Jan 13, 2021
Day 10: When The Time is Right, It Will Feel Natural
January 10, 2021
A sense of excitement is in the air. Nothing smells sweeter than progress. All we want in life is progress not perfection. Perfection is for the gods. Us mere mortals just want progress.
With just ten days into this “Year of Consistency”, I’m beginning to see green shoots of new life inside of me. I’ve never been more consistent and disciplined than ANY TIME in my life. Period.
The strange thing is this consistency was not gained by fighting with myself and forcing myself to be self disciplined. I’ve tried that for many many years and failed miserably at getting meaningful consistency and results for even a few days.
I have gained this consistency by just allowing it to happen. Perhaps after so many attempts at consistency and discipline and failing at them for so many years, that my brain, mind, and soul just have had it! Enough is enough! It finally got to the point where it said this is the year. No more wasted time. No more wasted opportunities. No more living below your potentials.
When the time is right, then it will feel natural. I realized that some of the best results I’ve ever got in life was when I didn’t force things. It just happened. My best job was when I was even looking for it. It came to me. Same with love life.
Spirit:
This is where my years of reading self-help is beginning to make sense. I know that some people considered the Law of Attraction (LOA) is a lot of woo woo. Until you feel it your life, it’s hard to believe. I’ve seen glimpses of it through out my life but not really understanding it or trusting it. When your spirit/soul is in alignment with the Universe, then everything flows more smoothly.
Instead of working so hard to be disciplined. Be in alignment to that which you want and make that state of being feel so natural that you do it without second thoughts or strain.
But this does not mean you can just sit at home thinking and visualizing your way to success. Life doesn’t work that way.
The feeling of naturalness of something you desire must be followed by actions. For example, the famous Muggsy Bogues is the shortest player in the NBA at 5 feet 3 inches. This is a field dominated by giants. Most men who are 5 feet 3 inches will NEVER in their wildest dreams even consider trying out for the NBA. Why is that? It is because it doesn’t feel natural for them. Therefore, they will never take actions to train and prepare themsevles for that.
Actions are difficult for us because it doesn’t feel natural. For most of my life, exercising on a consistent basis doesn’t feel natural. It was a great goal to achieve. I remember as a teen one of my older sister used to joke to me, “Is this the year you will get into the Buff program?” The Buff program is this mythical workout program that I tell myself one day I will get to. And if I do this Buff program then magically one day I will buff, trimmed, and in perfect shape. But the reality is I never even really tried to do the Buff program. I’m not even sure what it entails. It was abstract and not a concrete goal. Because it’s abstract it can never be achieved. There’s no road from here to there. The mythical abstract land of Buffness.
In late Decemeber of 2020, I decided to make things concrete. I simplified the process. I will do cario every other day using a running app. And the other days I will do strength training. To make it even easier, I decided to download a home workout execise app that does not require any gym equipment. This lowers the cognitive load. We suffer from decision fatigue with some many choices through out the day.
And that’s all I did. Just execute this simple plan day after day. I also added stretching exercise since I have been suffering from inner thigh pains. Still painful on the right inner thighs but getting better.
Mind:
I’ve been playing Dual N-Back game and stuck at Level 2 for a while because I wanted the False Alarm rate to get really low. This is the best score so far. Ironically, it was on the first try today. It’s as though the more I practice the more the brain is attuned to the game, which is the intent of the game after all.
Gotta trust the process. Put in the reps and the results will take care of itself.
Stats:
You can find the things I’m tracking in the GoogleSheet below. Please note some of the things I want to track will change over time as I learn from experience and what the data tells me. After all, I’m a data scientist.
Regardless, certain items will always be tracked because they are my outcome or target variables(such as weight, blood pressure, number of hours fasted, etc.)
