December Progress Report

“Change happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change.”

Photo by Kelly Jean on Unsplash

Wow, final month of 2017. What a blur this year has been — the most change, and the most exciting yet.

OBJECT LEVEL (what did I do?)

Self-feedback:

I’ve been at home for 2 weeks now, so it feels very much like a work-cation. Or perhaps that I’m enjoying the work I’m doing to the extent that it feels like a fulfilling and relaxing vacation.

This month has been pretty transformative: I’ve finished the third week of Zero to Launch and about to embark on my first endeavor to reach the benchmark to move forward to week 4. It’s exciting and scary, something I’ve never tried before. I also finished my Year of 2017 recap video and feeling really proud of the progress I’ve made in videography.

And being at home with the baby brother is always something I look forward to. My life is becoming closer and closer to how I want to spend my time based on the things that I value :)

Here’s where I’m at for goals:

This month’s goal:

I tried a new format this time where I listed on the project and area goals I had.

Projects:

• Writing: finish 12 projects in 12 months, December report → check
• Business: launch website and prep for ZTL in January → half check (already started ZTL, still working on launching website)
• Side income: finalize contract details with companies → X

Areas:

• Video: one monthly video, one Thailand video → X
• Dance: practice 3x a week → check

For the side income, I’m still waiting on the last detail to be finalized, and for videos, I decided to save the recap video for January since I would release the year end recap video on the last day of December.

It’s my first time experimenting with this format and I’m not quite feeling it. It doesn’t encapsulate all the goals I had for this month (which is another story, in another spreadsheet) and it feels a bit spread out, lacking focus.

Type to experiment again! It may be more interesting to use this section to talk about the monthly theme I’ll have (a lite weight version of a monthly project) and how it has influenced me. I’ll start doing that for next month and we can see how it goes.

Snippets from insightful posts:

• How you can have an amazing life: learn skills that you can only learn by doing, when you put yourself on the line possible for failure, skills that can’t be taught in a classroom; make sure path is always forward by choosing to try; invest in yourself: explore the exceptional while others marry the mundane; question yourself + authority; begin now rather than waiting until tomorrow; know that the only thing holding you back is you.
• Rethinking passion: when choosing hobbies to dedicate time to, it’s not necessary certain activities that make you more interesting, but rather the effect of choosing an activity that genuinely interests you, will make you more interesting (should vs. want); the ability to develop deep interests can also be learned (TimeWise program where students followed up on what was interesting and create diary to track how time was spent and later adjust accordingly)
• 6 week action plan for Carnegie’s principles from How to Make Friends and Influence Others: inspiration for a monthly project to go through it as well as see if I could create something similar to books I really like! #goals
• How to conduct your own annual reviews: a friend suggested this as an activity when I asked him about his solo retreat. I like that Chris says “I don’t make resolutions; I make a plan of action based on what matters to me.” He breaks down the categories to writing, business, friends, family, service, travel, spiritual, health, learning, financials which resonates a lot with me.

After I finish the Annual Review, then and only then do I break out the GTD and other productivity tools that I use throughout the year. I’d rather do the right things poorly than the wrong things efficiently, so I spend more time thinking about these kinds of high-level things than about how I can save 5 minutes a day.

• Some unconventional ideas: Sometimes things that seem “too good to be true” actually turn out to be true, if you’re skeptical by nature, you might miss out on some of them; there is almost always more than one way to accomplish something.
• World domination: You can have it all — the only things you’ll need to give up are assumptions, expectations, and the comfort zone that holds you back from greatness; you don’t have to live your life the way other people expect you to. What do you really want to get out of life? What can you offer the world that no one else can?
• How to set up a weekly review: taking into account emergency triage, preventative maintenance and planning for action
• Coaching vs. mentoring: coaching helps you determine tasks required to achieve objectives / address direct challenges, the coach has expertise and experience, provides you with clarity and accountability, performance-driven

PROCESS LEVEL (how did I do it?)

Belief updates:

• Change in money mindset: the more money you make, the more you can invest back into yourself, the more value you can bring to the world.
• I can always take more risks: the risk that I’m taking now and what I know is possible is only the tip of the iceberg.
• Life becomes much easier when you embrace your core gifts and pursue the things that are a good fit.
• Pursuing what interests you is a lovely incubation process: the contract proposal that I submitted was based off one I made back in February, for a company that didn’t work out. You learn with every step, and be sure to keep the projects you worked on!
• I feel like I’m much more attuned to understanding people: what mental moves they’re making and how and why they’re reacting to things.
• Humans are amazing and fragile, I’m still learning how to cherish hearts, and honor promises. I also know how to set better boundaries now.
• Sometimes your mind just wants to self-sabotage. Listen. Listen to your thoughts, your heart, what it’s telling you. And rather than running away from it, do what you need to do.
• When starting something new, think of it as problem solving. So rather than being dubious about how to scale something up to 10K or 100K or not having the skills, ask yourself: do you have the skills to problem solve aka figure out a way to xyz?
• Show up, even if the other person isn’t there.
• There is a thing called unconditional love.
• Application / experience bridges the gap between knowledge and skills.
• The stories you make up versus what’s happening here and now; how you do one thing is often how you do a lot of things. Ex: when you cautiously wait for the other person to be ready, is that how you also show up and interact in other parts of your life?
• Time doesn’t have to be in discrete packets, the present now is indefinite. This is what happens when you don’t measure time.
• If you’re anxious about the future because it’s unpredictable — isn’t the present unpredictable as well?
• Looking for excuses to validate my current situation (they started early, of course they’re successful now, they have a decade of experience) vs. getting inspiration from that and thinking of all the possibilities I can do as a beginner and someone more experienced in other areas
• Signs that you should work with a coach: when you need to learn a new skill quickly to achieve your objectives and deliver results; when no matter how hard you’re working, you’re still missing the mark and not meeting expectations; when you want to develop or refine specific competencies that you need to be successful in your role
• “Be yourself. I like the way you are.”

Currently reading:

• Zen: a practical guide to creating career design
• 5 minute journal (a dear friend brought me this for my birthday and it’s been amazing to do the simple exercises every day and write in it)

Intense emotions felt:

• despairing loss and regret followed by surprise, gratitude, care
• pride in my work and pushing boundaries
• disappointment in you who was once here | feeling hurt with stories of rejection and prioritization
• calm and contentness

META LEVEL (why did I do it?)

Because I want to. Because this is the life I want to live.

Experimental project for next month:

Music. I want to understand and appreciate music more deeply. A year of dancing has allowed me to feel much intensity listening to music and being able to move along and express myself with movement. Listening to music with good headphones did something similar — where I felt like it opened me to a whole new world.

On a similar chord, I’ll listen to songs every week with tips and exercises given by a friend who also really enjoys music, and I’ll see how it affects me. I’m excited about getting more attuned to the different nuances :)

Thanks for reading! This is #8 of my monthly progress reports.