July energy; 💕🕯️🍸📑🛁🧘🏽‍♀️☕️🐚

Change is scary, but staying in the same place is much more terrifying.

Today is the seventh day of doing the 75 soft challenge so here’s a wrap of my week. 

So far so good, I’ve been more active at home than before ever since I stopped going to the gym. I strive to finish any 45 minute workout daily regardless of my hectic schedule. Sometimes I only do my hot girl walk whenever I don’t feel like using weights during my workouts, ride a bike within our subdivision, or would play volleyball with my brother. 

Other than that, I have managed to eat a balanced meal without thinking about the calories of those food I consume. I no longer worry about gaining weight from the foods I eat, therefore I can finally enjoy eating. Also, I started reading books again, I am currently reading “101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think” by Brianna Wiest. I would highly recommend that you should read this book if you love listening to the perspective of other people <3

But there are days that I don’t feel like getting up in the morning given that I am not a morning person and struggling to fix my sleeping schedule. On those kind of days listening to podcast helps me a lot. I honestly enjoy listening podcast more than reading since reading makes me sleepy so I usually read before I sleep hehe. The podcast that I am currently listening to is “Party of 1 Podcast” by Erycka. It really helps in boosting my motivation since I’m also struggling in being consistent and being disciplined.

There is something I wanted to share with you guys for my weekly reflection. What I have realized in the first week of doing this challenge is that CHANGE IS SCARY. It can be frightening to imagine that you can't do that one task, but it can be even more terrifying to realize that a year has passed and you are still in the exact same place. Get up and prepare to fail repeatedly until one day you don't because all success is just failing repeatedly until you understand that the one thing you keep doing wrong is actually turning out to be right :)

Accomplish so far today:

Read Chapter Seven of In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom by Yeonmi Park

Made my bed

Cleaned the dishes

Started on the dirty laundry and folded some clean laundry

Helped A with accounting in a virtual meeting

Went for a 15 minute walk in the cold, but fresh air

Updated my planner

Drank mostly green tea vs. my usual orange pekoe black tea - less caffeine

Getting back into the swing of things

So like Chuck here says, writing is hard. I haven't really been able to get much writing done recently, but I am starting to get back into the swing of things. It has been a journey but I found out that the thesis does not need to be 100,000 words like I thought it did so my goal is 85 pages and I am on like page 40. I also had a pretty major break through on where I want my plot to go so that feels good.

I am also toying with the idea picking up an old work of mine and trying to rewrite it to a much higher standard, that what I was doing in high school when I was first writing it.

I think that it will help me with getting this story to progress, and I might try and do some prompt writing everyday for a month or so to try and get myself in the habit of writing every day.

I would also love to get a habit started of journaling in a notebook every day so that my brain can process things easier without having massive concentration issues.

School starts back up in like three or four weeks, which is both terrifying and can't come fast enough. Work has gotten more intense as time goes on and I am hoping to be able to let things calm down just a bit. But since we are getting into the fall and winter months things will likely only be picking up instead of slowing down.

But yeah, Hwang Hyunjin will help keep me company as I go through and write these first draft words and build these habits.

Wants, Needs, Habits

I want, I want, I want.

I don't really know what I want, as a person who's afraid to ask for anything.

Needs are to be met. I ask for what I need not only because I want what I need because I can't go without. Its a necessity.

Habits are formed within three to six months I've heard.

The moment of inconvenience, my habit breaks and crumbles away because what is the point? The point is to push past any and all inconvenience, will it matter the next day?

What about next week? Or the following month?

I want stability, because I know that I need it.

My lack of discipline makes it harder to achieve my needs, and the habits I choose to invest in are hard to continue when my mindset is lacking.

My needs are my wants but the habits that I need to achieve it needs discipline. It's all so confusing so I go in circles with building habits and the further that I go the longer that I break.

Last day of vacation and I’m setting some new habits up!

•3 bottles of water (right now that totals 95 ish oz)

•10k steps per day! Definitely no issue on days I work, but on my off days I need to work on not just laying in bed all day. Today I went on a 6k walk in the gorgeous sun which really boosted my steps

•meal prepping: nutrition is my biggest hardship right now. I don’t plan breakfast so I’m starving by lunch, grab food from the food court or snag a big coffee from Starbucks, and mindless snacking because I’m bored

I’m trying to start small and not do everything all at once or I’ll get overwhelmed. But the goal is to build up my self discipline and not be a giant pushover when it comes to achieving my personal goals!

I finally practiced yoga on a Wednesday.

For the past several weeks, I have skipped Wednesday for building my habit of exercise every day. Wednesday has been usually greeted with dread because I tend to finish work late the previous evening, and I wrote twice in my journal how I've completely accepted defeat from the cosmic forces. But today, a Wednesday, even if I had woken up from a late-night sleep (3 AM for that matter), I made time to practice a few minutes of yoga for the morning.

I am reminded of the lessons I learned in Elastic Habits by Stephen Guise. Building habits was a matter of simply showing up for yourself and allowing flexibility while appreciating each win (because each day is different and they're your own rules that you can customize as you see fit!). It doesn't matter that it was only for a few minutes; the point is I did it. I still did it even if I could and had the freedom to skip doing it. The choice, the active decision, was mine. That's the win.

Still, I know there will be days for when I can accept defeat from a simple day as Wednesday. Days for when I succumb to being human and the pointlessness of life. After all, without those defeats, I won't be able to call today a win.

7/14/22

Building habits check in:

1 20 min walking workout at my desk.

1 30 minute cardio Combo class.

Ate a grapefruit and a cucumber this morning. Fixed my cauli protein mixture.... but I am not actually hungry just yet.

It is on deck, whenever I get hungry.

It is about my lunch break so I am about to go hit up the elliptical! Woo!

It’s not supposed to be easy. You can simplify the process. You can streamline it. You can build momentum by doing the easy parts first. You can do any number of things to ease the process. But the process, in and of itself, of becoming someone you weren’t before or creating something that didn’t exist before is not easy and anyone telling you it should be is selling you something.

I lost sight of that. It’s very easy, funnily enough, to lose sight of that. And that’s something you can never let yourself forget. The “easiest” time I’ve had, the longest stretch of sustained progress, was build specifically because I stopped trying to hack everything or game the system and just focused on putting one foot in front of the other.

I lost sight of that. It’s not supposed to be easy.

a quick halfling senshi for today's warmup (and to better my mood)

Day 360

There are cynical folks who state (rightly) that one does not need to wait for a new year to start building habits. However, I do hold the belief in the power of choosing a time that feels like a new start. That’s probably why so many people decide to make a New Year’s resolution, because it’s the start of a new year.

That being said, there are ways to create times of the year where it’s a good time to start something new or develop a new habit. The beginning of the new school year is one of them, even though I haven’t been in school for well over a decade now. Seeing all the back to school sales and talks about preparing for school can get even an outsider into the mind set.

Though I have it easier since work is kind of affected by the cycles of the school calendar, but the beginning of the school year is for some a good place to start.

For me, I think I am going to use work’s two week closures to try and build a new habit. Last year, my work closed for two weeks for the first time, instead of just having shorter worker hours. This is great for everyone involved because some do not boot their asses out of work during those shorter hours when they should. In addition, this actually allows me to take two weeks off without fearing something metaphorically being set on fire while I”m gone. Since everyone is away, no one should be sending emails, or asking for last minute bookings because well the sites aren’t open.

Last year it was getting into the habit of writing, this year is going to be much harder. Writing is actually easy to an extent because it’s a hobby I get great satisfaction out of. However, like all my hobbies, they don’t require me to move. I’ve been doing pilates for years so I know a lot of exercises I can do at home. In fact, I’ve been trying to develop at home exercises with my instructor for years. Especially in the past year and a half because I work from home.

It had been my hope that I would take those five minute breaks that work keeps telling people they should and just do a few repetitions, but apparently I have issues pulling myself away from my work. Especially when things need to get done. So, I’m changing plans, and am going to try and build the habit of doing a set of repetitions after work instead. 

Of course I’m not at work at the moment, so the plan is to do them around in the afternoon when I would normally get off. Of course, like with writing, it’s easiest right now because I’m not working. The real trick will be keeping it once I get back to work, but I’m hopeful.

But that’s why you keep trying.

Reading Books

The other day, I decided to reduce the amount of time I spend on the screen. Since all my studies are now on the screen, I wanted to configure my rests to be on the more traditional side. If I'm not sleeping, I wanted my rests to be something like reading books or making traditional illustrations.

I already bought the books. I'm excited for them to come.

EDIT: The books finally came! [06/06/2023]

Empowering Entrepreneurs: Building Habits for Optimal Productivity at Home

We invite you to delve into the world of entrepreneurship from a fresh perspective. Discover how daily habits can spell the difference between success and failure, especially when you’re working from home. Our upcoming article “Empowering Entrepreneurs: Building Habits for Optimal Productivity at Home” will guide you through practical and effective strategies to boost your productivity and…

View On WordPress

2023.04.26 | What are you doing today that is helping you become the person you want to be in the future?

How to Set & Accomplish ALL of Your Goals 🎯 (5 Steps 🌟)

Reading and Writing goals for Summer '23

I would love to read for at least thirty minutes every day this summer. Hopefully I will fly through books. But I would love to read and maybe I go for a walk find a nice bench and read for a bit before it gets to hot and head back to the apartment.

I would also like to try and do two twenty minute sprints of writing every day. One in the morning and one at night.

I also would like to set up an accountability/beta reader system amongst friends to try and keep myself writing as we go forward with the novel/thesis. [Note to self: refer to google sheet with list of people to send it to]. I am thinking I will either send it out every Friday or if I am really going ham I might try for a Monday and Friday schedule. I am not sure whether I should break it up by word count or by how ever much I got done between submissions. Something to ask within my first real weekly newsletter.

So far, all the people I asked if they wanted to read my book have said yes, which is exciting. I am really looking forward to pushing myself to write and learn more about what routine works best for me. I also can't wait to try out writing in all the cool places that are around campus and within the college town I am in.

I will probably come back and edit this as I go but it is a start and something I can keep updating every few days to give feed back on why it worked or didn't work.