habit, regular, routine, writing

Goals with Intention (GWI) – 2020

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Notebook with pen along with laptop open with screen on and coffee mug on the left.
Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash

Making new year resolutions is clichéd. It’s known that 12th Jan is the fateful day[mfn]Reference[/mfn] when the majority of people drop on their new year resolutions and fall back into the normal (for them).

So last few years I’ve made a new year resolution list and some of them worked where I had the intention but some of them didn’t, they dropped out in the first half of the Jan month itself.

So this year, I didn’t make new year resolutions, because now I understand that this whole method is flawed. You’ll work only on those things where you actually have a real interest.

This year I’m working on Goals with intention (GWI)[mfn]Forbes Reference[/mfn]

Let me explain a little bit. Goals alone don’t work. Resolutions and Goals are similar, they fail, if your intention is flawed. You need to consciously define your intentions what do you really love to do and want to achieve. So if we put Intentions with Goals. Then they seem to work.

For example, If you are putting waking up at 5 am every day as your new year resolution but your work time doesn’t let you sleep till 10. Then the goal is flawed. You should think – why you want to wake up at that time? Maybe, to exercise? or to get some quiet time? Then you should probably not put this into the goal list and fail. Instead, you can just modify your current calendar to shift your exercise time in the middle of the day (at work maybe)? Your quiet time can be moved to right before your nighttime routine.

An example of a goal with intention is where you need to make a new window of time for something new entirely. Like Swimming or painting or journaling or writing and list goes on. However, the most important thing is to know what you really really love. You can discover but doing a little discovery on paper. Introspect yourself. Then to followup on your intention put it into a weekly review. Share your progress on a blog or maybe to a friend or a close group (maybe other people who also are working on similar lines). This way you actually can track what’s going on.

So for me, the formula is –

Goals with Intentions = Start with Intention + Set precise Goal + Measure + Improvise

Coming back to my list. Even though I’m improvising my system of resolution goal tracking in 2020. But first, let’s start with what I did with resolutions in 2019.

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habit, regular, routine, writing

New year resolutions – 2019

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Photo by Jessica Lewis on Unsplash

Making new year resolutions has now become a habit, which I want to keep on cultivating because it helps me move in the right direction throughout the year. I tend to go back each month to this resolution list and see my progress. It is an interesting and forward-moving process.

2018 is over and a new year (2019) is here. For this year’s new year resolutions list, I’m again putting in a few fresh resolutions and keeping a few from the last year.

For me, the resolution list includes a few good habits I want to encourage, some new things I want to explore and last but not the least a few things from last year which I really wanted to accomplish but couldn’t somehow.

Here you go.

New year resolutions – 2019

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habit, regular, routine, writing

New year resolutions – 2018

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Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

Making new year resolutions has now become a habit, which I want to keep on cultivating because it helps me move in the right direction throughout the year. I tend to go back each month to this resolution list and see my progress. It is an interesting and forward-moving process.

2017 is over and a new year (2018) is here. For this year’s new year resolutions list, I’m putting in a few fresh resolutions and keeping a few from the last year. Why carry on with the old ones you say? It is because now I’ve started to know myself better than before and what keeps me happy and content.

For some people, new year resolutions are some things from which they want to break out, like a bad habit. For some, it is something new which they want to learn or do. For me it has all three, break out of something which I don’t actually like, learn something new and do something which I’m carrying forward from last year’s resolution list and haven’t yet completed.

Here you go.

New year resolutions – 2018

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good habit, habit, life, regular, routine, writing

New year resolutions – 2017

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New Year Resolutions

Last year I first published a list of my top 10 new year resolutions for the year of 2016. So I’m continuing the tradition, cause it helped me move in the right direction in the last year throughout. I would go back each month to this resolution list and see my progress. It was a fun and productive process.

It’s the new year day today. New hopes, New resolutions and a report of last year’s resolutions. Here you go.

New year resolutions – 2017

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creativity, discipline, good habit, habit, life, lifehack

How this amazing medium helped me read more than 9 hours a week?

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Recently I’ve found interest in an old school medium of book and article reading, even though its old but still got its charm. It literally helped me gain more knowledge than ever before in past sometime.

This medium is Audio! by the mean of Audio books & Podcast.

How it can benefit?

While commuting or going for a run, earlier I used to listen to all types of music. But recently after reading an article from a guy who works at buffer. He shared amazing routine of his where he listens to audio books and podcasts while running or commuting. Here is a brief of the reasoning he gave.

“Often we use to put aside less time for reading articles or books than we would want due to busy life. But guess what! its not that we have less time, its how we make best of our time.”

His words gave me a reason to stop and reflect on my daily routine. Lately I’ve started 3 new books and have put many articles in my read it later app. But yet I’ve not made any significant progress in that front. Not because I’m too lazy, but because my day job and workout routine  leave me rarely any time for reading books and articles. So I tried to think, where can I cut some slack and add myself some reading time? That’s where the power of this audio medium crossed my mind.

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confidence, good habit, gratitude, habit, humility, life, life path, super human

How these 3 things will change your life forever.

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Building a good habit or cutting out a bad habit is not that easy. As we grow up, we start to change, cause life happens. Things which we used to like few years back, might not interest us now. Vice-verse, things which we didn’t like a few years back, we might start liking.

We as humans are prone to change in ourselves. More over, the age and time demands change as well. But sometimes a single incident can change your life forever. I’ll tell you a story about that.

“In mid 50’s, there was a lower middle class couple living in a small town in the state of Madhya Pradesh in India.  They were living a frugal life. They had a girl named ‘Shanti’ as their only child.

Shanti who couldn’t get too much in her childhood in comparison of any other child of a middle class family kid in that time. But still she was a happy child. She would run behind the sheep, the shepherd will shout at her in joy as she was a cute little freak.

As she grew up she got habituated of treating the animals badly. She would throw stones at the street dogs, kick the sheep or abuse any of the sort of animals. Her parents who thought they were giving her great cultural values didn’t know about this bad habit of her.

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experience, habit, intellect, Running

Try to be your own best instead of someone else’s.

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A guy was running on the pavement in an athletic robe. He seemed like a marathon runner. There was a grace in his running movement. When he was running, it seems like an effortless glide instead of a run. His pace would be almost double than mine. Next day again he would come for the run and finish with a nice pace strongly. Daily I will think I should talk to him and get some tips on running. But there wasn’t enough of the push to go to him and talk about running.

I had also started on my running sessions recently, like a month or so back. Everyday i go to this creek side  pathway where joggers and oldies would come for a morning stroll.  I’ve been keeping up with running schedule for the past month regularly.

Today I pulled myself together and run along with that guy and greeted him ‘Hi’. He responded back with warmth. We continued running along, after 25 minutes he stopped and I stopped along. I asked him, so how long you have been running. He said, “its been quite long”, with a smile. You can say half a decade. I frowned. So you must have ran many marathons. He nodded in agreement. I said, “wow”, with an excitement.

Then he asked me, how long you have been running. I said its 6 months on and off. You know life these days, always running for work, errands. No time for ourselves. He said, “that’s true. But its up to us, how we control our life. We control it or we let it control us.” I nodded in agreement. First time I’ve been talking to someone who seemed like thinking from my own perspective for life.

He told me, its good to see you running. It would be great to accompany you and share experiences. I said, that would be amazing. Then I asked him how did you reached to this pace. I cant keep up with your kind of pace (I’m talking about a pace of 5:30 per kilometre) for long runs. He said its all about training with the right mindset and towards the right direction. Listen to your body, but start to enjoying the boredom of getting up daily and going out there. All it takes is get up and get out there. Everything else will follow. The best advice I can give you is, “try to be your own best, instead of someone else’s”. Don’t think about if someone is thinking you are running slow. Don’t let that kind of thoughts bother your mind. Just keep this in mind, long you will give your muscles to build up for the higher paces by first running on slower but longer paces, that soon you’ll be running on your desired high pace. I said, I must admit, its quite a handful of insight from your experiences. He smiled. Then he bid me adieu and said see you morrow bud. Let’s train together. I said awesome, in agreement.

We parted in different directions to reach our homes. In mid-way, I thought oh shit, I didn’t ask him his name. But I said never mind we are training together from tomorrow.

How we forgot these kind of small details when we get into highly intellectual conversations. I wonder.

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dreams, exercise, goals, habit, health, life, regular, self-compassion

Life you really want comes with discipline, consistency and self-compassion, always!

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Photo by Hello I'm Nik on Unsplash

Photo by Hello I’m Nik on Unsplash

Life!

It’s not a predefined path towards happiness or sadness but a way which we carve out for ourselves. It’s based on the choices we make in our voyage.

Life is not a straight line, it’s a zig-zag path. Mixed with both the lows and highs of happiness and sadness. There has not been a single fortunate person who just had only happiness in life from the cradle till the grave and no single unfortunate one who just had sadness. Everybody, every single person experiences both the emotions in his or her lifetime. Though the ratio of these feelings differs for each and everyone.

If we want to live a happy and healthy life, we need to stay happy in a bigger ratio than sadness. How can we achieve it?

Anyone can achieve it, cause happiness is a choice not a state of mind. At times there will be situations that definitely gonna make us sad, but it’s our choice to fight them or to surrender. We do have a choice to surface up from that sadness. We have a choice to be happy. But it needs strong willpower to make that choice. More than 60% of people I know as friends, family or as close ones don’t possess that kind of willpower, which results in them being in a sad state which is totally unnecessary for them. They could choose happiness over that sadness but they didn’t, because their willpower was not that strong which didn’t allow them to move on from that sad thing. So how do we deal with this?

To reach a greater goal, first, we need to take the first step. That’s the most difficult part. Most of the people couldn’t make it there, because they don’t even take that first step.

Once we have taken the first step to get started, then we need to keep on moving by taking short but steady steps. Some people, after getting started, get so excited that they move on high pace, but they couldn’t keep up that pace and get tired of different circumstances like not getting the desired results or physical tiredness etc. and eventually they stop moving. But people who take smaller steps and keep on going on a steady pace and not thinking much about the goal but the process of reaching there, eventually get there.

Taking small steps and keep on going is not easy as it may seem, but it’s better than the former one. We must practice it with discipline so much until it becomes a native habit. Who said no efforts are needed? Of course, it will take great efforts, but won’t it be worth it? If it will give you a happy and healthy life.

Haven’t you heard, a healthy mind in a healthy body? In most cases it’s true. How could you achieve it? [Here’s a good article on 7 Steps to a Healthy Body and Mind.] There is only one way to be in a routine. Just show up every day, do it every day. Practice self-compassion each and every day.

Come on, make that choice, be happy be healthy. Show up every day for the routine you want to follow. Take that first step and keep moving.

Thanks to James Clear and Anca Dumitru for inspiring this post.

 

Inspiration only reveals itself after perspiration.

– James Clear

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