On the New Year’s new start
Knowing that there’s a point of reset eases your mind. And hitting that reset button every once in a while gives you a breath of fresh air. One thing that stands out when you do this is having the knowledge of what works for you and what doesn’t. It’s like having a 1 mile head start in a 100 mile marathon.
New year is a great checkpoint to start over from. Supporting the case it’s great to see a flurry of self-help, self-improvement articles being published since 31st December till now.
It’s the ability of people to influence and inspire others that I really adore.
The “New year, new me” notion stands true to me in 2016. Since Jan 2nd I’ve been:
- Writing a journal daily.
- Using a planner to plan my Todo’s for the week (even though I don’t complete them).
- Tracking time for projects I work on.
- Took courses on Productivity and Happiness from Highbrow.
- Learning Japanese.
- Tracking my habits.
- Exercising my brain at least 3 days a week.
One thing that I lacked before was self-control. I was mindless with my actions and was prone to impulsion. Not to say that I’ve outgrown those things, but I’ve been them in minimum amounts.
Journal writing has been a major boon for me. Although I had a ritual of writing journals every New Year’s Eve, recapping the year and deciding on resolutions earlier, it’s been fun winding down at the end of the day, everyday and just expressing myself. One theme that I do try to follow is having sections highlighting something I was thankful for, an idea I had that day, and something that I learnt.
The biggest influence that made me embrace the “New Year’s Spirit” was rather weird. I was at Pokhara with my friends on New Year’s day and on our way back home to Kathmandu I read this book, Red Hot Chilli Peppers: Stories Behind Every Song.
Now if you know me personally, I love the chilli peppers! This book had every freaking thing that a chilli’s fan would want, but sadly it didn’t cover I’m With You and any of the B-sides (c’mon man!!!). I can go on and on about this, but lets leave this for another time.
The peppers have such passion for what they do. They are relentless in pursuit of their art. And it’s not hard to fall in love with their energy.
I wanted the same drive that the peppers had.
It also helped that I ran into many motivational articles. Notable one’s being:
- The opposite of evolution.
- 10 habits that change boys into men.
- 5 minutes in hell.
- Life lessons from an 80 year old man.
- The real story of how to became a designer.
- Increasing your creative output with 14 time management tips for creatives.
Since yesterday I’ve been obsessing over Khai. It’s a Nepali song by Bartika Rai about finding happiness.
I love songs that have meaningful lyrics and stories that I can relate to. I don’t want to go into details but this piece really spoke to me. Definitely worth a listen.
Although I’ve been having bad days recently, January has been a great start to 2016. Embrace your “New year, new me” and finally Happy New Year 2016 everyone (Although I’m terribly late).
