June 28, 2024 by Zeal4living - 0 comments

Hacking My Day: Habits for Happiness and Creativity

What are your daily habits?

~ Hacking My Day: Habits for Happiness and Creativity ~

Habits are like tiny bursts of rocket fuel that propel us towards a smoother, more fulfilling day. I wholeheartedly believe in the power of cultivating beneficial habits that I enjoy. However, habits can also become mindless routines or sources of anxiety if we get too rigid. To keep things interesting and avoid burnout, I find it essential to incorporate variety into my daily rituals.

The first hour after waking up is my golden time. I seize this opportunity to jumpstart my creativity through automatic writing, blogging, or contemplation. To prime my mind for inspiration, I begin with a quick autogenic relaxation exercise, followed by at least ten minutes of free-flowing writing. Imagine me, diving headfirst into my creativity like an enthusiastic swimmer on a hot summer’s day!

Before my morning shower, I take a moment to program myself with the five Reiki spiritual principles. I commit to staying enthusiastic, calm, grateful, honorable, and compassionate. Each principle is reinforced with a corresponding rune posture and chant. This establishes a positive foundation for the day ahead.

After showering, I light a candle to symbolize the kindling of light, life force, and love. Then, I perform a three-rune reading to identify the energetic forces that will influence my day. I interpret the runes using the law of three: affirmation, reception, and reconciliation. This practice injects a sense of adventure into my day, allowing me to tap into my creativity and courage.

Before diving into work, I take a quick moment to check my calendar and plan my day. This helps me prioritize tasks based on urgency and impact.

At midday, I steal away for a minimum of 20 minutes of meditation. Depending on the day, moon cycle, and season, I might use Gassho meditation as a base and branch out to Zazen, Metta, or Yoga Nidra.

Evenings are for self-care. Ideally, I unwind with some breathing exercises followed by a 36-minute rune yoga routine that incorporates chanting, postures, and mantras. If I have a specific goal in mind, I might tailor the rune sequence to emphasize my intention.

Before calling it a day, I take a moment to express gratitude by journaling in my Dailio app, which I use to track habits and mood. To wind down, I spend 10 minutes reading an inspirational book or scripture.

As I drift off to sleep, I choose one of three practices:
Visualizing peace, health, and happiness for loved ones and the world.
Recalling the day in reverse, starting from the present moment and journeying back to the morning.
Active listening, which involves focused breathing followed by listening to white noise.

These are the daily habits that fuel my life. While I don’t always follow the exact routine, I find that structuring my day around these rituals brings me the greatest peace, happiness, and sense of connection.

August 31, 2018 by Zeal4living - 0 comments

Being effective in meetings

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10 habits when attending meetings that will develop into a skill of being effective in meetings:

1. Prepare for meetings. Clarify what the intent of the meeting is before the meeting starts.
2. Understand your role in the meeting… Are you there to lead, provide input or listen?
3. Understand the role of other meeting participants and ensure they are heard.
4. Acknowledge good points that are raised. When you differ from someone don’t get emotional, stay factual. Don’t be afraid to ask for clarity when things are not clear.
5. Be conscious of time, keep your contributions to the point, be accurate and short.
6. Try to find at least one learning point of interest from the meeting. Jot it down and share it with someone outside the meeting.
7. Summarize the meeting outcomes, don’t rely on meeting minutes alone.
8. Share your understanding of key points from the meeting with stakeholders both inside and outside of the meeting.
9. Take an action based on the meeting within 24 hours after a meeting
10. Continue to develop your skill of participating in meetings, don’t accept it as a chore but see it as an area for your own continuous improvement.

©Jurgens Pieterse 2018

August 28, 2018 by Zeal4living - 0 comments

Habit building for skill development.

Today my challenge is to break through a blogging blank. Time and again I get this ideas of what I need to blog about but when I sit down to blog I actually sit with a blank. The reason for this is simply being exhaustingly busy at the moment. My world is racing forward with multiple different streams of momentum in a conjecture at this moment in time. I should not be complaining about it, it is actually one of my most fortunate times and times to really make a difference. My work projects are ramping up and my personal life is also ramping up in the flow of fundamental change.

So today I am simply sitting down and I am writing what is coming up in my mind to simply keep building the habit of blogging. I am still smitten by the idea of building my skills through developing healthy and uplifting habits. In a sense a focus on good habits ultimately crowds out bad habits because there is less time and attraction for bad habits to be perpetuated.

Some people see that my tracking of habits is pedantic. I track my habits in an app called “Mastery”. It is a very simple App but it is effective in tracking my daily habits and it takes about a maximum of 10 to 15 entries a day with most habits and skills already preset. I am tracking currently 5o skills accross 15 skill development areas:

Dancing
Divination
Finances
General
Home
Mindfulness
Off Roading
Professional
Qi-Gong
Reiki
Mysticism
Tai Chi
TRE
Writing
Yoga

These areas are likely to increase. It helps me to understand how I spend my time and what skills I am developing. This approach has significantly changed my approach to how I plan and view my work. For example I am no longer just attending meetings in my workplace but I am looking at attending meetings as a skill. So now my approach is to look at how I want to improve my skill. Rather than just attending a meeting I view the meeting as an opportunity to become better at contributing to meetings. So besides just documenting that I spend 180 minutes in meetings today I look accross those meetings and I evaluate at the end of the day my skill within meetings. Did I communicate more effectively, how well did I contribute. So having logged the habits I spend my time on assist me to evaluate if I am just doing the habit as a matter of course or if I am consciously improving how I approach that habit to turn it into a skill. One person can attend a thousand meetings without any skill development but another who is conscious of that as a skill development opportunity will experience a vase differnce between the first and the last meeting.

August 16, 2018 by Zeal4living - 0 comments

Building on habits

Photo by Jimmy Chan on Pexels.com

Habits are the core of success. People who acquire good habits are far more likely to achieve extraordinary things. Luck often plays a role as well but people who acquire certain habits are more inclined to capitalize on those moments of good luck. In a similar manner good habits help one to overcome problems and constraints.

Today I simply marvelled at Seneca saying that he is not surprised when the gods are watching with anticipation to see how a good man fight a brave fight against bad circumstances. Whether you believe in gods or not, the image in my head of gods watching me in the arena to see how I apply my hard won skills to address problems is inspiring. I can imagine them betting on me and/or having their devices out to capture and record the fight. Changing our view on our problems in this way can often dilute the gravity of a situation that can be seen as an opportunity to apply the best of our skills.

The skills we have are really only skills when it is firmly based on a healthy set of habits. I used various apps to keep track of the skills I am developing through habits. Setting objectives without basing it on a healthy set of skills often negate those objectives naturally to failure. For example one can visualise a beautiful home and car and put its attainment on your goal list but if there is no financial acumen developed through healthy financial habits then it is a presage of failure.

By focusing on skill development as the base for achieving goals also focus us on today, the present moment. It is no longer about what we do in the future but about what we are doing in the present moment. From a Stoic perspective it is about the virtues we develop in our everyday living. You cannot develop a healthy body if you do not develop some physical skill through exercise and repetition. You cannot control your thoughts without some discipline in developing your concentration ability.

The challenge is consistency and application. There is simply not enough time to develop all the skills we need if we want to do it only in a practice ground. Habit development must be part of our daily routine. The way we wake up and prepare for the day might include a short meditation session which will proof far more useful over time than trying to have a long meditation only under specific favourable conditions. The point is not against a long meditation but rather on the fact that regularity outweighs ad hoc quality time. Regularity in its own can be established once we have integrated habits into our daily life.

Habits have a cumulative effect and is continually adding up. Like interest the longer a skill is practiced the more valuable it becomes and the more accessible that skill becomes as a tool in life. Different people will develop different habits and different skills. There is no right set of skills for our skills required is determined by our personality, environment etc. The key is to purposefully identify skills we want to develop and to make a concerted effort to make those skills working in our daily lives.