… really works.
Right after lunch every day, I study French.
French-studying is the habit I want to maintain, and lunch is the habit that I’m stacking French-studying on.
I’ll never forget to study French, since I’ll never forget to eat lunch.
Read more about habit stacking in James Clear’s words.
1. Passive reading is not learning.
2. Resist the mind’s default of wanting to do easy things. (Easy is often greasy + unhealthy.)
3. Constraints create the conditions for freedom.
4. “Be grateful 1,000 times a day”. – Wahe Takeda
5. Peace of mind… is the true cure. And the holy grail.
6. Circumstances > thoughts > emotions > actions > our life. To change our life, we change our thoughts about our circumstances (since we often can’t change our circumstances).
7. Fill your life with the things that make you happy.
8. Be kind about the things you say about yourself to yourself.
9. To know yourself, keep failing.
10. We’re more than good enough – we are enough. =)
It’s wonderful. This table I’m sitting at. This laptop I’m typing on. This view of the trees outside my apartment. My two cats sleeping on the couch. The fan whirling above my head. My fingers moving across this keyboard. The slightly overcast sky today. I’m happy to be where I am, and a little more.
Tomorrow might never come, and yesterday is over. Today is all I have. All the cliches in the world are true.
It’s wonderful to be here today.
I fell off the (blogging/writing) grid for a bit because I was in a don’t-feel-like-doing-anything mode. But I’m back, re-energised!
Talk/write more later!
1. Work hard (do the hard stuff).
2. Get 1% better every day.
“You don’t put yourself online only because you have something to say — you can put yourself online to find something to say. The Internet can be more than just a resting place to publish your finished ideas — it can also be an incubator for ideas that aren’t fully formed, a birthing center for developing work that you haven’t started yet.”
– Austin Kleon
Learning to tear down my own walls, disintegrate, reintegrate, learning to become child-like again, to play, to be messy, creative, uninhibited, to live without rules, to be fully myself, truly myself, to be honest, to roll through this world without guilt, to make things and break things and dream up things and fail at things, to live, to simply live… in this mess that we call life.
“At the back of our brains, so to speak, there was a forgotten blaze or burst of astonishment at our own existence. The object of the artistic and spiritual life was to dig for this submerged sunrise of wonder.”
– G. K. Chesterton
Negative thoughts create negative feelings. Try replacing these negative thoughts with their positive versions, because why not? And notice, with curiosity and a sort of detached bemusement at how silly human beings and our brains are, what happens when you do that.
Photo above: A snapshot of home these days.
1. I lost my French streak on Duolingo. I was at about day 130+ and then, one day, I simply forgot about logging in to do a lesson. Now I gotta start all over again.
2. Bought a MacBook Pro 16 inch recently. What a powerful machine. We really do live in the future.
3. I bought my own home! Personal milestone. It’s a small 600+ square feet apartment (in Singapore). We have been watching Never Too Small to hype ourselves up about living in a tiny home. Then of course we realised many people who live in tiny homes make do with spaces way smaller than 600+ sqft, and now our future home doesn’t feel quite as small anyway.
4. My nephew is arriving on earth in less than two weeks. And another nephew in a few months. Babysitting duties are about to get quite serious.
5. Currently reading “Solitude” by Michael Harris + “When Your Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress” by Gabor Maté (both super interesting) + “How to Draw Without Talent” by Danny Gregory.
6. I learned to drink (and appreciate) coffee recently.
…