Category: Habits

January is not only a fresh start for the year but also provides a milestone to break down the habits to achievable sub goals.

 

Plan for January

 

1.Discover your soul signature

 

It is a one page dose 3 times a day for 33 days to get you in touch with your emotions. I liked the idea of the book and even if it can’t bring out the emotions for the first time, I am sure that will be a thought which will be lingering in the consciousness and with a few repeated readings will become very effective. 

 

2.Artist’s way

 

Doing the exercises of artist’s way was quite exciting in the month of November. I could not stick with it in December due to other commitments. I will take the opportunity this month to speed up on the exercises and try to finish at least two a day.

 

3.Coursera

 

I got coursera access for this month so want to spend my time learning professional and soft skills by studying various courses. I want to target to finish at least 8 courses (2 per week).

 

4.Kapalbhati

 

By the end of this year, I want to be able to do 30-45 minutes of Kapalbhati daily. Currently I do around 10 minutes. In this month, I target to do exactly 15 minutes daily in the morning.

 

5.Replacing checking notifications with Breathe from Belly

 

I switched off notifications for whatsapp. This means that I decide when whatsapp can distract me. I don’t want it to distract me whenever it wants which in turn means that I can create a lot of free time. I have decided that I will check whatsapp notifications 4 times a day or more if I have a conversation going on. I can evaluate my progress at the end of the month by comparing with my usage from the past month.

 

We normally breathe from our chest. Breathing from belly gives a sense of relaxation to our body.

 

Now I replace my urge to check whatsapp notifications by doing a deep breath from the belly. It provides me relaxation, saves time and gets rid of an unhealthy coping style.

 

6.Launch of ‘Make your dreams a reality’

I have launched a package to help people make their dreams a reality in 2021. Drop a mail to lensq29@gmail.com to book your 1:1 session. 

 

Majorly, this month is all about consuming content to start working on action plans for the coming months.

 

What are your plans for January?

 

Happy January!

In 2020, the world saw nature take over its power and tried to reset the balance. I will stop here instead of repeating what everyone has been already saying. 

2020 for me was, “When you can’t go outside, go inside”. I couldn’t go around the world to experience new things, I went inside my body to discover the wonderful meditation experiences. I found a safe place inside me to go to when there is turmoil around. This one choice alone has made a huge difference and made 2020 a life changing year for me.

2020 Review

 

January started with a challenging new job. While I enjoyed my work and constant appreciation from the Product Manager, I always had the doubt that am I doing well. Little did I know that I am going to spend the rest of the year working with the most amazing Manager I ever worked with. It gave me faith in humanity and good people still exist. For the first time in my corporate life, I experienced working with a manager who cared for me as a person and for my personal goals and skill set and always made me feel cared for. The best habit which I picked up this month but became more serious about only in the next month was gratitude. The one thing which set me up for the beautiful day was gratitude diary.

 

February was the month of my first anniversary and we went to Andamans to celebrate. When we discussed the things we wanted to do better, the point on how I am anxious and stressed out all the time came up. I took the discussion seriously and chalked out a plan to change that. That was the one discussion which changed my 2020.

 

March was the onset of Covid in India. Given how poor my immunity is, I decided to go through the natural ways to bump it up. I started taking kapalbhati, yoga, ginger-amla-turmeric, meditation quite seriously. It was also the beginning of reading books on spirituality which started with Power of Now.

 

April was the month when I got into mindfulness. I had a stretch of one week where I felt absolute bliss and I could not replicate that experience again. Another highlight was, I read close to 3000 pages in one month which boosted my reading speed. The tricks I found to read faster were helpful for me in the coming months to read the highest number of books in any year so far. Most of my other goals failed at this point, one of them was learning Kannada. I didn’t have sources to practise so I could not find motivation to stick with it. Another one was I couldn’t publish the book which I finished writing because I didn’t find it upto the mark. But the way I could keep up with photography by finding something to click daily has definitely pushed my creativity to next levels.

 

May was all about cooking. I learnt a lot of new dishes in a month since I thought it was not safe to order from outside to satisfy my cravings. I went from being a person who cooked to survive to a person who was trying to create the atmosphere of home through food. As far as cooking was concerned, I definitely inherited the genes from my mother who is an excellent cook. Most of the time, I intuitively knew what to add and I created my own recipes. Guess what, the dishes turned out to be amazing on the first time, which gave me confidence to cook more. I went up to the phase of making my own masalas to add for different types of curries. Learning a new skill always gives a different type of confidence to life.

 

June was for a breakthrough in Kapalbhati. I just increased it by one minute daily by starting it at 3 minutes a day. I initially thought it was an impossible task but definitely learnt a perfect example of moving just a little everyday. I also started hip opening yoga. I really loved the way I was feeling more flexible.

 

July started with me finally getting into a data science project. All the credit goes to my manager who recognised my skill set and put me into a project where I can prove myself. Since I was getting back to coding after a long time, I had to put in extra hours to speed up my skills. But it was definitely worth every effort I put into my dream. Another highlight was my exposure to Gita classes. The downside is I haven’t started reading Gita yet.

 

August was all about the black and white grid where I lost and learnt. I always wanted to learn chess and finally my husband agreed to play this with me as a shared leisure activity. When I won, it only boosted my ego and the games I lost taught me the game, just like life does.

 

September was the month of “Build the skill set, opportunities come on their own”. I started that month by recording a short video of me everyday to practise my public speaking skills and by the end of the month, I was asked to do a small video on managing stakeholders by my company. 

 

October is a special month as I started being a Habits coach. Helping others find their purpose in life brought immense joy in me which in turn made me feel that my purpose was to help others live up to their fullest potential. Moving into a new house,  helped me set my sleep cycle and watch the sunrise and do my meditation on time.

 

November was about getting back to morning pages. I brought out so many of my limiting beliefs just through my morning pages. This in turn helped me cry a little and let go of long held resentments. I liked the joy of healing. Another best thing was buying a piano which I had wanted since ages and I started growing vegetables in my balcony.

 

December was about forgiving. I religiously did it for the first few days, where I could actually feel my chest go lighter. Later on I felt bogged down by my project and internship work and had to heavily focus on that. I felt really grateful for all the people who contributed to the survey which made my project a success and the wonderful guide who had immense confidence in me.

 

As the year ended, it felt nothing special. It was just a date which we humans make as special. But it is not a bad thing to make it a milestone, to reflect on the time passed and make new goals for the future. The one regret I have about 2020 is that I could have written more and better. 

 

Plan for 2021

Moving forward to 2021, some of the broad goals I have are

 

1.Physical health

 

Weight loss has been really tough for me. I have tried a lot of different alternates but nothing worked. But I am grateful for not putting on any new weight. Sometimes, we just need to keep working on what is right and not control the results. That is the exact plan for weight loss this year. I will keep doing what I consider good for my health. Grow my own organic food, eat more raw food, keep doing yoga daily. Sleep on time. Work on limiting beliefs on weight loss. 

 

2.Mental health

 

2020 was excellent for mental health. I need to put in extra efforts and plan well to make 2021 as better than 2020 for mental health. The brief goals I have are 

• • Spend less time on worrying
  • Hold no resentment
  • Forgive
  • Learn self compassion
  • Write about everyday miracles
  • Attend vipassana retreat
  • Learn to breathe from belly
  • Do 30 minutes of kapalbhati daily
  • Learn to look at every problem as an opportunity for growth

 

3.Hobbies and skills – I don’t have a Netflix subscription. Nor do I plan on taking one. I use my free time in getting better at my hobbies.

• • Learn piano thoroughly
  • Publish one book
  • Learn digital marketing
  • Learn public speaking
  • Launch different counselling programs and workshops
  • Write daily
  • Learn chess moves
  • Read 100 books
  • Publish 50 book reviews
  • Be an expert at billiards
  • Play badminton regularly

I will create time for this through

• • Don’t check phone the first thing in morning
  • Limit whatsapp and instagram time to 30 minutes a day
  • Check whatsapp notifications only twice a day

4.Learning a new language – Learning a new language expands your vocabulary. I want to learn a local language – Kannada, a national language – Bahasa and an international language – Spanish.

5.Academics –I want to publish 2 research papers based on the study I have done this year.

6.Career goals– Most of my work experience in machine learning has been about text mining. I want to work more intensively on this and become a Natural Language Processing expert.

How was your 2020? What are your plans for 2021?

Happy 2021!

 

November was a life changing month. I had a personal discovery almost every other day and it was filled with miracles. My book sales improved. I bought a piano after thinking about it for many years. This new mode of relaxation has helped me bring out another angle in me. I started growing plants. I bought empty pots and soil and planted tomato, tulsi, marigold, methi, coriander and chilli. With a gap of a few days, different plants started sprouting. The joy of seeing the seeds sprout made me feel alive. 

 

Review of November

 

1.Morning Pages

 

After a really long gap, I started writing my diary. I didn’t write what just happened in my life. I started questioning why I was doing what I was doing. I uncovered a lot of my beliefs which were holding me back in life. I could see my peace of mind improving exponentially with every discovery. Thanks to my friend, who was a true accountability partner which enabled me to stick to the schedule and get back to this.

 

2.Mindful brushing

 

This didn’t feel as good as I did for the first time. I felt my mind drifting quite often. But the good thing is brushing with my left hand has become a habit now.

 

3.Self exploration

 

Writing an answer for one question each day to explore myself was quite revealing. It showed me how my values evolved and I changed over the years. 

 

Goals for December

 

1.Revise the books

 

I would ideally want to revise the concepts from all the books I read this year. But I don’t think one month is enough to achieve the same since I have easily read more than 50 books this year. But I will do as many as possible to make sure that I implement whatever I learned.

 

2.Visualisation for weight loss

 

After having no luck with any of the traditional methods for weight loss, I decided to try visualisation for weight loss. I will listen to visualisation for weight loss videos before sleeping every night which might help me in my weight loss journey.

 

3.Forgiving

 

After previous failures at this, I have decided a template which I picked up from the books on forgiveness. I first explain the event as it is without any interpretations of mine. Then I talk about my perspective, my interpretation and my feelings. In the end, I will write an alternate story, another perspective to view things from a third person perspective. I did a sample exercise and this worked wonderfully for me. The only concern is this needs to be done over and again for the same scenarios until the new story becomes the new normal.

 

How was your November? What are your plans for December?

 

Happy December!

 

Oct has been a quite exciting month. I moved into a new house which has a beautiful view of sunrise and sunset. I automatically started waking up around 6 to get a nice view of sunrise. I never missed my remote group meditation which is at 7 am as a result of this. Since I was done with meditation and other chores by 7:30, I was able to start exercising twice a day. All this meant that I was crashing by 11 PM which is what I always wanted.

 

Review of Oct goals

 

1.Malasana

One of the best ways to feel stretch in hip flexors after butterfly pose. I will continue this as a part of my daily routine just like butterfly pose.

 

2.Self Exploration 

This didn’t happen as planned. I didn’t have a clear plan and whatever I did was not motivating enough. I have come up with a renewed plan for the month of November.

 

Plan for November

 

1.Mindful brushing 

Even though I did this a few months back, with the morning drowsiness, it got dropped. I haven’t put conscious efforts to get back to it after that. This month, I put a sticky note on my mirror which reminds me to do mindful brushing with my left hand. Since I am a right hander, doing it with my left hand not only cleans the part of the mouth which can’t be reached with my right hand but also improves creativity by activating the part of the brain which is not used much. I got myself an accountability partner and will also be journaling my experience to track the progress.

 

2.Morning pages

From the time I have started meditating, I stopped focusing on writing my diary. Now I am back with it with a bang. I have decided to write 1000 words every morning. Just whatever comes to me naturally.

 

3.Self exploration

Since this didn’t happen last time, I have a clear plan this month. I have picked up tasks from the book Artist’s way and added a date against it to give a deadline to the task. I am doing this assignment with a friend where we are going to hold each other accountable for the task and it is going to be fun to share the answers with each other.

 

How was your October? What are your plans for November?

 

Happy November!

 

Note: I have a few slots open for counselling sessions for the month of November. Mail your problem statement to lensq29@gmail.com to book your session.

 

 

 

One thing which has taken over the world right now is fear. As each day passes, there is only anxiety which is building up not knowing whose turn it is next. I think I moved from denial to acceptance stage of the world pandemic. I hope all my readers are safe and are reading this article in good health. 
 

Review of March

 
The month of March started for me with a high fever with chills and sore throat. It took me a week to recover. The fever could have been due to the unnecessary panic I was putting myself through or the non stop travel I did in February. I was grateful to the Universe for sparing me from the deadly disease. Due to the uncontrollable panic I went through, I binged on social media which made my days worse. One fine day, I decided enough was enough and cut the time I spent on my phone from 4-5 hours a day to less than one and half hours a day. That felt like an achievement. With working from home the entire month, it was a lot easier to stick to my goals.
 
1.Breathing exercises
 
I finally found a way to make it a part of my life. Except for the week I was sick, I did it on the rest of the days of the month which made the streak higher than the past month where my sole goal was to master this habit. I could make this happen this month because I used the technique of ‘Do it after X’. Never does a day go without brushing. The next action I do after brushing is breathing exercises. I mostly did kapalbhati and anulom vilom. The time ranged from 5 – 10 minutes. But I feel that it is a huge achievement in itself. As long as I don’t have to rush to the office, this habit will continue.
 
2.Gratitude diary
 
I used the same technique of ‘Do it after X’ for the gratitude diary. The first thing I do in the morning as soon as I wake up is write three things I am grateful for. Most of this month, it has been about 

1. I am grateful to stay safe
2. I am grateful to have a job which has an option to work from home

 
If you are not writing one, it is high time you feel grateful for the good health you have may there are thousands out there struggling for their lives
 
3.Learn Kannada
 
I am not at lesson 30 as planned. I reached only lesson 15. One thing I didn’t take into account is revision. I spent a week just revising the 10 lessons which I studied and redid a few where the words weren’t registered in my head. Thankfully, I practise them a few times with my husband who corrects my pronunciation.
 
4.Books
 
I read Power of Now, The road back to you and a few e-books on photography. 
 

Plans for April

 
Mindfulness
 
Power of Now had a powerful message on the importance of staying in the now. It was all good in theory but I had no clue on how to put that into practise. I started searching for practical tips and stumbled on The Mindful Way workbook. It has a 8 week course on how to stay in the present. Based on my previous experiences and the availability of tools I have these are the action points for this month.
 

1. Body Scan – This is one of the awareness exercises which helps you examine each and every part of your body and helps you mentally give instructions that it is relaxed. 
2. Mindful routines – Every morning as soon as you wake up, you brush your teeth. But did you ever notice how the brush feels against your teeth and how many times you move your hand. I want to bring awareness into my everyday activities like brushing, bathing and eating.

 
This month is the right time to start it as the situation demands to stay calm and the conditions of working from home are favourable to achieve the same. Even though it might look like I am overdoing it because I already do pranayama and meditation daily, it is the need of the hour.
 
How was your March? How are you coping with Covid 19?
 
Stay Home. Stay Safe!
 
Happy April!