Looking back (An annual review – 2019)

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From the past six years, I’m doing an annual review of my life. December month is usually the time of every year when I tend to slow down a bit and take a pause. It’s the time when I reflect back on the year. What I’ve done, where I’ve been, where I’m at right now and what I’m looking forward to. To promote writing online and to keep myself publicly committed to my new year’s goals, I publish the annual review here.

A rear view mirror showing Himanshu behind the camera near a waterbody showing looking back 2019 annual review text as well

This is my 7th annual review, you can access all my previous reviews at the end of this post.

This year also I’ll answer three questions, the same as the past 6 years.

  1. What went well this year?
  2. What didn’t go so well this year?
  3. What’s am I working toward?

Hope it will be insightful and interesting for some of you. Lets cut to the chase.

Looking back (An annual review – 2019)

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Looking back (An annual review – 2018)

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From the past five years, I’m doing an annual review of my life. It’s the time when every year I take a pause and reflect back on my successes and failures in the past year. I publish it here in this Blog which keeps me publicly accountable for the goals for the coming year. Here is it for this year –

Photo by Michael Skok on Unsplash

This is my sixth annual review, you can access my previous reviews for 2017, 2016, 2015 (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), 2014 and 2013. This year also I’ll answer three questions, the same as the past 5 years:

  1. What went well this year?
  2. What didn’t go so well this year?
  3. What’s am I working toward?

Hope it will be insightful and interesting for some of you. Lets cut to the chase.

Looking back (An annual review – 2018)

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New year resolutions – 2017

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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Resistance

'Resistance' - Picture courtesy — The coffeelicious post — http://bitly.com/2bvtCVt
‘Resistance’ – Picture courtesy — The coffeelicious post — http://bitly.com/2bvtCVt

 

She was standing on the edge of the cliff.

The gray blind still on her eyes, covering the blind of her hair on her face. She was ready to give in. But why?

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Story of my first Half Marathon.

Picture courtesy — Abigail Keenan

Some people are born to be Athletes. Well, I’m definitely not one of them.

In my childhood, I was always game for sports. All kind of sports. I played badminton, cricket, basketball etc. I always wanted to take part in sports but I was more of a jack of all rather than being a specialist. I never focused on one single sport, I was little there in each of the sport.

But as I came out of college and started working on my first job in Mumbai. I realized that I needed to get back into sports. I was now too skinny and a long way from fit. Then it started getting worse. I became underweight.

The picture below is from 2010 (5 years back). Yes, that’s me. Some of you might not even believe it (Even though its all smiles but still). You had to see me to believe it.

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Gratefulness, motivation and running stories!

Earlier I’ve written about my daily rituals and how I keep myself going. If you have read my earlier post, you may remember the importance I give to gratefulness in my life.

Everyday I wake up, I see the sun rise, I go for my morning run, while running the breeze comes on my face, I get to see beautiful scenes of nature – trees, stray dogs, fallen leaves, the sea flowing. All these things make me feel alive. At that time, I tell myself how grateful I am to the creator, who shows me the real beauty in everyday life.

Each day in my daily prayer I pause for a moment to think about the world we live in right now. Where we can breathe fresh air, walk and run freely, eat whatever we like, wear whatever we feel good in, go where ever we want. I feel grateful for this abundance of nature, this freedom. This habit of being grateful keeps me motivated.

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Looking through the tiny keyhole

Picture Courtesy – ‘Music Smells Like Noise’ Blog

We all see the world through our own tiny keyhole.

Today we are living in a comparatively peaceful world then the last couple of centuries. We should be grateful for that. Days of literal war are a talk of the past. But everyone fights a different kind of war today. We fight it everyday. A beggar fights for a meal, a rich fight to stay rich, an artist fights the block, an athlete fights to reach their optimum performance.

It doesn’t matter how hard you fight, what matters the most is if you are consistently putting efforts. Its not about how furious you are its about how consistent you are.

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

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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How these 3 things will change your life forever.

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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