10 Life Lessons I Learned By Vlogging Daily For 365 Days

“Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightening to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.”
— Chuck Close

So, my journey began with a good dose of frustrations. I was frustrated about so many things in my life. I was frustrated of having a low self-esteem. I was frustrated of not being able to keep my words. I was frustrated of not being able to follow my passion of reading and writing in a consistent manner. I was frustrated of not being able to come out of my comfort zone.

I was frustrated of living everyday unconsciously. I was frustrated of living a mediocre life. I was frustrated of being unproductive. I was frustrated of having a fixed mindset in every aspects of my life. I was frustrated of having a victim mentality. I was frustrated of feeling sorry for myself all the time. And above all, I was frustrated of being a loser.

I was frustrated of making New Year resolutions every single year and not being able to carry it out for more than a few weeks. I was frustrated of falling into the same old habitual patterns again and again. I was frustrated of losing faith in myself. I was frustrated of setting goals upon goals, and yet not accomplishing any of them at all. I was frustrated of not having enough patience with all the projects I wanted to start and finish all the way through. I was simply frustrated of not walking my talk.

I had to do something. Something fundamental had to change in my life. I was not happy at all with the lifestyle I was living. I had to force myself to get out of my mind and come out into the present moment reality. I had to stop thinking, and start living. I had to stop dreaming, and start creating realities. I had to stop procrastinating, and start taking actions.

I realized, no matter how passionate you are about something, no matter how bad you want something, unless and until you take conscious actions, you will never get what you want. If you want to see results, if you wanna see transformations happening in real time, all of your dreams needs to be followed up your actions. All of your passions must be followed up my your actions. All of your intentions must be followed up by your actions. Action is the key. In other words, showing up is the key. As they say, half the battle is just showing up.

But the good thing about any problem is that there is always a solution. There are always things we can do to handle all the pain and pressure we are going through. There is always a way out. We can start taking small actions, we can start taking baby steps towards any field in our life that we feel we need to work on. We are not born perfect. And even if we were born, it would be utterly boring.

Perfection is boring. If you are perfect, you will have no reasons to live. The very desire to achieve our seemingly unattainable goal of perfection is what drives us every single day. And that is what gives us meaning and purpose. We are designed to seek progress. We all want to evolve and grow. Even though people say they want happiness, what they really want is progress. What they really want is growth. And the thing is, once you experience the taste of growth and progress, happiness follows as a result.

So, the first thing I had to do was change my philosophy about the overall life. I stopped seeking happiness like a freak like I used to. I stopped seeking bliss and joy all the time like I used to. Instead, I started seeking progress. I started seeking evolution. And it made all the difference. Just a small change in the way I thought, the entire course of my actions changed. I changed my fixed mindset into growth mindset in every areas of my life. Now, I had something to look forward to. Now, I needn’t fight with my discomforts and pains anymore. Now, I could embrace my inner darkness. Now, I could understand the beauty of struggle. Now, I could understand the beauty of hard work.

But, those were good frustrations which helped me to be a better person today. Those frustration fueled me up with some sorts of energy which I wasn’t quite familiar with yet. So, there are no problems. There are only situations. Situations slowly turn into problems only when we decide not to deal with it, when we choose not to face it. But, if we choose to face them head on, those problems turn into opportunities. Those frustrations become your sole inspirations. So, it all comes down to your perception and attitude.

So, these are the 10 life lessons I learned by Vlogging every single day for 365 days in 2017. I hope you all learn something from it and make this year 2018 a great one. I feel so good knowing that I finally accomplished my new year resolution for the first time in my life. Even if it’s not a great deal, what it does is it helps you to see yourself in a different way. Suddenly, you start telling a different story about yourself in your head and that makes all the difference. Now, to some extent, I have created this ‘I am a go-getter’ kind of image about myself. Now, I have this confidence in me that says I can do anything if I set my heart and mind to do it. Small things matter. Small efforts matter. Small accomplishments matter.

Now, I am ready to make a litter bigger resolution than the last year and I feel I am confident enough to carry it on for a year. Just like the way you develop muscles by going to the gym consistently, you develop your confidence doing the things you set out to do in a consistent manner. Consistency matters. Discipline matters. Habit matters.

I will never forget a quote I read somewhere in internet, it says, “Until the age of thirty, you make your habits and after thirty, the habits are going to make you.” Keeping this quotation in my mind, I set out my journey to make good habits on a daily basis. I am really happy to share my journey of a year with all of you guys. I want to thank all my viewers who consistently supported me through out the journey. Who never hesitated to let me know that what I was doing was indeed making some changes in their life. I will forever cherish all the personal messages I received from my junior brothers and sisters and my friends who even requested me to continue doing what I did.

So, I made one video Instagram every single day for 365 days in 2017 as a part of my New Year Resolution. It’s been a wonderful journey to the self. It was a journey of self-awakening, self-realization and self-transformation. Time flies. It feels like yesterday. So, meanwhile, we better do something worthwhile now. So that one day, when we look back, we can smile knowing that we didn’t waste our precious life. So, these are the ten life lessons I learned by Vlogging everyday for 365 days.

1. Inspiration Is For Amateurs

You can’t always wait for the inspiration to strike you to do something. Because you never know when will you feel inspired. What if you never feel inspired? So, learning to work on the things you want to work despite not feeling inspired is the key to get things done and key to become productive. Especially, in the field of arts and creativity, we have this tendency to rely too much on the struck of inspiration. But, as a grown up, we need to get over it. We need to be more practical and disciplined. We need to see that habits and discipline will take us far more than anything else. Inspiration might be important just to light the fire, but we need dedication and commitment to keep the fire alight.

As Woody Allen has said, “Ninety percent of the success is just showing up.” If you show up every single day, you don’t have to wait for the inspiration, the inspiration will follow you. So, just realize that inspiration is for the amateurs. If you want to be a professional in any field, you need to learn the work ethic and be unstoppable. When I was Vlogging I didn’t wait for the inspiration, I just showed up and things just happened. There were times when I had nothing to say and in that situation, I just kept quiet and that is how the series called “A moment of silence” started. Things will happen when you just show up. Stop thinking and waiting, start showing up!

2. Motivation Is Garbage

When I heard this statement for the first time, I was literally shocked. This was a statement made by Mel Robbins in her book titled “5 Seconds Rule: Transform your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage”. I thought her to be rude. I questioned myself how can a motivation be a garbage? Isn’t motivation actually a good thing? I was kind of biased about motivation. I thought we needed motivation to do anything great in our life. I thought, without experiencing the feeling of motivation, we will never be able to accomplish anything. But later, I turned out to be wrong. When I listened to her explanation, it made sense. Indeed, we don’t do lots of things just because we keep waiting for that perfect moment of motivation. And the bad thing about motivation is that it comes very rarely and it doesn’t last long. We feel it now and after a moment, it’s gone. It is ephemeral in nature.

So, don’t wait for the motivation to start out your project. Don’t wait for the motivation to take care of your health. Don’t wait for the motivation to do anything good in your life. But instead, learn to take actions right away without thinking within 5 seconds. If you are struggling to wake up from your bed and waiting for the motivation to give you a push, count for 5 seconds and jump out of bed. Because if you don’t take actions within 5 seconds, the odds are that you will never take action again. If you apply this 5 seconds rule in all the things you want to do, before you know you will have accomplished a lot. So, don’t wait for motivation. If I had waited for the motivation to move me, I wouldn’t have accomplished my new year resolution. It is hard, but it is worth trying. And this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t seek motivation. Seek motivation, but don’t rely on it for everything.

3. Do Shit

This is what I learned by watching Garyvee on a daily basis. He has a quote written somewhere in his office that says, “Ideas are shit unless you execute them.” It doesn’t matter how great your ideas are. It doesn’t matter how talented and smart and genius you might be. It doesn’t matter how good, nice and gentle and caring you are. You won’t get what you want without taking actions. Without doing shit, you don’t have room for exceptions and growth.

He has a philosophy, which I think makes everything crystal clear, called ‘Dirt and Cloud’. Clouds represents the philosophies he carries, ideas he has in his mind and whereas, the Dirt represent the actions he takes, the places where he shows up, every single thing he does. That way, this philosophy comes into a full circle. You cant just act, you need to have some goals and visions and strategies which you need to think first. And you can’t just have goals and visions, but you need to execute those things in real time and place as well. So, he invites people to both talk and do. Do more. Do more shit. Nobody owes you anything. Nobody cares, so the best way to deal with it is to work harder.

I vlogged every single day for 365 days. In the process, I learned so many things about myself which I could have never learned otherwise. If you do shit, you will grow. If I can do shit so can you. Let’s crush 2018 and make it the best year of our life.

4. Be Consistent & Persistent

As they say, “If you are persistent you will get it, if you are consistent, you will keep it.” It doesn’t matter if you start something, the main thing is — are you able to maintain it? Are you able to be consistent and persistent regarding the work you are doing? In other words, its all about repetition. But the reality is, most of us are so lazy to repeat things. We are constantly looking for new things to experience. We want more color and more sound and more texture. This is the reason why we are not expert in any field. If we truly want to be the great in one particular thing, if we want to be the best in terms of skills and aptitude in any given field, we need perfection. And the perfection comes from practice.

We can only practice through the process of constant repetition. You should be using your skills and knowledge constantly otherwise you will lose it. As there is a saying, “If you don’t use it, you will lose it.” So, we need to learn to be consistent and persist in every single thing we say and do. That is the only way to remain in the game. If we become negligent and slack off, someone else is going to come up and take our position and market. So, its high time we become consistent and persist, otherwise we won’t see any result anytime soon.

And the good news is, we all can learn to be consistent and persistent. Some people are born with this skill. But most of us have to learn it, cultivate it. Isn’t it amazing that we can learn anything we want? That is the privilege of being a human being. Let’s cherish our privilege by owning it.

5. Fall In Love With The Process

Fall in love with the process of work, and the result will follow by itself. Most of the time, most of us have this tendency to get too much attached with the result. We are so result-oriented that we cannot focus on here and now where the process actually takes place. We forget to see that the result is actually happening in the present moment process itself. You can’t expect things to happen right away. You can’t expect results to appear out of nowhere. It is the process that encompasses the most part of the journey. Any journey is made up of ten percent of starting point, and 20 percent of ending point when we reach our destination. The rest of the seventy percent is included in the going and doing itself, it lies in the process itself.

Lets make this even more clearer. Our life journey stars when we are born and it ends when we die. So, when does the life actually takes places? It takes between the gap of birth and the death right? Same is the case with all other journeys. You want to write a book. That is your final destination. But you can’t write a book in a day. There is a process that happens between the moment you start writing and you actually finish writing. That is called the writing process. That is when you write, re-write, edit and read and live and write again chapter after chapter….

And one day, you have a book in front of you. So, here the idea is to fall in love with the process itself. If you love the process, you will obviously love your result and your journey will be much more meaningful and purposeful. Making video on a daily basis, I felt in love with the process of taking video, editing and thinking about the contents every single day. Now, I have 365 videos. And that is my result which I wouldn’t have been able to achieve without falling in love with the process everyday. Remember, the journey is the destination. Life is happening right here and now.

6. Keep Your Word

Keep your word. When you say you will do something and you don’t do it, you teach others (including yourself) that you cannot be trusted. As they say, you are what you do, not what you say you’ll do. So, when I first posted a video publicly saying, I will be posting one minute Instagram video every singe day for one year straight, I was scared to death. So, now, people will be watching me. What if I couldn’t keep my words? Now, I started getting messages from my friends saying, they are excited for the videos. At times, I regretted why the hell did I even say something so stupid publicly. It was obvious because I had never really kept my words ever before in my entire life. I would say I would do something but I wouldn’t show up. I would just give up right away.

So, I had zero confidence in me. The good news is, if you announce publicly about something you want to do, you put yourself in a position where you must do it or you will have to face some kind of grand episodes of shame and regret. Which would you choose? Now that I have kept my words, I feel so relieved and I feel so much more confident than ever before. I have successfully changed the personal narrative I tell myself. Now, I want to keep my words and I feel I can keep it. I feel so good to have gained so much trust from so many people. I want to maintain the trust.

There were times when I accidentally and quite unconsciously happen to break someone’s trust. But I realized my mistake and I learned from it. And the most important thing is, I successfully taught myself that I can be trusted. When you trust yourself, you can get so many things done. So, the next time, when you make some announcement or promise, even if it might be really simple, be mindful about keeping your words. Say, you have an appointment with someone, try to reach there early. That way you give an impression to other people that you value their time and that you appreciate their time.

Keeping in mind about such small details in our everyday life, that is how we increase the quality of our relations and over all life. Be an integrated person. Even if you are not, accept it and bring the growth mindset in this particular area and decide to work on it. Always remember, we all are here to learn and grow. Our flaws and weakness needn’t define us. All it needs to do is remind us, and we shall work on it and turn it into our greatest strengths.

So, this year, if you have some new year resolutions. Make sure you tell it to someone or everyone you know. That way, you put yourself in a position where you must follow it or you will lose their trust and most importantly, your own trust. Take risk and see what happens.

7. Be Utterly Honest & Vulnerable

All of us are brought up in certain way. All of us are taught about basic rules of living. All of us somehow know what is right and what is wrong. We have this basic knowledge of rules of conduct. We all have some sense of morality. And we all have our own version of image about what is good and what is bad. So, we unconsciously try to get rid of all the bad stuffs and get attracted to the good ones.

And in the process of following our bias and prejudices, we forget to see that the idea of goodness and badness is but a creation of our mind. It is relative. Just like they say, we all try to be normal and fit in. We try to be unrealistically faithful to all our belief systems and ideas without ever questioning their existence in the first place. This way, we are conditioned to be ashamed of so many things. This way, we are conditioned to feel guilty about so many things about ourselves. We are asked or expected to be in a certain way by others and even if we know we cannot be that way.

We neglect our gut feelings and go against our own inner will and intelligence and become a victim of someone else expectation. This way, we forget to be honest and vulnerable. Trying to be normal and ordinary all the time, we lose touch with ourselves.

I can’t help but share this quote by Charles Addams, “Normal is an illusion. What is normal for spider is chaos for the fly.” What I mean is, being ruthlessly honest and vulnerable especially with yourself is really normal even if we don’t feel that way. We were taught to hide our true feelings. We were taught to neglect and repress and reject all the so called negative feelings and emotions without realizing that they are there for a reason. So, making video every single inspired me to be utterly honest and vulnerable with myself and with my viewers. Even though, I was supposed to make inspirational and motivational videos, there were times when I couldn’t make those kinds of video at all.

Even if I tried to sound inspiring, I could sense it being fake. So, at that moment, I would express my honest feelings and thoughts. I would talk about depression and fear and insecurities and all the things I would feel uncomfortable thinking, let alone talking about in front of camera. By being honest and vulnerable, I have come to see myself from a deeper perspective. I have come to realize my true potential which was hidden beneath the debris of unconscious lies and prejudices.

As John Steinbeck has said, “And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.” We don’t need to fit in any image or so. We don’t need to be perfect. We need to be ruthlessly honest and vulnerable. That’s being what it means to be real. Let’s be real, ruthlessly real.

8. Make Conscious Commitment

Commitment means staying loyal to what you said you were going to do long after the mood you said it in has left you. The first thing is, we don’t even make any commitment. Even if we make, we don’t do it consciously and intentionally. So, as far as my experience is concerned, the first step towards commitment is, your ability to make conscious decision about something and being mindful about all the consequences and your skills and aptitude. For sure, the excitement, under which influence you made commitment will certainly fade away, your mood will certainly wane out.

So, learning to experience all the challenges that come in the process consciously is how you stay loyal to what you said you were going to do. You need to decide. We don’t decide much of the time. I don’t know why but we have this unconscious inherent tendency to believe that someone else is going to make all the decisions for us, but it’s not true. We need to start making decisions for ourselves based on our own intelligence and wisdom.

This year, let’s learn to make commitment to improve in every single category of our life. Let’s remind ourselves about the commitment every single day. Because nothing great has ever been accomplished without unfaltering commitment to ones dreams and visions and goals.

9. Start Small

We need to start small. We need to take baby steps. We can’t expect hell of a lot out of our very first attempt. I didn’t think of making one hour long video nor did I think of making 10 minutes long. I started Vlogging by making one minute long video. If you start small, you won’t feel the pressure of doing something grand right away.

Now, I have developed this capacity to talk in front of camera for more than 20 minutes. I call them 20 minutes rant. Imagine, if I had started Vlogging with the intention to make 10 minutes long video everyday, I would have given up after few days. Because that is not sensible, that is not practical. We need to go slow. We need to learn to take one step at a time. And this applies to almost everything in our life. There is another philosophy that inspires us to make big goals.

They say, if your goals don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough. And they also say, if you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success. But, we need to understand that we are just beginners. We don’t have yet the power and stamina to set goals so high. Here our goal is not to set big goal but to start making habits and start taking small actions on a daily basis. We are playing long term game. Once we are comfortable with small goals then we can reach for grand ones for sure. That’s for later times.

So, I want to encourage all my friends to start making simple and small New Year resolution and I encourage them to stick with it. You don’t have to do anything grand, you should start small. Either it be, running 1 miles for 3 times a week. Reading one page a day. Waking up at 5 am at least five times a day. Make the resolutions that seem realistic and achievable. Don’t aim too high or you will feel discouraged and give up.

10. Feel The Shitty Feelings Happily

One of the greatest lessons I learned is this — it’s not about feeling good, it’s about being good at feeling. Ever since we were a kid, we were taught to feel in a certain way. We were taught to seek good emotions and feelings, and ignore and resist co-called bad and negative feelings and emotions without realizing its purpose. I was taught to be happy and blissful all the time, but there were times when I felt sad and miserable and shitty. So, at those moments I would try to ignore those shitty feelings using different manipulations.

But what I realized over the period of time is, it is only by consciously feeling all the shitty feelings you have been avoiding so far can you actually be free from it. There are things in our life which we aren’t able to do, even though we know we need to do those things in order to step up in our life. But the reason why we don’t do those things is because it makes us feel bad or it triggers some shitty emotions within us and as a result, we give up. So, the trick here is to not fight with the shitty feelings, but to face it and embrace it.

Usually, all those shitty feelings come with some not-so-shitty wisdom we need to hear and learn about ourselves. So, learning to feel the shitty feelings without any regrets or grudges helped me accomplish so many things. For instance — If you are having hard time speaking in the public, be present, accept all the things you are going through like — your body is shaking, you voice is trembling and your mind is not in its place, but go in front of the mass and speak anyway. That is how you conquer your fear, by facing them head on.

So, next time, you feel shitty about something, take it as a reminder that you actually need to improve in that particular area. Because we usually feel shitty about the things we don’t know about, we are ignorant about, we are uncomfortable about, so this is the invitation to actually learn about those things. If you keep hiding or if you keep avoiding shitty feelings, you will never be able to grow and evolve.

Always remember the example of lotus flower. We all know it is beautiful and pristine, but we need to understand that it grows in the mud. Imagine, what if tomorrow all the lotus flowers start hiding away from the mud, they start ignoring it or hating it? I am sure it won’t be as beautiful as it is, and it won’t even survive.

So, learn to feel and embrace all the shitty feelings inside you consciously and do something about it consciously. They are not a bad thing even if they might feel that way. Resistance leads to persistence and acceptance leads to transformation.