habits

No Snooze Challenge -2022 Update

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I have been using an old-fashioned 5 JDs alarm clock for the past month because it has no snooze option, and I vowed to use it to wake up right away without attempting to ever reset it and it’s been working like magic.
One month later, my sleep quality has stabilized and improved mainly due to stopping the snooze. Moreover, I sleep earlier in winter anyway, which is one of the reasons I feel rested enough and able to wake up at 4 am consistenly lately. On weekends when I set the alarm at 7:30 am, for example, I noticed I naturally wake up earlier, after 6.5 hours of sleep. I don’t ever remember opening my eyes this early naturally, which is fantastic.

In one weekend or two, I felt tired, turned the alarm off, got my phone from the charging deck right outside the bedroom, and set a new alarm there. Yes, that too. Since getting the alarm clock, I have been keeping my phone out of the bedroom. It’s a piece of advice I’ve been reading over and over and finally tried and can attest to.

The quality of the alarm clock I got is basic, and if I’m too sensitive, the low humming sound it makes would annoy me, but it doesn’t. I may upgarde it soon to a nicer one, with no snooze option of course.

I highly recommend you purchase one too, but first, make sure you test its alarm sound; I once got an alarm clock from IKEA that might cause mini heart attacks when it goes off.

No Snooze Challenge -2022 Update

My Words of the Year 2022

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In the previous post, I shared with you why you should set a word for the year. Now I would like to share with you my three words for 2022.

Release:

(Dictionary definition: to set free from restraint, confinement, or servitude, to relieve from something that confines, burdens, or oppresses, to give up in favor of another, to give permission for publication, performance, exhibition, or sale, also: to make available to the public).

I have been using this word for months as a symbol of renewal and starting over whenever a new menstrual cycle begins. This year, I want to use it to remember to:

  • Release feelings of disappointment and sadness through journaling, conversations with close family and friends, and commitment to my spiritual practice.
  • Release beliefs that don’t serve me.
  • Release content consistently on my blog, podcast, and social media.
  • Release attachment to outcome and focus on the process.
  • Release clutter from my home continuously by making it a habit.
  • Respect my monthly menstrual release and plan my schedule accordingly.

Cherish:

(Dictionary definition: to treat with tenderness and affection; to nurture with care; to protect and aid). This word goes beyond focused attention. It’s my family word for this year.

  • It reminds me to enjoy my time with my kids because they will not be this young again, and that time passes by too fast if we’re not mindful.
  • I want to cherish time with our bigger family whenever we’re together. Most of them are in different countries and get together once a year.
  • I want to cherish my kids’ four healthy grandparents, take more photos, and be more present.

Prolific:

(Dictionary definition: marked by abundant inventiveness or productivity).

I’ve always loved this word when used to describe an author or an artist. I, too, want to generate a prolific body of work through committing to my creative writing practice, starting by committing to this blog, which will help me generate podcast episodes and material to teach in other formats.

I am really excited to live my words and live up to them. Wishing you the same.

My Words of the Year 2022

Starting a New Job? Here is Some Advice.

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My friend is starting a new job soon, so I sent her this list of helpful reminders; maybe they will help you too:

  1. Starting a new job is uncomfortable; you are used to being the expert in your previous job, but now you will be the newbie. Not knowing all the answers is uncomfortable.
  2. Sit with the discomfort and accept it, realizing it is a temporary phase.
  3. Those first weeks are your golden opportunity to ask questions. You are expected to. Your new team will not look to you for answers for a while. Don’t act as if you have them; you don’t.
  4. It’s time to practice listening and hold off jumping to conclusions. Just listen.
  5. Set clear boundaries about what’s OK and what’s not OK, especially jokes and personal questions.
  6. Some employees will try to win you from day one. It’s nice to feel welcomed, but they are not your friends yet, let time show you who they are.
  7. Some employees will try to plant seeds about other employees. Please don’t take their word for it. Even if they trust or like another employee, that does not mean you should too. Let your own experience determine your relationships.
  8. Some employees would be so insecure that they will see you as a threat and try to sabotage you, keep your eyes open, and listen more than you talk.
  9. You have always said you want to leave work at work, so it’s time to walk the talk. Changing your job is a chance to change your work style. You may be used to taking work home and getting work done after your kids sleep, but people at your new job do not know that. The first step is to leave at 5 pm on day one, right when the official working hours end. You don’t stay late to prove anything to anyone. Instead, you become so efficient during working hours to shut down work entirely until the next day. If you stay late, on the other hand, you will set that as their normal expectations from you, while leaving at 5 pm would be abnormal.
  10. Changing your environment is a great way to start new habits and get rid of negative ones. Try taking your lunch box instead of ordering takeout, bringing your coffee with you instead of buying it, taking walks during lunch breaks instead of staying glued to your screen, listening to a new podcast in your new route, or changing your attire or hairstyle.
  11. Read the book The First 90 Days.

Happy probation!

Starting a New Job? Here is Some Advice.

How to get back on track with your New Year’s resolutions?

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In the previous post, I shared why we quit our resolutions. In this post, I’ll help you start them or get them back on track.

Write the why of the resolution.

What would you gain by committing to it? How would you feel in a month, three months, six months, or a year? What changes will you or the people around you experience because of it?

More importantly, what would you lose if you didn’t pursue this resolution now? What’s at stake for you, your relationships, health, money, or career if you quit? 

Write your why. You will need it again in the future, trust me. Write as many reasons as you can and highlight the most important ones after. Those are the ones you connect with on a deep emotional level, not just intellectually. 

Read your why every few weeks as part of your monthly reviews. 

In his recent book, How to Begin, author Michael Bungay Stanier recommends using “For the sake of …” instead of “why”.

“I find “Why?” a pretty hard question to answer. I end up spouting sweeping, self-justifying generalizations that I don’t quite believe myself. A more nuanced way to reach the same destination is to see if I can complete this phrase that I add on to the Worthy Goal: “for the sake of…”. When I think of some of the Worthy Goals I’ve achieved, I’ve been able to offer up a strong answer to the question “Why?” For the End Malaria book I created and edited in 2011, it was “for the sake of saving lives” (it raised $400k for Malaria No More). 

Use habit trackers:

I’ve been using habit trackers since I started waking up early in 2016, and reading Atomic Habits confirmed that they are helpful in many ways, such as:

1. Habit trackers in the right place in your environment or on your favorite tracking apps make the habit trigger visible, so they remind you to do it.

I place my morning habits tracker on my desk and my evening habits tracker on my fridge in the kitchen, where I spend most of my time at home. 

2. Habit trackers make the habit satisfying to complete every day: 

Until we start feeling and seeing changes in our lives due to the new positive habits, tracking a habit by crossing off each day we commit it to makes it satisfying in itself. It reinforces our new identity as the kind of people (healthy, mindful spender, good parent) who do this kind of habit (walk, monitor expenses, read books to kids). We see our progress on the tracker even if we still don’t see the results in our lives. 

Use Personal Metrics:

If you don’t want to use the chain method to track your habits, develop personal metrics as suggested by the author Cal Newport. A personal metric is a number you want to track and record every day, like the number of steps you walk, the number of hours you spend on social media or the number of water glasses you have. Add it to your daily reminders and agenda and include it in your reviews.

Join or create a group:

Join a group that is already committed to the habit, or start your habit group for interested people. Groups sharing the same goal make it more attractive, and the accountability of members significantly increases. We also love to belong in groups; it’s in our DNA. 

Announce your new habit.

Another way of creating accountability is announcing your new habit and sharing your progress with a circle of your choice. It could be a family WhatsApp group or the stories on social media. Studies proved that sharing your implementation intentions increases the chances of follow-through.  

Make your habit flexible:

You can combat perfectionism using the MTO method that Tanya Dalton shares in her book, On Purpose:

“MTO METHOD: Set a Minimum, a Target, and an Outrageous measurement for yourself. Example: Each month I will save a minimum of $75, but I will target saving $100. If possible, I will save the outrageous amount of $150 dollars.”

This technique reminds you that life happens. We will break our chains and forget about our personal metrics and whys. We need to prepare for those challenges by making our habits flexible off the bat. You show up with your minimum in those days. You already planned for them. And you perform outrageously wonderful in those better weeks you are also bound to have.

Which technique(s) is your favorite? Which will you use?

How to get back on track with your New Year’s resolutions?

Why do we quit New Year’s Resolutions?

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It’s February, and this is when studies say 80% of people quit their New Year’s Resolutions. I wrote this post to help you be in the 20%.

We have three main challenges when it comes to sticking to resolutions.

The Future Self Problem:

The future self problem has been discovered by professor Hal Hershfield through MRI studies of the human brain, which showed that certain areas in the human brain get activated when you think of your current self; however, when you think of a celebrity whom you like but have never met; other brain areas get activated. Interestingly, those same areas light up when you think of yourself in 10 years. We see our future selves as people we’re familiar with and like, but strangers, nevertheless, whom we don’t know or even genuinely care about.

The Temporal Discounting Problem:

The human brain has evolved to prefer instant rewards over future ones as a survival mechanism that served our ancestors well in the wilderness. We learned to place a higher value on the present, so we discount the value and importance of the future. That’s why we stay up late and regret it the second day. The current night self ignores the morning self, putting it in trouble.

These two challenges become prominent when it comes to habits. We keep on making unhealthy choices because the rewards are instantaneous; we feel the dopamine in our bodies when we have a piece of cake or join a group for a cigarette outside. However, the consequences of negative habits are delayed; they happen to someone we don’t care about, our future lookalike. On the other hand, as James Clear explains in Atomic Habits, positive habits are a bit painful in the present; they require us to stretch those muscles, withhold spending money, or experience some discomfort. In contrast, their advantages to our overall well-being are delayed. Accordingly, not seeing the immediate positive impact of new habits, by February, for example, makes us quit our New Year’s resolutions too soon.

Perfectionism:

We quit because we demand of ourselves a 100% that nobody asked of us. We can not tolerate 80% or 60%. It’s the very familiar all-or-nothing mindset, the 100% or 0%, as Jon Acuff shares in Finish. We often think if we hadn’t committed well so far today, or this week, or this month, we might as well forget about the whole thing. We self-sabotage, thereby dismissing any little progress we made. And that’s a trap that we can easily fall into if we are not paying attention.

What should we do to overcome these hurdles?

That’s my post for tomorrow.

Why do we quit New Year’s Resolutions?

No Cinderella Writing

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After I arrived early to work today, I had my daily friendly chit-chat with the one other early co-worker, filled my water bottle, lit up my cinnamon candle (still going strong since Christmas), got out my new eyeglasses, and opened up my daily and weekly planners. Then, I set my beautiful timer for 30 minutes to write and publish this post.

It’s February 1st, and just like last year, I’m starting the habit of writing frequently here. Notice that I didn’t say daily, although I really really want to write daily, like Seth and Rohan; however, reviewing last year showed me that writing on weekends did not work. I got frustrated every time I forgot about it then acted all Cinderella when I sat at my desk at 11:30 PM trying to ship a post before midnight. I forgot simply because the trigger of the habit of writing was not there. The trigger is arriving early to an empty office to finish my post before everybody comes.

This year I’m publishing four posts a week from Monday to Thursday (the workdays in my part of the world), and I’m taking a break on Fridays and Saturdays. Sunday’s writing session is reserved for my Sunday Spark newsletter.

I attempted to write some posts privately in January to keep the practice of writing and also prepare a queue to publish daily in February. Alas, I took a look at them now and noticed they were fewer than I remember and not that great.

The queue idea did not work so far. Ideally, my perfect self would write on weekends anyway to honor the writing habit and build up a queue for rainy writing days. I said ideally, so no commitment to this part for now.

Happy to be back in your inbox from Monday-Thursday! Subscribe to my newsletter to See me on Sundays too.

No Cinderella Writing

The 101 to Personal Budgeting

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How many of us really know what goes on with our money? For some people, our money is like an airplane black box. It’s a just a mystery to us. If we were to live successful lives we need to work on our finances and the first step in this journey is learning how to create a budget.
Yesterday I hosted a Live session with the super money coach Christeen Haddadin for the second time, where she shared with us a step-by-step guide to budgeting.

Highlights from the Live:

  1. We need to change our mindset about having a personal budget, budgets will free us up, not limit us. They will put us in charge of our money instead of having our money run itself, which means we would run out of it needlessly.
  2. Creating a budget is setting jobs for every Dinar we make. These jobs will help us cover our expenses on nonnegotiable needs, and also differentiate them from wants that we could do without.
  3. We start a budget exercise by adding up our annual income including bonuses, and any planned returns we expect. In case it’s a non-fixed income, we look at last year and take 2 scenarios, the average monthly income and a more conservative one based on the income worst 3 months of that year.
  4. We lay out our fixed monthly expenses like rent, car fuel, groceries, phone bill.
  5. We lay out our quarterly/semiannual and annual expenses such as car license & insurance, family birthdays, tax, life insurance and so on, and let’s call these the annual payments
  6. We save money every month to the above account of annual payments, so we would not be shocked when it’s our daughter’s birthday again, and we need to spend money on a little party for her. Example if we have car insurance of 500$ due in June we need to save 100$ every month from Jan-May to the annual payments account in order to be ready to seamlessly do the payment in June.
  7. It takes time to build an emergency fund, and it’s up to us to decide how many months it should cover, 3, 6 or even 12 months. It depends on the stability of our income, the less stable, the higher the emergency fund needs to be.
  8. We also talked about bad debt and good debt, where good debt is what you pay for assets like mortgage or land. Bad debt is what you pay for consumer loans like car loan or credit card interest rate. We need to check online debt calculator to see how much interest we are truly paying and look into increasing our monthly payments to reduce the interest amount that we are paying.
  9. Last tip we discussed was about engaging with our money on a daily basis, especially since most of us are not using it in cash, by logging in to our bank applications and checking the status of our accounts.
The 101 to Personal Budgeting

The Perfect Habits Question

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Peter Shepherd reminded me of a question I learned in Atomic Habits:

“Is what you are doing today getting you closer to where you want to be tomorrow?”

The answer is an astounding YES when I think about some habits I have:

-Exercising today: Health & Vibrancy tomorrow.
-Meditation today: Mindfulness tomorrow.
-Journaling today: Clarity tomorrow.
-Creating (videos, podcast, blog posts) today- Legacy tomorrow.
-Story time with kids today: Memories and love of reading for the kids tomorrow.
-Skincare today: glowing skin tomorrow.
-Checking on family today: Closer bonds tomorrow.

On the other hand, there are habits I have that will affect me negatively on the long term and will not get me closer to where I want to be tomorrow, so I need to work on them. For example:

-Not saving money today: no peace of mind tomorrow

Such a good question.

The Perfect Habits Question

September is the Other January

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As I was writing today’s date on my journal I thought about this amazing quote by Gretchen Rubin “September is the other January”. I read it in her book “Happier at Home” a few years ago and loved it ever since.

Gretchen Says:
“September marks the start of a new year, with the empty calendar and clean slate of the next school cycle. Even if you are no longer in school yourself, September nevertheless remains charged with possibility and renewal.”

Continue reading “September is the Other January” →
September is the Other January

Keep the spotlight shining on them

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I notice myself flourishing in the presence of some people. I make my best jokes, I feel light, I feel at ease, I feel understood, I feel at my best. I can count the number of those people on my hands. They are rare.

The question is, how can I be like this for others?

I remember an exercise we did a few years a go with a mentor where we were requested to practice listening more to the people in our lives. Whenever they struck up a conversation. We needed to listen attentively, hold back from switching the subject, and notice our urge to interrupt and talk about ourselves. If it’s the right time and place, we also needed to offer the space for them to continue their thought process, with as little probing as possible, until they figure out what they needed to do next all by themselves.

Being very similar to the exercise I mentioned in this post, it was such a hard experience to implement.

Try it and see firsthand the insights that will reveal themselves to you. Simply witnessing the urge to take the microphone and be under the spotlight is something totally worth catching.

If you get asked, answer shortly and then kick the ball back into their court. Make them the guru not you. Wonder what they could teach you. Listen with the purpose of learning something new about them and their worldview and maybe a useful fact or two. Be open and curious. Trust me, they will feel it and open up to you. They will feel you not rushing them so you’d take your turn to speak. For example, If my conversation partner tells me they are starting to wake up early and share their routine, I need to resist the urge to tell them I’ve been doing that since 2016 and have a whole thing around this habit.

It’s been a while since I practiced this, so it’s time I activated my listening muscle again. I think it grew weaker lately. Join me and let me know how it goes with you.

Keep the spotlight shining on them.

Keep the spotlight shining on them