#i can be at peace one piece of media decided to avoid that bs decision

[thetimelordbatgirl]

How the mentions of the Smith family in Whotopia got me like.

[changedaily]

The Plan

The X Effect Day 0

January 06, 2017

Here’s the plan on how I’m going to start developing 11 new habits; it’s called the X Effect 

I didn’t come up with this.. I actually found it on reddit. The concept is simple enough.. pick a habit you want to develop and make a 7x7 table representing 49 boxes for 49 days. After completing a day of the habit, using a red pen, cross it with an X. The goal is to have 49 red Xs in your box, meaning you have completed that habit for 49 days. You have to be completely honest with yourself- if you didn’t complete the habit, keep the square blank and reflect on why you failed that day. Trust me when I say that you won’t want to have a blank, because seeing all boxes crossed will be so satisfying. I know for me personally, avoiding blanks in my charts is enough of a motivator to complete the habits for all days.  

11 habits might seem like overkill, but some of these are pretty easy and I’ve already been doing a couple of times a week, so I just need to make sure I’m doing it every single day. Meditating, exercising, visualizing, drinking 2L water are all things I have been doing for a while (just not every single day) so the point of me adding these is to make sure it becomes a daily thing. The other habits I’ve added will be new to me; some of them involve doing things, while others involve avoiding things; we’ll see which type is harder at the end. Let me get into more detail of each habit and why I want to develop it as part of my daily regimen. 

(1) Meditate for 15 minutes: I want to become a meditation master both for spiritual reasons and for practical reasons. On one hand, I want to become more enlightened, find consciousness, kill my ego, find pure bliss and peace. On the other hand, I want to learn to control and observe my thoughts so I can learn to ignore negative thoughts in my everyday life, and learn to increase my focus which can translate to everyday tasks such as working and studying. Also, all the other cool benefits that meditation brings.. like more happiness, better health, better sleep, etc. The steps I’m following are from the book The Mind Illuminated by Culadasa. This book outlines 10 steps of meditation- I’m only at step 2 where I’m learning to focus my attention on my meditation object (breath) while keeping peripheral awareness. Meditation used to be hard for me, even just doing it for 5 minutes was a challenge and I was always thinking about the timer.. but I’m at a point where I can keep my attention on my breath for longer periods of times, and some sessions fly by and don’t feel like 15 minutes. I already feel the effects in my everyday life. I’m able to be more mindful and present, I can analyze my emotions better and let go of negative thoughts and emotions more easily, and I’m a lot less reactive to external events than I used to be. I’m excited to see what the next steps bring me. 

(2) Visualize for 15 minutes: The point of me visualizing is to reach my subconscious mind and program my new self-image, by using imagination and emotion. In my visualizations, I picture myself in various scenarios that I want to happen. For example, my goal is to get straight As next semester (I already achieved that during last semester) so I visualize myself opening my final grades and seeing all As. Because I already experienced the feeling of getting straight As, I can translate that same emotion into this visualization to trick my body/mind into thinking it’s real for the next semester. I do this for other things I want to happen- such as how my body looks like skinnier, me having great friendships, me being more social/outgoing, me being kinder/friendlier, me being able to afford things like trips and an expensive apartment etc. the list goes on. I also use this time for affirmations. Anything to reach change my subconscious mind. The exercises/processes I use for visualizations come from the following books:

Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz

The Power of your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy

Break the Habit of Being Yourself by Dr. Joe Dispenza

(3) Exercise- Gym or Home: I want to make this a daily thing because it makes me feel good, and to help me lose weight. My usual routine is to go to the gym and do cardio for an hour, then alternate days between arms and legs. If I’m too tired to go the gym, I have dumbbells and ankle weights at home that I can use for Pilates and other weight exercises. I will be posting progress pictures over the next 49 days to track my progress with my body.

(4) 2L of water: This one is fairly obvious- we all know the benefits of water. However, water is never something I get enough of unless I consciously think of drinking it. Usually I’ll have 0.5-1L a day, so I want to use this exercise to increase my consumption.

(5) Study for 15 mins: This means a minimum of 15 minutes a day- but usually I’ll probably do an hour or two. As a 4th year University student, I have never given much thought to my grades until this year. I have always been a procrastinator and never kept up with studies. I somehow was able to slide by with some As, some Bs, some Cs and a couple of Ds. All my exams were studied the night before and all my projects were done last minute- it was draining and unmotivating. However, this year I decided I need to increase my GPA and get all As. Last semester, I started to really keep up with my readings by making time each week to do some school work. This allowed me to understand and absorb the content more easily, which made me more prepared for the exams. I ended with three A- and one A+. Next semester (which starts in 10 days) I want to achieve five A+. Since my semester hasn’t started yet, I’m going to start studying for my classes before the semester starts. I have already gotten 2 of my textbooks, so I can start reading the chapters. By the time the semester starts, not only will I be prepared but I will have already started to make a habit of studying daily.

(6) Stay off social media: This is going to be one of the hardest ones. As a millennial, I pretty much grew up with social media and being addicted to the Internet. It all started with creating a neopets account in Elementary school.. then went on to explore the creepy world of Yahoo Chat.. then came a Myspace account in grade 6-7, then Facebook and Twitter became popular throughout grade 8 and high school.. and in University all the other ones started to pop up like Instagram, Snapchat, etc. I feel like I’m so used to putting my life online that I feel empty when I go a few days without letting people know where I’ve been or what I’m doing. If I ever feel down about myself, I’m used to just validating myself through likes and comments. The main reasons I’m staying off social media are to become more present/mindful, and to increase my self esteem. I’ve gotten to a point where I feel unloved and unworthy if my pictures don’t reach a certain amount of likes. I find myself constantly comparing myself to my friends and wondering why they have 500+ followers and 200+ likes on all their photos, while mine only have 20-50. Another dangerous thing that I have noticed is when I go to places and do cool things, most of my thoughts are on what picture I can take that at the event will look cool on my Instagram and show people I’m trendy.. instead of actually enjoying the moment. Now I’m still going to use Facebook Messenger because at this point I consider it a messaging tool since a lot of communications with friends happen over this app, especially group chats. By staying off social media, I mean that I will stop (1) posting (2) creeping other people (3) scrolling through my feeds, 

(7) and (8) No Sugar or Dairy: This is mainly due for health reasons and for weight loss. Chocolate and sweets is my one downfall and something I have no willpower over. I can never just eat a piece of chocolate, I always consume the entire bar. Besides, we all know the dangers of sugar and how we’re addicted to it, so why not get rid of it. When I mean sugar, I mean sweets and desserts and soda.. I know sugar is in a lot of other things like sauces and dressings, but for now I won’t count that. As for dairy, I’m fairly certain dairy causes me to break out, so I’m including it in this challenge. It will also prevent me from eating things like chocolate and ice cream. 

(9) Wake up With Alarm: This means I will wake up with my alarm every morning. I’m still going to allow one snooze, but the idea is that if on a Saturday morning I put 2 alarms for 9 am and 9:30 am.. then I will be out of bed by 9:30 am and not snooze until 2 pm (like I usually do). This is so I can regulate my sleeping pattern and not feel so exhausted during the week. I can also be more productive on weekends.

(10) IF 8 hours/16 hours: This stands for intermittent fasting.. I eat between 1-9pm (8 hours of fed state) and not eat between 9pm-1pm (16 hours of fast state). There’s tons of information you can find about this online and the benefits for it. This is something that I was doing last semester.. not purposely, but because I was so busy and stressed that I only had time to eat twice a day. I ended up losing weight doing this without even trying. This is also going to help my save money, and cut down my decisions throughout the day.

(11) No Data: This one is fairly simple; don’t use data on my phone. Why? Because I only have 1GB of data a month and I ALWAYS go over which means my phone bill is always ridiculously high. My plan is to stop using my data altogether and only use WiFi on it. If there’s an emergency and I need data (i.e. I’m lost in the city and need to pull up google maps), then I will allow myself to use it and not leave a box blank, but I will leave the box blank if I use my data to browse the internet during times that I’m bored in areas without WiFi (like I used to do). 

So that’s it.. those are the 11 habits I will start implementing tomorrow. Let’s see how this works out! Thanks for reading.