30 Days to change your habits

It's true. It takes about 30 days to change your habits: break old ones or get new ones. For e.g. if you want to take up running, you need about 30 days to get to a point where you become a runner. Same holds true if you want to start working out or stop the information overload that you often subject yourself to etc.

Changing habits requires a couple of very important things:

1. Reason
2. Resilience
3. Follow-Through

REASON
Unless you have a reason for change (and a very good one at that), you are not going to be able to cause a change. The process of wanting a change often begins with a reason. But the reason has to be grounded well. Superficial reasons usually lead to disasters. "I want to lose weight so I can look good in my clothes," is a very superficial reason. 90% of people never follow through on their changes because their reasoning isn't solid enough.
"I want to lose weight so I can live a healthy life and live longer and play with my grandchildren while I am old," on the other hand is a solid reason. Try, "I want to run a marathon when I am 80yrs old."

Your reason for doing something needs to have enough purpose and meaning for you to get up and follow through with your changes each day until your objective is met. This is the only known way you can follow through.

RESILIENCE
Resilience is everything. It is the ability to stand and face the challenges that may arise in the changes you are about to bring. Every action causes and equal and opposite reaction. When you try to change, you will be pushed back, but your reason for change will make you stronger. Your unyielding attitude will make you succeed.

Resilience can be built up by using the Gradual Setup philosophy.

Say you want to change a bodily habit. If you were to just go and start making immediate changes, your body will react in a negative way. You see, your body is smarter than you and it does not like sudden changes.

Some very good examples of how your body reacts when you make rapid changes:

1. If you wake up at 9am every day, try waking up at 7am one day and see what your body does to you.
2. If you don't work out at all, go to the gym one day and just push a whole lot of weights and see what your body does to you.

It goes to prove a very important point, changing habits is better when it is gradual. Gradual shift is a good shift.

When you want to start getting up early, don't just wake up at 7am instead of 9am all of a sudden. Take your time.
For the first couple of days wake up at 8:30. Then for the next couple of days wake up at 8:15. Then 8, then 7:45, then 7:30 and then finally 7. Give yourself enough time and spread to get comfortable to waking up a little early than before.

All great things have a great foundation. Make this initial setup phase a precursor to how you want things to follow. Reinforce your beliefs, outline your vision a little more clearly during this phase. Believe.

You have now formed the habit. The next challenge is to keep it and not revert back to your old ways. This is the toughest phase. Many people make it to the end of the tunnel, but give up because they don't see the light.

FOLLOW THROUGH

At the end of the tunnel lies light. Light that will grant you the joys of the day. Light that gives you the gift of color.

It is the journey that makes the destination worthwhile. The process and what you learn in the process that makes your new habit worthwhile.

Every thing you did in 1 and 2 counts towards 3. If you don't have a good enough 1 (Reason), then your 2 (Resilience) will be weak. If your 2 is weak, 3 is almost a guaranteed failure.

If you have a good enough 1, but not that good a 2 (i.e. you did not take time to adjust to your new habits) then 3 will work out for a while, but eventually lead to failure.

It takes a solid 1 and a rock hard 2 for you to completely develop the new habit to a point that it becomes a part of you. Apply this to any skill, habit you want to develop and you will hopefully reap the fruits of your hard work.

Push the "RESET" button already

I have often been tested in ways I cannot imagine. Each experience has been mind bending and almost paralyzes me to a point where I cannot think for a little bit. And then through some magical way, something works out and life moves on. That's the way life works. Easy come, Easy go...sometimes high, sometimes low..

An immigrant's life in this country is hard. If you are not overwhelmed by the excess of legal papers, you are likely to be challenged by the endless deluge of Visa constraints, the important dates like your extension for the work visa, your Green Card application dates, papers and the list goes on and on. Sometimes I feel so drained by the excess stress imposed by the uncertainty of things that I just can't think straight.

That's when I really need to sit back and regroup and re-game. I need to push the RESET button already.

Life doesn't have to be hard. It's your perspective that makes it hard. To change your life, you have to change your perspective.

A great friend of mine once taught me a great technique. It's called the Golden Bubble Technique. Every time you are going to act on while in a helpless situation, or if you don't know what your next step should be, just use the Golden Bubble Technique.

GOLDEN BUBBLE TECHNIQUE

Visualize yourself in 3rd person and step outside from your body and look at yourself and the current situation inside a Golden Bubble. What do you see? Disconnect your emotions and just focus on what seems to be the most plausible action. See yourself in ways you have never seen yourself before. Analyze from the outside. It's a tremendous experience. The golden bubble will disconnect your thoughts from all the negativity and reinforce some light and positive attitude. Very important. Many a times the Golden bubble will spit out the answer so fast, that you almost think you're stupid for not knowing it.

It's called selective disassociation.

Pushing the RESET button implies a lot of things. Here are some that are very important:

1. Slow Down
I cannot begin to tell you how important slowing down is. I was so stressed by a particular situation today, it almost made me cry. Made me feel I cannot control things around me. But i soon realized, what's not in my hands cannot be controlled by me. If fate has something ugly in store for me, I am ready to take it on...head on.
I just slowed down. I sat down on my couch, set back the recliner and just chilled out. Listened to really slow music... "Amos Lee - Arms of a woman", and just closed my eyes for a moment. Slooooooow Downnnnnn.... breathe in slowly, breathe out, and as you breathe out, just get rid of all that instability your devious mind causes.....

2. Write Down your Feelings
Many times you will feel helpless. Keeping emotions in your head does not help. What helps is verbalizing using the right phrases and words your exact feelings. Doing so does the following: it frees up all the junk you kept re-iterating in your mind. It gives you a more rational way of associating your emotions. People usually don't have many adjectives to describe their emotions. Most of them describe their emotions using: Unhappy, Tired, Frustrated.

They say the more you can enunciate your feelings, the better person you become. So if you are exhausted, say you are exhausted. And so for unhappy, helpless, challenged, insecure, jealous etc.

3. Know that you're not the only one
Not only that.... you probably have it better than most others. I was once not happy with the way things were going on in my life. I had a week of arguments with my girlfriend over things that really don't matter at all, but we fought and fought. And then one day, while she was gone, I watched the movie, "City of God." Within 20mins of the movie, I just realized how fortunate I am. You see those little trigger happy kids, shooting and being shot and you realize how lucky you are.

My mind raced back to those days in Bombay where I would stand on one foot in a jam packed train compartment, praying to God that I don't lose my bag which was somewhere around my arm, just because it contained one of my most precious things, a photograph of me and my crush at that time :)

If I pulled off that, I can pull off anything. People who have lived in 3rd world countries know what real pain is. Real pain is not having clean water to drink, or water to bathe on days, or continuous electricity, or luxurious cars, or free roads and a peaceful drive on the streets. Real pain is when you get old before you are old.

If you think you've had it with things, just flip your channel to CNN and see how many global crisis' are going on right now. Do you really think you've had it that bad?

Well, we'll continue more when I write again. Life is too fast, unless we devise ways to slow it down and make it worthwhile to stay.

Until then.

Love,
Anup

Happy New Year!

I would love to wish all my readers a Happy New Year.

Looking back at the last year, I can tell you things have changed a lot since! I am no longer working 12hr days! I am having a great time working from home and working on things that are really important to me. I am absolutely enjoying life to its fullest.

2009 is going to be a very personal year for me. It will be a year of tremendous paradigm shifts. It will be a year that dictates the next 4-5yrs of my life. I can already feel the good stress when I wake up and I am excited to see what fate has in store for me.

Once again, I wish all my friends and readers a very Happy New Year!!

Let's start the good times...

Martini of the Day - Dec 30, 2008 - Tangerine Martini

This great martini comes courtesy of Tower23, a great hotel bar in Pacific Beach! This place is a personal favorite hangout place!
This is officially the last martini of the entire Martini series, and I was very impressed by it!