November Progress Recap

“Sometimes the unexpected turns out to be better than imagination”

I marvel again at how quickly November passed, and how quickly December is coming up. It feels unthinkable that we’re nearing the end of the year!

Especially since where I am now, is drastically different from where I was in the beginning of the year. It surprises and marvels me, and I hope it stays this way. No, not I hope, but I’ll strive for it.

I’ve been home for about a month now. More specifically, I spent the majority of the time at home, and went up to D.C. for a week to celebrate my old roomie’s birthday (as well as meet my D.C. client for the first time in person!).

The suburban life is so chill. Though SF is too, it’s a different pace of life. Whereas in SF our weekends consisted of going to fitness classes + lounging around, our DC weekends consisted of eating, napping, eating, a little bit of work and repeat 😂. The trip also had an unexpected surprises (more like a miracle, I call it). I reunited with someone who is very important to me. It felt like a sweet sweet homecoming.

Speaking of home, I’m both getting used to it and still not getting used to it. Now it feels familiar to have home cooked meals, working from home having everything taken care of, and looking forward to my brother coming back from school every afternoon. On the other hand, I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to waking up to yelling from downstairs during the weekdays where my mom counts out the time every 5 minutes starting from 6:12 AM, so that my brother doesn’t end up missing the bus. I wonder what the use of buying a phone for him was, especially with the built-in alarm function. Maybe I should just take it back.

This month I also read last year’s November progress recap, it was really interesting to see how much I’ve come in a month, and how much in a year. As I’ve been doing more podcasts and AMAs this month, I’ve been asked questions like: How did you get on this path? What are the best resources? What inspired you? These are difficult to remember as time passes, so I hope that I’ll keep some level of a beginner’s mind, especially with these monthly recaps :)

🌻 High level results:

• Highlights: being reunited with someone that I thought I had lost forever. Well not that drastic, but I didn’t think we would talk much again, much less spend time together. We ending up sharing time, and it felt so natural. It feels as if time stopped and yet never stopped 🕑
• What could’ve been better: dancing for sure. I started off the month quite well, learned a move almost every day. But after I went up to D.C. and stopped taking progress videos, and then wasn’t motivated to do it everyday anymore. I think I need a plan or system to pinpoint what I really want to do and to get out of this, so that I’m much more clear with my intentions
• November project: completed my first NaNoWrimo! Well, my own version of it: the goal was to write 1,000 words every day rather than the average 1.6K words you’d have to write to reach the 50K word range at end of the month. I finished my version and ended up with 32225 words!!
• Major update: decided to pause my expansion plans into China for next year. I did a MVP version in which I hosted an online workshop around One Month Projects for Chinese students (which was quite arduous given my level of business fluency in Chinese…), and realized that there was a lot more I needed to work on if I wanted to expand into China. It’s more important for me right now to solidify my base here in the U.S. before I branch out. Yay focus 👓

🌻 Lessons I learned

On life:

• If you do what everyone else is doing, you shouldn’t be surprised to get the same results everyone else is getting. In fact, it pretty much guarantees that you’ll be average
• At the end of the day, enjoyment and contentment are really the mundane things, like napping in the afternoon, chatting with a friend, taking a stroll, feeling the warmth of the sunlight

On business:

• Learned a lot from going on a podcast (release date TBD), hosting online workshop for Chinese students, going on my first AMA for Flow: Empowering Students group. There’s only so much you can prepare but communication skills can always be improved :)
• Enrolling in Derek Halpern’s Blog that Converts is probably one of the best decisions I’ve made for the business! Ramit Sethi’s Zero to Launch course is the other one
• If I want to accelerate my business, the thing that would 10x it, is probably the promotion / selling part. Especially if we’re talking about the 80/20 rule. Also the more I get into blogging, the more I realize that it’s not just writing, but a craft

On relationships:

• They don’t go the way you want it to, and when you just let go, and let take its course, sometimes it’s better than what you’ve ever imagined. Don’t stress out about the future, you can’t predict nor control the other person’s reactions
• How freeing it is to not have expectations and rules, but just let it be. Sometimes that leads to more commitment and a renewal of genuine promises ✨
• What a gift it is to hear from someone, to not come from a place of obligation or expectation that they haven’t met the needs that you entitle yourself to, but to know that every interaction is a step forward, and is a choice from the heart 💖

Favorite discovery:

• Subtle Asian Traits Facebook group 🤣🤣🤣

Book recommendations:

• Atomic Habits by James Clear. SO GOOD. Book notes here.
• Antifragile by Nassim Taleb (finally reading this book!)

🌻 Next month’s goals:

• Writing: I’ve been deliberately practicing the writing process, as well as reaching out for guest blogging. Next month, I’m aiming to get published in 5 career sites
• Monthly project: Thinking about the habit that I really want to acquire this year but haven’t, it would be to doing yoga every day (and in the process, find a yoga site that I enjoy following)
• Dance: I may or may not have already lost all the muscles. But I will continue to work on things that I would’ve pushed aside if I was at the studio, especially lower abs, hip flexors and splits

Thanks for reading! This is #17 of my monthly progress reports, as inspired by the One Month Projects program.