self-motivation

By Now

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By now I should be able to be calm and patient with my kids.
By now I should have my home decor and design taste all figured out.
By now I should have a proper dining table for guests.
By now I should be driving that fancy car I always eye in the street.
By now I should be making that amount of money.
By now I should have my emergency fund up and running.
By now I should be able to cook extravagant meals.
By now I should have upgraded my beauty routines.
By now I should have the body of my dreams.
By now I should have started my own business.
By now I should have a much higher number of followers.
By now I should have traveled the world.
By now I should have had a third kid.
By now I should have had kids.
By now I should have registered my kids in extracurricular classes.

How did you feel reading the above?

Have you noticed that dreadful word; should?

Should is such a heavy word that we need to question constantly; coupling it with an arbitrary deadline, such as “this many years into adulthood”, makes us feel much worse.

We feel less than, not enough and late to the party. Who decides who is invited and when the party starts, no one knows. We are just late. That’s what society taught us. So, we set too many goals but achieve none, and knock too many doors but don’t stick enough to see if one opens. We are too late to wait and find out.

I am here to tell you that yes, time is finite, but that makes it all the more worthy to spend doing what matters most to you, not what others say you should do.

Yes, you can’t do it all and have it all. Once you stop fighting that and accept it, you will see that the gift of time is to sharpen your big-picture most important goals, so you would seek only them and forsake the shoulds that are hunting you.

Your big picture goals are probably very different than mine, but the question is, why are you checking mine?

Reflect on where you want to be at the end of your life to uncover your most important goals and work backward from there to now, to your very next step right here.

Your timing is perfect.

By Now

What Would Make Today Great?

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This is a question in the morning section of the Five-Minute Journal -which I adore-that did not sit with me right when I first used it; because the answer, in my opinion, is always: me.

I used to think of the answer by looking over my day and what events I was expecting to happen, like receiving a shipment or a meeting going well. Then I shifted the way I read the question. I now ask myself every morning: How will I make today great?

It’s up to me to make today great.

I will make today great through my actions and attitude. Therefore, I answer this question with my intentions for the day such as being kind, leaving to/from work early, respecting my writing practice, and enjoying my time with my kids. Or I answer this question with my top three priorities for the day, or what the book Make Time calls “the highlight of the day”, which could be work-related like finishing a presentation or as simple as spending time with my husband.

So, yes, good things are about to happen today; YOU will make them happen.
New perspectives are going to emerge; YOU will start seeing differently.
Fantastic progress in your goals is actualizing; YOU finally realize progress is more important than perfection.

It is totally up to you.

You get to choose how you will show up today, tomorrow, and for the rest of your life. Please, don’t let yesterday’s mistakes ever hold you back from starting over. Not giving yourself permission to start over is, in fact, self-punishment. You are not making amends by remaining stuck. Choose to forgive yourself and move on. Forgiving yourself means believing you are worthy despite your mistakes. You are worthy of new beginnings. No matter what your darkness is trying to tell you, believe in your light because that is who you truly are.

P.S: Happy March, subscribe to my newsletter here to get the Sunday Spark.

What Would Make Today Great?

JOY

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When an idea presents itself to me more than once in a couple of days, my ears perk up, and I listen. This time, it seems I need to take care more care of being aware of and creating JOY in my life.

Here are the passages that presented themselves to me from three different sources in less than 24 hours:

“We can make joy and gratitude a daily habit and standard simply by measuring how often we cultivate such emotions. Several times each day we can assess our success by asking, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how much joy and gratitude am I bringing to this moment?”
There is power in this wording. We are not asking how much joy and gratitude we are experiencing in the moment, as if we are somehow entitled to such high emotions. We are demanding personal responsibility—how much am I bringing?”
-Brendon Burchard, The Motivation Manifesto

“Choose joy. Choose it like a child chooses the shoe to put on the right foot, the crayon to paint a sky. Choose it at first consciously, effortfully, pressing against the weight of a world heavy with reasons for sorrow, restless with need for action. Feel the sorrow, take the action, but keep pressing the weight of joy against it all, until it becomes mindless, automated, like gravity pulling the stream down its course; until it becomes an inner law of nature. If Viktor Frankl can exclaim “yes to life, in spite of everything!” — and what an everything he lived through — then so can any one of us amid the rubble of our plans, so trifling by comparison. Joy is not a function of a life free of friction and frustration, but a function of focus — an inner elevation by the fulcrum of choice. So often, it is a matter of attending to what Hermann Hesse called, as the world was about to come unworlded by its first global war, “the little joys”; so often, those are the slender threads of which we weave the lifeline that saves us.”
-Maria Popova, Learnings from 14 Years of Brain Pickings.

“Joy for human beings lies in proper human work. And proper human work consists in: acts of kindness to other human beings, disdain for the stirrings of the senses, identifying trustworthy impressions, and contemplating the natural order and all that happens in keeping with it.”
– Marcus Aurelius.

This week, I will ask myself often: “how am I bringing joy to this moment?”
I wrote the word JOY in my weekly planner and listened to this amazing Joy song this morning to keep it alive in my heart and mind.

Choose Joy.

JOY

Spark Yourself

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This is an excerpt from a wonderful book I read 4 years ago called book “How to Live a Good Life” by Jonathan Fields about a life quest the perplexes most people which is defining their passion and purpose. I learned from Jonathan and the author Elizabeth Gilbert and many others that we can only follow our curiosity as a guide to find things we enjoy doing with passion, so here it goes:

“Time for you to spark yourself! What are the things that you want to invest time, energy, money, and effort to do, learn, or participate in more? Answer as many of the following questions as you can. Truth is, it’s often easier to have fewer sparks, because then you spend less time trying to decide which to devote time and effort to. You can still contribute to the world in a way that lights you up.

If you find yourself struggling to answer for present-day you, answer for 12-year-old you. Sometimes by the time we reach adulthood, our true sparks are buried so deep we have forgotten how to see them. Reconnecting with your inner 12-year-old, without regard to whether adult society holds your answers valid, can be a great place to start.

  • Am I curious about anything in particular?
  • Is there a big question I’d love to answer?
  • Is there a problem I feel compelled to solve?
  • Are there things that fascinate me? Is there a topic or field or thing or pursuit or even a person that I have a deep yearning to know more about?
  • Are there activities that I get lost in?
  • Are there things I love to do where I lose track of time and would pay to be able to do more?
  • Is there something I want to master? Is there an art or field or pursuit I’d love to be really good at, maybe even world-class great?
  • Is there some person or community or being I feel compelled to help? It doesn’t have to be human; it could be an animal, a plant, or even a planet.

Look at your answers, then ask how you might be able to weave more of the things that spark you into your days.“

Note: Spark Yourself is the title of the chapter I took this excerpt from. I totally forgot how amazing this book was until Readwise app reminded me of it.

I love the word Spark which is why I named my weekly newsletter “The Sunday Spark”, subscribe to it and check the archive here.

Spark Yourself

Begin Again

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You wanted to start today perfectly, but you didn’t? You were not at your best behavior perhaps? You snapped at someone or criticized others? You were mean, even?

I listened to something beautiful recently from Waking Up App about the power of beginning again. It went something like this, and I am paraphrasing here: “When we notice how we are acting, we need to make amends if we can then forgive ourselves immediately and completely. After that, we decide to free fall into the next moment without any residue of the past. “

We don’t need to take on the weight of guilt to the next moment.

I loved it so much. Today I needed it again. Maybe you do too?

Begin Again

Pre-Summer Sprint

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A new work week is upon us, and it is the onset of the last school term before summer vacation. Working hours are back to regular, lunch breaks are back, vaccinated employees can come work at the premises and lockdown hours are delayed to 11pm in Jordan. Life is so close to the way it was once upon a time.

That means, we have a few weeks to do something remarkable before we free up our calendars again to spend time with loved ones who are coming from abroad or whom we are travelling to.

What remarkable thing will you accomplish?

Pre-Summer Sprint

Light & Easy

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“Imagine if the hardest thing you have to do at your job was light and easy. Instead of dreading the year-end report you prepare for the leadership team, what if it felt light and easy? What if the budget you had to present at the sales conference was light and easy? What if standing on the scale was light and easy? What if the parent-teacher meeting for your high schooler was light and easy? Take anything challenging in your life and think what would happen if you retired the frustration you have about it and instead replaced it with a soundtrack that said “light and easy.” I scribbled those three words on a Post-it note and stuck it on the window I look out every day at my desk. From here on out, the writing process was going to be light and easy. That was the new soundtrack I was going to listen to.“
~Jon Acuff, Soundtracks:The Surprising Solution to Overthinking

I am really enjoying listening to this book, Jon is so funny too. I love this part about Light & Easy and thought I would use it to make today’s post easy.

Go read this book, especially if you are an overthinker. Even if you are not. It will give amazing mantras that you can tell yourself to move upward in life.

Light & Easy

Whiteboard Love

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What’s the most important thing I need to do today?

This is a wonderful question that keeps me focused. I wrote it in on the whiteboard in my office right in front of my desk. I will keep it there for a while until I need to change it again when it gets blended with the environment.

The first thing I asked for when I started my current job three years ago is a whiteboard to write inspiring quotes or questions on, like I had done in my previous job. Come to think of it, it’s been a while since I thought how grateful I really am for this space I am inhabiting 8 hours a day. It’s the first office I have with a door, a whiteboard and an evergreen plant.

I never wrote a To-Do list on my whiteboard. I have my planner for that. My whiteboard is to inspire me and whoever passes by my office or checks my social media.

In fact, my early Instagram feed was photos of my whiteboard quotes, not always taken in the highest quality, but always motivating and never boring quotes like this and this and this

I also kept all the quotes I picked and wrote on my whiteboards throughout the years in a Google doc so I wouldn’t repeat one by mistake. When I started this job, this doc came in handy as I referred to it to write quotes again.

What’s on your whiteboard?

Whiteboard Love

Fear encore

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Last week I watched Seth Godin in a LIVE Q&A session where someone asked him what to do about fear of failing in their new small business. Seth answered beautifully (and I am paraphrasing) to write down the worst case scenario if they go for it and how they can be prepared if it does, and to also write the best case scenario. Then, Seth said that both scenarios probably wouldn’t happen, but now we are better prepared if they do. Back to work.

This is the same advice that Tim Ferriss gave in his TED talk encouraging us to set fears instead of goals.

You can do Tim Ferris’s fear-setting exercise here and read more about it in this amazing article he wrote

One last thing, I would like you to notice with me how yesterday’s post and today’s are basically telling us the same thing: WRITE down your fears. Unless you face them and see what they are trying to say; you would remain paralyzed.

Fear encore