Lensq2021 has been one of the best years of my life. It transformed me so much at a personal level that I am amazed at how much a person can grow in a year. I left behind a lot of negative attitude and converted the remaining to a growth mindset through contemplative meditation and surrender. Though my circumstances have not changed drastically, I no longer hate the person inside me. I have learnt self compassion and self love which makes every day so much easier and merrier.
2021 Rewind
1.Physical health
Exercise
Splits
Even though the year started with my obsession of wanting to do 180 splits by the end of the year, I started experiencing pain in my hip joints mid way and I was scared to continue the routines. But the good part of the story is I reached 150 degrees from 120 degrees. I am glad about my efforts and results.
Mindful Yoga
Of all my yoga sessions, there was one day when I went into a complete meditative state while doing the poses which is the ideal state I want to go into every single day. Even though meditation is not something to aim for, that session has set up new standards for myself.
Bodyfulness
After I quit doing splits as the aim, I started to do yoga based on what my body wants. This is one of the best ways to tune into your body to listen to what kind of stretching it needs on each day. On one of the days I was dancing with a series of yoga poses because that is how I wanted to express myself. It felt extremely beautiful to be in sync with my body and feelings.
Diet
I spent around 8 months following the diet of Medical Medium but I couldn’t see any significant results. I hope it was actually detoxifying my body even though I could not treat my symptoms. Later Ayurveda happened to me and I saw good results in less than a month. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. There is a lot more work to be done. Hopefully in 2022, I will find a genuine ayurvedic dietician and find some way to deal with my weight and see significant results.
Unmet Targets
I wanted to include running or walking 10k steps everyday. But practically, I could not make time for this. On the days I don’t step out of the house, my average steps within the house is around 3700. Realistically, I can aim for at least 6k-7k steps daily as I don’t really have a lot of extra time in my everyday life.
I put on two kgs more in place of wanting to lose at least 10 kgs. Weight has not been kind to me at all.
2.Mental Health
Therapy
I understand myself better when I have a safe space to express my feelings. I found a good therapist where I don’t feel judged and I have a breakthrough every time I express my confused feelings. This helped me break a lot of limiting beliefs.
Forgiveness
In 2020, I found forgiveness to be impossible. Now I am able to do it within a few hours. The more I let go of my ego, the more easy I find it to forgive.
Emotional maturity
Many times, even though we know everything in theory, it is difficult to put that into practice. But I am definitely proud of how far I could come this year in bringing myself close to what I know about emotional maturity from books. I still have my long standing trigger points but only a very few people can still push my buttons.
3.Spirituality
Even though I didn’t have any major breakthroughs like 2020, it was a decent overall year. I have explored and learnt a lot of new things to get deeper into spirituality. I started using Tarot cards, oracle cards, astrology, numerology as divination tools. For meditation, I started using crystals, Rudraksha, Tratak, lucid dreaming and contemplative techniques.
If you would like a reading through Tarot, numerology or astrology, you can book a session here. Currently I do the readings for free. If you find it insightful, you can choose to be a Patron.
4.Hobbies and Skills
Side Hustle
With the minimal efforts I have put into marketing, I saw a linear growth with at least one new participant in each of the workshops. The best part definitely was recurrent participants which was the best metric for me to measure the work i was doing.
5 weeks of meditation was one of the highlights of 2021. It changed me fundamentally and took my creativity and confidence to the next level. Even though I have done more sessions on meditation, the first one always remains close to my heart.
1:1 sessions – Every session with a client where the client goes back with an insight is a win win session for me. It gives me immense satisfaction to make a difference to the world.
Books
I reached my target of reading more than 100 books this year. Even though I wanted to track all the books I read, it became difficult after a certain point. I don’t want to come off as a fraud when I say I read more than 100 because it is quite a difficult feat to achieve it. The way I was able to reach this number is that the first book I read on a topic, I read it end to end. When you read more books on the same topic, you already know what the author is writing. So you skim and skip certain headings which are repetitive unless there are case studies. Of course, I cant skip paragraphs in fiction, but in non fiction it is very much possible based on the utility of the book.
Of all the books I read, the life changing book I read this year was ‘Maybe you should talk to someone’. This book helped me identify a lot of hidden parts of me and motivated me to go for therapy because I have breakthroughs about my limiting beliefs when I express myself. Therapy was the only place where I felt safe to do that. Even though my therapist was only around 23 years old, her compassion was what made it safe for me to express my innermost self.
Audible
After a lot of resistance to audio books, I finally tried out audible to save my eyes and include more movement in my life by listening to them during a walk. Even though I am a proponent of mindfulness, I gave Audible a try during my vegetable cutting time because I just can’t convince myself to do it daily and being mindful doing that is even more painful as I am not a saint yet.
Writing
I was always afraid to express my spiritual thoughts to the outside world for the fear of judgment. I have been a non spiritual person in the past, I looked down upon spirituality, never really tried to even understand it before dismissing it. But when life happened to me, there was still a fear inside me that I would be rejected by people if they knew about this side of me. I was afraid that people would no longer find me credible as that is how I viewed people who did that before. After studying my own chart, I understood that it’s a fear from past life that is preventing me from being open about spirituality. The only way you overcome fear is by facing it. Some of them laughed, a few others mocked, then came the few others who wanted to connect and learn. Spiritual journey is a very lonely one. If my posts on spirituality can make a few people less lonely, I think expressing myself to the world is worth all my fears. This was one brave step I took to be more authentic. What you see is who I am, with all my strengths and weaknesses.
Unmet targets
I hardly played piano in the second half of the year. I started writing a lot of books but never got closer to completion. I hardly spent any time playing indoor or outdoor games. I found doing marketing the most boring and painful thing to do.
4.Relationships
With growth comes shedding. I had to let go of a few friends this year, because I am tired of being the person they expect me to be. I always thought friends are for a lifetime. But I have learnt that you should not hang on to energy drainers who come from a place of entitlement and not gratitude when you want to grow emotionally and spiritually. When I am with those friends, I say things which I don’t mean because that is how I fit into their world and at this point I no longer want to wear masks to please people all the time.
In my attempt to find and make more friends with whom I can resonate, I was regular on a website to connect with likeminded people. I met more than 60 strangers this year and a very few actually converted to friends. A few of them were a pleasure to meet, a few more were just a pain. But overall, it gave me an opportunity to study body language, ask right questions and insights into human beings.
2022 Goals
2020 has been a year of exploration of my new life. 2021 was about trying about if I really like them in practise. 2022 is going to be about strengthening the existing practices and expanding on the current set.
1.Physical health
My goal so far has been around ‘How to lose weight?’ At this stage and age, I don’t think it makes sense for me to chase it. I have tried everything out there in the market and saw no results from it. I want to reframe my goal now.
Are the results of my medical tests normal? Am I able to do my everyday chores without fatigue? Can I go on treks and not feel tired?
While I can say a yes to the first two, I miss out on the last one hugely. I use stairs once in a century these days and that definitely has impacted my stamina for a person who used stairs regularly in the pre covid era. I want to improve my endurance and stamina.
Exercise
- Read the book ‘Hatha Yoga Pradipika’ to understand Hatha Yoga at depth
- Stay in each pose for 3-10 minutes. My yoga teacher always said that it is not about how many poses you do in a session but how long you stay in each pose that helps you reap the benefits.
- Learn more about the science of exercise. There are so many schools of thought out there, most of which are targeted at weight loss. Some of them even increase stress in the body unnecessarily. Learning the right thing will benefit for a lifetime.
Diet
I am yet to stumble on the right Ayurvedic dietician. Until then, I will follow the diet for my body type and season.
Tracking
I will measure the amount of time I spend in each pose daily and increase it by a minute every month until I reach my target of 10 minutes or whatever my body allows. I will measure my weight and get regular medical tests done to make sure that I am healthy even if I am overweight.
2.Mental health
Even though my triggers have reduced considerably, I still have a long way to go. There is a lot of trauma stored in the body for all the times I never stood up for myself. Every time I reach a plateau in my spiritual progress, I know that all the previously stored trauma needs to be cleared up.
Ideas
- Continue with the contemplative meditation which helped me have major breakthroughs into my behavior pattern
- Continue with therapy as I discover myself more when I talk in a non judgemental space
- Continue with writing down how I feel more often to find a safe outlet to my emotions
- Keep reading books which uplift my mood
3.Spirituality
I have high hopes and goals for myself in this area and want to reach greater depths.
Ideas
- Document my experiences more often
- Spread my knowledge either through talks or writing more often
- Go deeper into astrology. Do at least one chart reading a week
- Learn to see auras
- Practice Tratak using various objects like flame, sun, moon, sri chakra, mirror
- Practise intuition exercises
- Do regular cleaning of my energy
- Add more mantras into my chanting regime
- Make a prayer to the Universe regularly
- Learn more tools and techniques like palmistry, runes, pendulum, past life regression
4.Career
Data Science
In my full time career as a data scientist, I have been majorly woking on text models. It is always good to have diverse expertise rather than stick to only one field. I will spend the first few months trying to update myself with technical terms so that I can be an all rounder.
Side Hustle
Even though it was good to grow linearly, I am looking forward to expanding at a higher pace this year. In order to achieve that, I will have to learn some marketing skills too along with delivering it seamlessly.
How was 2021 for you? What are your plans for 2022?
Happy 2022!
Note: If you are looking for help in self-improvement, goal setting, habit building and meditation sessions, you can enquire for a session.
[…] 2022 is just a milestone on the journey of life. I have documented my journey until this milestone here. I get back to planning the rest of the journey at month level […]