The chain-reaction of self-improvement

There is a famous 21/90 Rule: 

"It takes 21 days to form a habit and 90 days to form a lifestyle". 

Recently I went through 21-days of meditation [thanks Pankaj Ballani for sharing whatsapp tasks for abundance and self-improvement everyday]. One of the tasks asked us to jot down some of the habits that we wanted to inculcate but had been procrastinating it forever. This was my favourite task - I had a long list of todos that I wanted to add to my lifestyle. The next day's task asked us to prioritise from that list and start acting upon it. 

My first item on that list was to have a healthy lifestyle - which included two major asks - 

A. Physically more active - Exercise 4-5 times a week, take staircase instead of elevators, walk etc.

B. Eat healthy - Cut out on processed junk food, midnight snacking, sugar, cheese, etc.

Initially it was daunting to go to gym - 24 hours were too less for me in a day to include it! :P I had to actively make adjustments to my work schedule and following the golden rule, I made up my mind that initial 21 days would be difficult. I promised myself a big reward after reaching 21-day milestone. Within a week, I started enjoying going to gym - I saw some regular faces and made a new friend- Neha, my gym-buddy. Rightly said, having a good eco-system will boost you towards excellence and I added Neha to my eco-system. If I missed gym in the morning, she enquires about it when we cross each-other on the floor or accidentally meet at the water-station or the washroom. It pushed me not to miss gym the next morning.  

After successfully finishing 21 days of gym workout sessions, I started playing with my mind the chain-reaction game. As a reward for the first todo, I walked towards the second item on my list, -reading more books.

Being a millennial, I am addicted to audio-visual means like watching Youtube, Ted Talks, documentaries or listening podcasts on my walk to work or cycling in the evenings for getting new ideas, inspiration and learning facts. This is followed by reading online news, articles and blogposts on Medium - which is less time-consuming, concise and easy to skip-and-skim through the content. I was never an avid-book reader until I realised that most of the successful people I have come across had the habit of reading books. So I had added on my wishlist "reading more books" as a habit that I wanted to include in my lifestyle.

I gifted myself two books which were recommended by intrapreneur community at Deutsche Bank: 

1. Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, Braden Kowitz
2. The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm
Book by Jonathan Littman and Tom Kelley

Inspite of having a rough week at work, with some items on my plate at risk for the next release, I was able to spare time and read through the Sprint book in 5 days [the review for which will follow in the next blogpost]. 

As a reward to reading first complete book in 2019, I decided to move to the third item on my list - i.e. writing blogpost. If you are following this blog, I am sure you would know my love for putting my thoughts to words, but also have noticed a sharp fall in the number of posts after campus to corporate transition. But I have been disciplined enough not to break yearly streak on my blogpost (even if that means posting on the last day of the year ;) ) So, the third item on my list is to be like a college-kid again and start sharing more blogpost. 

As a tribute to the 21-days Chopra meditation sessions, the last day they asked me to share my experience on the group, but here I am sharing how it transformed my life-style on a much bigger platform. With this item also getting ticked off my todo, the forth item is to improve at public speaking.

I think that public speaking and being a good leader are two very closely coupled traits. And the journey of improving both of them is like walking on an asymptotic curve. For readers who aren't from engineering background or not well at maths, geometry and calculus -what asymptotic curve  means is you are always on the tangent which approaches the curve, but never touches it. [ lim x -> ∞] There is a scope for improvement even fot the best public speaker or the best leader. And I ain't anywhere near the best - so I have a long way to go. I was a part of Toastmasters club - which I absolutely loved, but recently having moved to another location of work in Pune, it is difficult to travel 10 kms to attend a meeting once a week. To work towards my forth goal, I wish to re-join Toastmasters Club [maybe some other community club if not Deutsche Bank corporate club] to be on the self-improvement path on that facet of life. Finger crossed for that goal!

Dear readers, let me know [email: kesha(dot)shah1106(at)gmail(dot)com] if you want access to the 21 days of meditation which includes 15-20 mins time commitment everyday to complete two exercises: 1. a small task 2. a guided audio meditation. I could not close my eyes and sit calmly at some place for 5 mins also before Day 1 of meditation. It has been a transformational journey for myself over the last month.