Archive for the ‘life’ tag
Best of Summer 2010
Everything here in Ukraine lets you know that the summer has passed. It’s the weather, which as if suddenly awoken from a deep dream realized that it’s lagging behind and is now trying to recuperate by raining and blowing cold wind. It’s the usual traffic jams of people, who have just returned from their vacations and are desperately trying to remember how to work.
But everything has its own time, so I thank the summer and excitedly greet the autumn, which I’m sure holds even more fun stuff for all of us.
During last three month tons of interesting and exciting things happened to me. To record the most pleasant experiences, achievements and discoveries I will award top prizes in several nominations “The Best … of Summer ‘10″. So, here we go.
My Personal Mission Statement
Since my first reading of “The 7 Habits” I’ve been possessed by the idea of creating my own personal mission statement. You know, that self-defined concise written expression of the purpose of one’s existence. And as it is obviously not the most trivial thing to do, I decided to approach it slowly and carefully.
First, I did a lot of reading on spiritual and personal development topics. In particular, following the chain of references by my favorite authors I discovered the works of Mahatma Gandhi and Dalai Lama which impressed me very deep and actually changed the way I see things in the world.
Then, little by little I started acquiring yet non-verbal feeling of what I definitely must reflect in my mission statement. The next step of choosing the right words was probably the most challenging one. To break it down I set up a couple of simple lists and over the course of several weeks had been accumulating items there. Among others, for example, I had the following lists:
- Qualities I want to possess throughout my life (e.g. calmness, integrity, kindness, etc.)
- Areas of life I want to focus on (e.g. family, friends, communities, work, etc.)
- What I want to do to myself (e.g. grow as a person, grow professionally, learn new skills, etc.)
- What I want to do to others (e.g. inspire, serve, make happy, etc.)
Self-Development Report 2009 and Goals 2010
The year 2009 is coming to an end. It’s hard to believe that it has been one whole decade since the millennium. The time does pass quickly and it’s true that the older we get the faster its pace seems to become. Caught in the minutiae of everyday life, we seldom get a chance to reflect on the big picture. That’s why New Year, being a tangible check point, gives us wonderful opportunity to think over what we’ve done during last year and set up our goals and resolutions for the next.
Described in one word, 2009 was the year of awareness for me. My sensation of life seems to have shaped itself to some definite and stable form. I was trying to spend every minute consciously, by doing good things that will have impact in a long run. During the year I gradually came the point where I feel ready to define my values and start developing my own personal mission statement (using Stephen Covey’s words). And even though I’m still thinking about exact wording, I know for sure that I want my life to be based on self-discipline, integrity, open-mindedness, non-complaining, and abundance mentality.
At this post I would like to report to my own self about the last year’s accomplishments along two different lines. First, I want to appraise how good I adhered to my plans and goals and then tell about the fascinating new things I experienced, learned and started during this year. Also I want to share some interesting personal statistics and of course, I’m going to set up some challenging and exciting goals for the year to come.
Perfect Order — The Keystone of Productivity
I love when things are in order. For me this is the necessary condition for any productivity. I sometimes think that my passion for order in everything is too strong and may even be considered by someone as a sort of paranoia. But it is not so. At least while it helps me be more efficient and agile.
There are people who think that order is the sign of boredom and it takes too much time to practice it, which otherwise might be spent on some fun activities. However, for me it is not true. I believe that keeping things in order isn’t time consuming. It may seem so in the beginning, until the habit is fully developed. But in a long run it actually helps to save a great deal of time. Also order doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be creativity. I for one cannot do anything creative when surrounded by clutter.
Here are some of the manifestations of order in my daily life:
- In my wallet I always have all the bills laying strictly face-up and sorted from the highest denomination to the lowest. It only takes a couple of seconds to arrange but it makes me much quicker when it comes to pay for something.
- On my bookshelf I have separate piles for English, Spanish and Russian books. Of course, this is more aesthetic than practical, but it encourages me to read when I have a free minute.
- In my wardrobe I have long-sleeve shirts on one side, short-sleeves on the other. I also have a separate corner in there for those shirts that I already wore once after last washing (usually I wear one shirt twice before washing it).
Powerful Daily Routines
One of the things that changed my life for the better during the last year was developing and sticking to so-called “daily routines”. These are simply a set of activities done in approximately same time of each day. I first came across the idea on Leo Babauta’s blog and became very interested in making this concept work for me.
Now that I have my daily routines up and running for more than six months I think it’s time to share my recipe of constant good mood and persistent feeling of accomplishment with the whole white world.
I’ll go through each part of a day one by one.
Morning
I begin my day getting up at about 6 a.m. Here I must confess that I always use “snooze” feature of my alarm clock. However this is not because I don’t have enough will to get up when I planned. What I do is set up alarm clock half an hour in advance of the time I actually need to wake up. I don’t know why but it gives me a huge pleasure to realize in my sleep that I have half an hour more to luxuriate in a warm bed. Anyway, after hitting “snooze” button for about 6-7 times I finally get up and run straight to the bathroom to wash up and brush my teeth.
Then goes yoga. As of today I spend about 30 minutes for doing 25 basic asanas. I know that it’s too fast of a tempo and I will definitely start doing it more slowly as soon as I teach myself to get up earlier. In the end I also do popular 8 minutes program for abdominals, the cheerful music from which is now the inseparable attribute of a morning for me.
