used to a routine, you can always squeeze time out for your interests.

If you love sports, you can find time for it during your off days if not every day, if you wanted to hit the gym each day, you can resort to home exercises, if you want to learn a new skill, you can download an app or find a buddy with similar interest, you can always find an easier way to fulfil your interests. It’s very easy to blame your external situations for all your inadequacies, but if you look closely, you have the solution to all your problems deep within your mind. You just have to pay attention.

Initially, when I was asked to travel to office which involved a commute of 8 hrs per day, I was very upset to skip my workouts for those days. I really enjoy working out, it keeps me sane and gives me an endorphin rush that can’t be put to words. Today, after giving up on my workouts for several office-commute days, I managed to squeeze in a 10 min skipping session in the morning. It was a small session but made me feel more productive than my usual long routines. It’s because I did something that I believed was practically impossible. The adrenaline rush after completing such tasks is inexpressible.

Do you have any such thing in mind which you have been missing out on? Try making time for it tomorrow and realize the true potential of the human mind.

Run with the wind

#9/100

Many years ago, I was going through Will Smith’s interviews on YouTube on a lazy afternoon. I had watched his movie “The Pursuit of Happyness” and was mesmerized by his performance in the movie. I wanted to understand his personality and ideologies more and would end up watching a lot of his interviews. During one such browsing session, I stumbled upon his award show winning speech which left a huge impact on me.

“The keys to life are running and reading. When you’re running, there’s a little person that talks to you and says, “Oh I’m tired. My lung’s about to pop. I’m so hurt. There’s no way I can possibly continue.” You want to quit. If you learn how to defeat that person when you’re running. You will know how to not quit when things get hard in your life.

-Will Smith

During those days I was completely cut out from any form of physical activity. As a kid, I was never into sports and ended up being that overweight kid who avoided the sports class in school. I never had a dislike for sports or any exercise in particular, I was just not into multitasking back then. School only meant studying for me, I was never part of any extra-curricular activity (a thing that I totally condemn now).

My tryst with running started when my best friend enrolled us into a 5 km marathon about 4 years back. I had never run more than 100 mtrs in my life till that time but somehow had the confidence to complete this run. You can sense my total disregard to the concept of distance and time here. In my mind, 5 km didn’t seem that difficult a target to accomplish. My confidence was crushed when I barely huffed and puffed my way past the finish line in 55 mins on the race day. Although my timing was horrible, this run somehow managed to release a great deal of endorphins in my body and gave me a sense of accomplishment. But that was it, I made unsuccessful attempts to make running into a habit many times after the marathon. I even purchased running shoes and active wear to motivate myself only ending up being stored safely in my cupboard. I just didn’t have the will to wake up early and run during the weekends.

Two years back, I was reunited with this sport when I was rock solid on my resolve to lose weight. I started slow but was determined to be consistent this time. I barely could complete 2 kms in the beginning but didn’t lose hope. I slowly increased the distance of my runs with each passing week and was able to build up the confidence to enroll myself into a 10 km marathon within 3 months.

Today, my love for this sport has completely transformed me for the better. As Will Smith said, it helps us quieten that little voice in our head which says “No” to any hurdle/struggle/change. Running gave me confidence to begin any new task headstrong and just dive right into it. The longest distance I’ve covered in a single session in the last 2 years has been 26 kms. Before the start of each long run, my mind always presents me with many negative emotions and doubts about completing the run. However, I’ve managed to complete every single run target I’ve set for myself and crossed the finish line feeling like a super woman each time.

There are certain habits which you know would work wonders for you yet difficult to imbibe. In my case it was running. I just had to force myself the first month and then it benefited me ways which were hard to ignore. I ran 5 kms after 4 months today because of the lock down and had the most surreal start to my day.