I had a great January

I'm feeling good! 

When I can begin a blog post without mentioning whether I've posted in an acceptable amount of time after the previous post, I'll know that I've made it in life, or at least in blogging. That being said, this one is a week late so don't hold me to that.

What’s cookin’ readers? My January has been very good, how was yours? Outwardly, nothing too interesting has happened, the last month was great only because of vitality. With a renewed, or perhaps even newfound vitality I was able to turn a normal month into something special to me. I started taking cold showers, physically wrote down my plans and goals for the day and found some motivation. It’s important to note that this is unique to me, some of (or none of) this stuff may work for you.

Vitality: The state of being strong and active - energy.

Let’s start with the most immediate and physical one first. Cold showers. I began taking cold showers on the third of January after becoming more curious about discipline and hearing of others who take cold showers as an exercise of discipline. I generally like to try something first and then research whether what I did is effective afterwards (strange right?). Though with cold showers this may have been a great thing to do as I could see the benefits first hand without any sort of confirmation bias or extensive placebo effect for its benefits. I began by starting off with a normal warm shower and gradually reduced the temperature just outside of my comfort zone. The key is to continue this process until you reach the point where your shower is as cold as it can go.

For the first second or so, it sucks.

Many near identical articles promoting the benefits of cold showers bring you this message (no literally, all of them are the same) that cold showers increase alertness, maintains hair and skin, improves immunity and circulation, can be good for stress and depression and a whole host of other benefits. I don’t think I can really say that it helps with my levels of stress or aids with depression (usually something that will take a lot more than just cold showers to manage) I did immediately begin to feel much more alert and focused. I’m sure there are scientific reasons for why this happens but to me the water is just cold! The main thing is that once I’m out of the cold shower, I feel as though I can take on anything else that I have planned for the day. I have to! I went through the pain of a cold shower for this. The sensation of plunging into cold water never gets better, but you get strong enough to manage it and the immediate reward feels like cheating; a day full of energy. 

The next aspect of my increased vitality; writing down my plans and goals for the day with nice little check boxes next to them. The night before, for every new day, I write down my long term goals and what I want to accomplish that day, and each item in this list is in line with at least one of my long term goals. I got this idea from the video below showcasing Jim Rohn's advice for achieving a better life.

Jim Rohn was a motivational speaker that I had never heard of before (all credit for finding this video go to my mum). Motivational speakers, in general, annoy me. I view them as a call to action that I don’t want to take, and a lot don’t seem to give very actionable, simple advice. Jim’s manner of speaking isn’t the most pleasant, my initial impression was "patronising" but I was able to learn a few key things from his seminar. One of my favourites; "The law of use", states that “what you don’t use, you lose”. This hit me hard and fast, if you don’t use today it’s lost, if you don’t use an idea, you’ll forget it, if you don’t make use of advice it’ll stop being applicable or perhaps people will stop giving you advice. My main takeback from this was that as soon as you have an idea, write it down. The most helpful part of it to me is to make a list of things that you want, things off all sizes, and tick them off as you go along. This became the written log that I now carry with me every day. I physically write down the things that I want, how I want to achieve it daily and tick the item off once I have achieved it, it’s fun.

I highly recommend giving this video a watch, it's quite long, so fair warning. If you think that what he's saying is very obvious then that's good for you, you're clearly doing better than I was. 

Finally, an overrated book. In the beginning of January, I was advised to read and act on the book “The 7 habits of highly effective people” by Stephen R. Covey. The book, filled with buzzwordy titles and horrible attempts at basic maths (1+1 = 50,000 makes an appearance in there somewhere), still conveys some good information. The Cortex podcast here mentions that while it seems like 7 habits is a mix of basically every other self help book, it was actually the book that many modern self-help solutions derive inspiration form. By the time I started reading this I was already on course for having a great month, putting me in a great position to soak up information from the book. The book is not perfect by any means, I’m not even sure that I liked it, but it helped me realise what I want to be remembered for in this world and the kinds of activities that I should focus on and the ones that I should ignore.

The most useful parts of this book come early on in the first three of the seven habits, 1. Be proactive 2. Begin with an End in Mind and 3. Put First Things first. The first challenges our behaviour and passive scripting i.e. whether we're reactive or proactive people and tells us to focus on what we can influence rather than the things that we can't. The second, quite straightforwardly, tells us to have a plan in mind for the future, that once you know where you're going it'll be easier to formulate and act on the steps required to make it there. I personally liked an exercise within this habit that asks you to visualise your own funeral and the relationships you had in life, what would you want them to say about you? Doing this without any forethought and straight from the heart is very effective and made a huge difference to me. Habit three is all about prioritising, and is best known for its time management matrix.

If you don't know what your priorities are, how can you prioritise them?

With the key emphasis being on prioritising quadrant II which will lead to growth. So often we end up spending too much time doing the not importants, it becomes a passive time killer for us. So this framework is incredibly helpful in raising your own self-awareness on what you spend your time doing. The order of business is to always take care of any urgent and important quadrant I objects first, they need to be done and there's no avoiding it but then prioritising quadrant II over III and IV. This is not to say you should dump "pleasant activities" altogether but it's a matter of truly knowing when you need them rather than acting out of addiction.

It also introduced me to a quote by George Bernard Shaw,

“This is the true joy in life-that being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. That being a force of nature, instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die. For the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It’s a sort of splendid torch which I’ve got to hold up for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

Put simply, when you know you want something, and work and live life in pursuit of that is how you can achieve true joy in life or a sense of vitality, which I agree with. I already know that February is not going to be an easy month like January but I am confident that I can successfully challenge it because of these things that I have learned. Now very little can affect the mentality that I have. I have the vitality to succeed.

Thanks for reading this one! I realise it may contain stuff that you do not agree with, just because they were effective for me does not mean that they're perfect for everyone, you have to find what works for you, just hope that it gives you something to think about. I'll be back in two weeks!

- Angad