This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.
As a coffee shop barista for 8 years, 8 hours on foot per day. This quarantine and isolation period has completely turned my world upside down. In the past couple of weeks, I have been going through states of mind. From acknowledging the fact of not having a job, worrying about the coming couple months of financing my family, seeking help from different resources. Till now, I start to enter the state of peace in mind and knowing what I can do every single day.
It is tempting to watch the data about Cover-19. The more you search for the news, the more you feel anxious. In the first three weeks, I have been actively exploring the data every single day, and it only grows the anxiety within me.
Till one day, I understand that I have been doing what it needs to do to protect my family and the community. Spending time worrying and watching the news will not help to make the situation better.
I started a new routine to get the most out of it.
A New Routine to Make Better Use of Your Time from This Quarantine Period
Think about what matters most to you
Every day I start to take the time to think about what you really, genuinely care the most about, then invest your time in what you care. A lot of people wing their way through each day, not thinking about whether how they’re spending their time will produce meaningful results.
Start with meditating gratitude to get the most out of it. Ask yourself what matters the most to you. Question the elements of your lifeand work backward to your actions to figure out how you should act.
Do less. By listing the 1-3 main things, you must do per day.
What I have been found useful is that I drop down three things I must do the night before I sleep, I am surprised by how my subconscious mind is working on this in sleeping. On the next day, I focus to complete these 3 tasks.
When you do fewer things, you spread your time over less, and so you have much more of yourself to give to everything you do. I think one of the best ways to boost your focus, become a better person, and use your time better is to do less.
Multitask.
I have heard a lot about multitasking lower your productivity. That is because people choose the wrong tasks to do! Yes, you cannot multitask something that requires deep focus. But you can multitask some chores. Only that these chores should not be the subjects, you value the most. And one of the tasks does not require your focus on it. Simple tasks like making the coffee in the mid-morning while doing some quick clean in the kitchen. Listening to a podcast or watch an inspiring YouTube video while preparing meals.
Time Batching: Kill two birds with one stone. Combine different purposes at one single activity. One thing I found incredibly helpful is, do exercise with the family together. You motivate each other, strengthen your relationship, plus build up your body muscle at the same time.
Focus on high-leverage activities
You may have heard of the 80/20 rule, which says that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. The higher leverage activity is, the more you’ll get out of from a small amount of energy.
Some people invest their time in watching the phone, watching the news all day long, which I did. That’s time you’ll never get back, and time you could have invested into a much higher leverage activity, like reading a book, exercising, writing, or meditating.
You invest your time in high-leverage activities so that you produce the most significant returns on your time.
Know how little time you have, and live accordingly
You really do not have that much time. Especially if you are a parent, you have one more thing to add up while fighting with distractions. You start the day 24 hours, but once you subtract all of the commitments from that, you do not have much left.
Instead of whining about not being able to complete your task, you always remind yourself how little time you have. You light a fire under yourself to make the most out of your time. You start to say “no” to commitments that don’t mean much to you. You bring more energy and drive to your work. You become more defensive of your free time and make the most of it.
Make time to relax.
Your fuel can’t last long if you keep stressing every day without rest. Don’t feel guilty about relaxing yourself. It is okay to play games or watch TV as long as you set a time for it. Set yourself some relaxation time from half an hour to two hours per day. Relax me a lot from daily stress built up.
How do you change your routine on this quarantine period? Share with us and comment below.
When it comes to learning, A lot of people say, “ I am not good at learning, or I am poor at memorizing things. “ There is no such thing as a good or bad memory. “ There is just a trained memory and an untrained memory.
Learning is about showing up and play full out. According to super memory coach Jim Kwik, there are 6 keywords to learn faster.
6 keywords to learn subjects faster and smarter
1. Believe
All behaviours are beliefs driven. Your brain is like a supercomputer, and your self-talk is the program to make it run. You have to monitor your self-talk and guard your mind. Some people say ‘’I can’t focus’’, you may be surprised that Focus is not something you have; it’s something you do. Energy is not something you have; It’s something you do. Memory is not something you have; It’s something you do.
You need to rewire the way you talk to yourself so that you can exceed the limitations.
2. Exercise
Physical exercise. As your body moves, your brain grows.
3. Forget
If you want to learn any subject faster, it is to forget. A lot of people don’t learn faster, because they thought they know it already. That is also called “ the all-known ego.” You have to empty your cup so that you can learn.
4. Active
Be active. Learning is not a spectator sport. You need to get involved. Your mind doesn’t learn from consumption information; your mind learns from creation in it. You write notes, and you ask questions so that you can learn.
5. State
All learning is state-dependent. A lot of times, people are not even in the state of learning. The state that you feel back in school was mostly bored or confused. You don’t want to learn in a bored state. Control your state. The highest level of states is peace, love, gratitude, joy, and compassion. You need to train your emotional state to be able to learn faster. Same as body muscle, you got to exercise and build mental muscle with nutrition, so that you can adjust quickly.
6. Teach
Learn the intention to teach someone else. When you teach something, you get to learn it twice. Your focus would be better.
If you are interested to know more about learning, there are more practical ways to help you learn better. Click on the link below to my next article:
A lot of us are living in a constant state of fear missing out. We always depend on what we have plans, our future, our visions. With social media coming out, everything goes so fast, and if you are committing to create significant results in your life. A lot of them steal time and moment from you.
The biggest problem is that we think that happiness, joy, or fulfillment is in the future. Or it was in the past that we lost it. One of the things we do is that we missed out on the moment, and we don’t realize that happiness is right now. The only moment that we have is this moment. There is no other moment; the other moment is a promise, an idea. The past moment is over.
We live our lives as we have forever like there is a guarantee of tomorrow. However, you don’t know if there is another moment. When you live life from this is the only moment you have, you are living life form emergency, you are living life from you may not see them again. When you are doing, you are celebrating it, and you acknowledge it, and you can be present in it.
What stop you from living the moment could be the guilt from the past. It could also be the anxiety of the past or the resistance of what you have been through.
Embrace and accept where you are, that what happening right now is actually happening for you. That what happening right now is your benefit. Be grateful for being in a bad moment; it could be an amazing moment. Because your happiness is up to you, enjoying this moment is up to you. So you can embrace the moment and live in it that you are present.
And what makes it unique is in the moment, how you are engaging.
So many people are never present, connected, and they missed out. They do not even remember the conversation. There are so many moments that they are with somebody. Still, they were not present, present with the responsibility that they are creating. They always think that this is not it, and then they are stuck in a situation that they don’t want to be present. Because as long as they feel that this relationship is not the one, this career is not the one. They are putting all of their happiness on the results.
As a result, they are miserable about it, complaining about it but not doing anything about it. They decide not to make a decision. So many people are unfulfilled because they are not doing what they want to do. If you are in a career that you are not all in, get out. What is your intention when you talk to your daughter, your coworker, your mother? So what’s the experience you want to create when you are with that person?
So how can you practice living in the moment? There are some ways I found it incredibly helpful for you to enter the present moment.
Breath Meditation
Watch your breath, and see how your body and mind react to it.
Feel the inner body, focusing your focus on the muscles or parts of your body.
Touch ( focus on the simple act)
Recite ( and quiet the mind)
Awareness of silence
Listen closely to words
Be in ownership in whatever moment you are within. You live, make every moment counts, that will evaluate your life.
Revelation is looking at what is right in front of you. Most of the time is when there is a crisis, and if we just Stop sit and open our eyes. The path is revealed right in front of us.
For the most part, our thinking is born of obsessions and usually wraps up in a whole lot of junk from the outside… Past things, things that we projected to the future, things we saw on TV, stuffs that we heard on the internet, something that somebody said to us, most of our thinking is not serving us because it is not steeliness. Its a form of activities, not action.
We are built to continually compare ourselves to other people. We are always thinking of what the other person has; how we are in the relationship that we are getting as much attention as the other person. We started when we are children, are we getting more attention than our siblings from our parents. So we are continuously comparing ourselves in the brain, power, the status of the people around us.
When we are looking at the unhappiness, it is people who are one way another into a tunnel. They say the only way to live is this way… They are not happy with it, but it seems the only way… I have got to love this person, although it is not making me happy. I have got to do this job, there is a prison. I’ve got to live in this place though I don’t like it. We can unpick some of these things and say, “really?”. Is that absolutely necessary? Humans are brilliant at building themselves cages and throwing away the keys.
Better be really careful about the words that you tell yourselves. Because there shows how you view yourself, how you talk to yourself, how you look into the mirror, and how you perceive yourself. That is the same way you see the world, speak to the world, and get out of the world. So you better be careful the story you are going to tell yourself; how you feel about yourself. Otherwise, what do you gonna expect?
Each time you feel anger at your siblings or your mother or your friend for saying something that you misinterpreted. You will just say that your ego speaking. That these people weren’t saying something personal, but your ego is just always getting in your way, question it.
The origin of wisdom, according to the Greek, is Know Thyself. One important thing is that you have to understand 95% of who you are is set on unconscious programs. And the first step is lighting a match in dark ways. If you want to become someone else, you need to be aware of who you are.
Knowledge, experience, wisdom, Philosophy. Initiate that philosophy, master it. Mind, body, soul, thinking, doing, being, learning with your head, applying with your hand, knowing it by heart. This is the journey of knowledge. Because when you learn that information, and you really study it. You are going to begin to see the world differently because your brain is changing.
Here what you got to do, you got to show up every day. When I was on the path, a path that just grows. People start jumping off the track over time. Kids, drugs, failures…It does matter excuses… But if you stay on that path and people are jumping off. You show up and guess what happens; you become the oldest guy in the way.
You learn to love yourself into the context of your relations with others. It is interactive. You need the right amount of self-awareness, but you also need to be in relationships because it is people who help you become more aware.
How you can change your circumstances by changing your attitudes. Your attitude towards life with determine what you get. If you are avoiding and hostile towards people, a hostile person will tend to create hostility around them.
Imperfection stops us, I don’t think we will easily overcome it. And indeed the quest to be immortal, to be free of blame issues, to be always correct, to say and feel the appropriate thing is in itself a full of madness. The best we accommodate ourselves in the conditions of life is by accepting: we are fraud; those around us will be fraud; we will make errors; those around us will make errors; we are largely in the dark. Therefore we need to go easy on ourselves and be generous towards others.
Somebody else tells you, “I too have gone through this”. That is why we read books that inspire us from other people who have also lost and found a way back and saw the light again and created new hope. We connect with someone and allow themselves to love again and have another child and start another business… What you go through it, but you have a sense that it is that thing called going through and that you can’t come out of it from another side. That there is HOPE.
You don’t suffer less, you suffer differently. And the most important thing is if you are not alone. Probably the most challenging thing in all our experiences is that the pain of suffering, loss, or ache is not to be alone.
You want to enjoy life. You want to love fate. And what fate meant things happen to you can’t control. You didn’t control over your parents are, you didn’t control which city you were born into what school you went to. You didn’t control whether you were born rich or poor, there is much you can’t control of is fate. Accept it for what it is, stop whining, and stop saying I want something else. Embrace your world and your life.
You may not be aware that in behind there are couple thing stops you from being motivated.
1. You do not connect yourself to the goals.
Only a few of us really ask a question: Is that what I really want? Take your head into the reason why you do and what you do. Keep asking yourself, like did I choose my own goals? Is there something else I feel more connected to? When we have the emotional connection to that idea, we can then insert ourselves into it.
2. You reward yourself for everything.
It is good that you start with a reward system, but you are not firm with yourself. If you procrastinate, but you still reward yourself. An excellent reward system has to be positive rewards and negative punishment. Keep yourself in check.
3. You lack independence.
Many unmotivated people feel like they are being put into the driver seat. Freedom of choice is essential for building your motivation.
4. You stay in bed. Laying down too much ruin your motivation. Don’t work in bed.
5. You are indecisive about the future. It is like jumping straight in the unknown. Instead, you should define your goal, laying out the plan about the future. So that you can make that specific dream into reality.
6. You repeat past mistakes. You are struggling with the same problem, and you don’t feel like you are improving. Change your perspective and try something different. Find another way around it.
7. You are exclusively Extrinsic. In fact, the best motivation around you is intrinsic motivation. Which are inner passions, beliefs, and values. If you stay disciplined, you will get to your goal eventually . However, most people are motivated by extrinsic, like praise or admiration.
How do you keep motivating yourself? Comment below.
When I was younger, I don’t know what it means to be grateful. No matter how much I have accomplished, its always this dissatisfaction that it is not never enough. It is almost like an emptiness inside. I didn’t know that it actually needs to learn to be grateful. Later in life, I learned that gratitude is an experience that something a lot of people crave for. Indeed, it is a deep sense of Joy that, unlike any other feelings you experience.
Unfortunately, most people don’t experience gratitude naturally. They are a little bit negative. Think around the people around you; they usually complain about the environment; they are not grateful or appreciate what they already have.
We need to learn how to be grateful and appreciate what we have today. How do you be grateful? It is something that you have to work on. It is actually something that you actually have to spend time feeling and experiencing.
The best way I found to be grateful is that in the morning, I start off the day with a guided meditation. To focus on what I am thankful for, what could I be grateful for, even though I am going through some challenging time. The little things that you appreciate in life. Who are some of the people in my life that I am grateful for? All it takes is 10-12 minutes in the morning. By exercising that emotion and by digging deep.
When you start the day this way, it completely changes your life. When you are grateful, you will not be fearful. All the stress that you experience in your life is because you focus on certain things. Maybe you are focus on negativity, lack. However, when you are grateful, you feel wealthy.
In the evening, you write on gratitude journal, write down 3 things of the day you are grateful for.
Until you documented it, it changes the games for you because it changes your mindset.
“Ideas are a dime a dozen. The person who puts them into action is priceless.” You don’t have to invent antigravity or faster than light travel. You must be different in some way. Most different products and services are just a small twist on an old idea. But they are different. Get ruthless about trying something different.
Be first or Be different. If you don’t change, then you can’t be different. Start an industry or change an industry. Do not merely copy an industry. The big slice of cake goes to those who create – the crumbs go to those who copy. The skill with the maximum shelf-life is creativity.
Is your idea weird enough? Trust your crazy ideas! Trust your instinct. Trust that and dream! “People who think they are crazy enough to change the world are the ones that do.” Apple computer. Do you have the guts to throw out today’s winning product when you get a better idea?
Good Ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous patience. Before the beginning of exceptional brilliance, there must be chaos. “Be all you can be!” From chaos comes order. If we wish to make a new world, we have the material handy. The first one, too, we made out of chaos.
Before a brilliant person begins something great, they must look foolish in the crowd. How do you find an area in which to make you succeed? Seek out chaos and bring order to it. Master the chaos that controls our world.
Most people struggle to succeed because they are fearful of the unknown, and they are focus on fear.
“Courage is not the absence of fear. It is proceeding despite those feelings
“Failure is hard. But you know what? There are real payoffs if you can figure how to get over the fear of it, how to live with it, and ultimately how to push ahead.” Barry Diller
Comfort Zone: One’s image of “the way things are supposed to be.”
Super discomfort zone. Being uncomfortable and filled with dread, almost beyond your comprehension. E.g., for most people, public speaking, or life-threatening activities.
How to expand your comfort zone
1. Take a Limo to the airport next time you fly.
2. Hire yourself a good lawyer and a good accountant. ( They will give you proper advice that will get you out of comfort zone.)
3. Buy Clothes you can’t afford.
4. Join the best Club you can’t afford, Golf Club, etc.
2. It is all about elimination. Eliminate other skills and focus on your picked one so that you can concentrate on one expertise at a time.
3. Identify the emotional barriers that would interfere with your desire skills. The barriers could be low self-esteem, any negative thoughts.
4. Plan the time and commit to practice it. Break down that 1 day 24 hours into 60-90 mins per each session. Set at least one day apart between each section. Time your practice into 25 minutes each so that you can focus.
5. Get the tools, the platform, and the environment you need to achieve the skills. Get immediate feedback to keep track of your progress so that you can quickly adjust your mistakes and grow fast. If you have money, getting a coach who specializes in that field will help you eliminate common mistakes among learners. You may not like listening to your voice; however, a filming recorder does help you to observe your performance fine-tune your skills. Apps or Softwares are also a great way to help you keep track of progress.
6. Breakdown the subject into micro-parts so that you can digest complicated ideas.
7. Aims at acquiring skill most and quickly, not perfection. Being a perfectionist will slow down your pace. By doing so, you can achieve your skills rapidly.
What have you done in the past in mastering your skills? Comment Below.