May 13, 2019 by Uli on Micro Habit Challenge, Transformation Inventory, Uncategorized

Micro Habit Challenge 5.0: Am I Ready to Stop Judging?

Before it is getting even more quiet here it is time to announce another challenge. After a successful social media challenge a couple of weeks ago I proclaimed that it is time for another level of challenges.

Recently there are a lot of topics I’m working on simultaneously: attachment, observation, judgement – these are subjects I’m studying next to happiness, pain and fear…

After all I found out that it all comes back to self-love. If I don’t love myself enough I’m not able to create a gap between me, my thoughts and the rest of the world. I take myself so f*cking serious, but I don’t love myself (enough). What is self-love again? It is accepting your mistakes. It is appreciating you peculiarities. It is the opposite of judgement.

So, what I really have to learn is to not judge myself. Of course – two weeks are a very short time to change your way of thinking. It is impossible. Some people say it takes 60 days to establish a new habit in your life. To be honest – I’m not even sure if ‘thinking negative’ is just a habit or a personality trait. But at the end it doesn’t really matter.

Why am I doing this challenge stuff?

What I learnt since I started this blog and what I learnt from my micro habit challenges is that it changes my thinking. At least it is a start, an initial trigger to question my behaviour.

By writing about it I’m forced to dig deeper. It helps me to get to the core of my quirkinesses in some areas of my life. These challenges became my tools. They are like verbal manifestations of positive change.

Why do I come up with this challenge now?

I’m beating myself up again for not focussing on ‘what needs to be done’. Doing this there is something that came into my mind – no something that revealed to me in front of me.

How do I come to the conclusion of ‘what do I have to get done’? Mainly I judge – I’m busy telling myself which things I have to do. Hahaha it is so ridiculous. In reality I don’t even have a real goal. So, there is nothing to aim for and therefore nothing to judge really – judge on which measurements?!

What if I just don’t judge for two weeks?

So, what am I going to do?

I don’t judge other people. I don’t judge them based on the way they look. I don’t say anything judgmental – neither to anybody in person nor to anybody else about anybody.
I ask myself before I open my mouth if what I’m going to say is a judgement or not.
And the hard ones: I don’t judge myself. If I do mistakes I won’t identify with them. If I think negative about myself I will stop that immediately and instead I will tell myself: “I’m okay how I am and everything is fine.”

This is basically it. I’m curious what I will learn within the next two weeks. In one week from now I will tell you about my first insights.

February 9, 2019 by Uli on Micro Habit Challenge, Transformation Inventory, Uncategorized

Micro Habit Challenge 4.2 – Mindfulness beats Social Media

Another challenge is coming to an (happy) end. To be fair – it turned out to not be such a big challenge at all as I’m quite involved in ‘real life’ at the moment. I think I have to make the challenges a lot harder from now on.

So what did I learn?

I’m actually not as distracted by social media as I thought. Haha, it seems I had a bit of a negative image of myself here. I didn’t really have to change much. All I changed was, as I said – investing the time I spent in social media in other stuff (learning languages, writing, talking to people, reading, going for a walk…) But it turned out: I’m doing these things anyways and flightmode is my best friend.
I turned the 30 minutes ON social media into – what I called – “The 30 minutes of mindfulness”. I’m very ill-disciplined when it comes to exercising or meditating regularly. So I decided to leave it open and just set my alarm a little earlier to make sure I have time for any of the above. I either do some chanting, meditating, some yoga or any other type of stretching or workout depending on how I feel – maybe I even go for a walk around the garden or block – depending where I am. It forces me to observe myself before really getting out of bed. “How do I feel today?” is a good question to start on. Also it helps me to set an intention for the day. “How do I want to feel?” – My answer is mainly quite simple: “good.” What does this have to do with social media? Actually nothing. But! I realized repeatedly:
Tadaaa: I’m happier WITHOUT checking instagram every couple of hours or minutes. It’s such a relieve for my – anyways – strained brain to not to see all these perfectly curated pictures. And also: Without feeling the need to reply to every message whatsoever…
Also: In a way this exercise was a good reminder to keep cultivating self-love. Questioning is my tool and I’m the master of my mind not the the victim of my devices.

Well, what do I do now? I just continue doing the things I do instead of not-doing.

January 31, 2019 by Uli on Micro Habit Challenge, Transformation Inventory, Uncategorized

Micro Habit Challenge 4.1 – Social Media Substitution

The first week of my challenge is over and probably this is the most successful micro habit challenge so far. Okay – maybe I didn’t challenge myself enough then.

I found out that social media is not my problem anymore, woohoo. My problem are in many ways not the things that I do, but the things that I don’t do. So, instead of ‘being on social media’ for 30 minutes I decided to do something useful instead. I have to address the problem slightly different…

What did I do?

Quickly I figured out that my thumb has this stupid automatism. So what I needed to do was to remove the apps (Instagram, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp) to another screen of my phone. É voila – I haven’t touched instagram since roughly one week. Apparently it is not that urgent.

I figured out that instead of saying: I reduce my social media time, I simply have to find a useful substitution. So what I’m doing now is: I invest the 30 minutes in practicing italian right now. I placed all the ‘useful’ apps like my notepad and duolingo on my homescreen now. Facebook I check only every now and then for a few minutes a day.

My biggest let’s call it ‘time invest’ is actually sharing my life with my friends on WhatsApp. This also holds me back a little bit from living in the now. So, what I do now before sending a message, I ask myself, do I really need to share this? A lot of times my initial answer is no. Plus: If I want to tell somebody something, I think about the message a little longer and might even write an e-mail. This whole ‘instant-reaction’-thing bothers me since a very long time anyways.

Why am I doing these challenges?

Already by looking at my behaviour I change it. The so called observer effect doesn’t only apply in quantum physics. By surveilling my actions on my phone I change my behavior automatically. This way with a little bit of discipline it is probably possible to achieve everything.

It’s a little bit like quitting smoking. Already the question: ‘Do you really have to smoke now?’ potentially triggers a series of positive alternative actions. ‘Why not go for a walk instead?’ or say ‘hi’ to the stranger at the bus station, where you are standing right now. Life could be so simple, if we’d just live it.

January 26, 2019 by Uli on Micro Habit Challenge, Transformation Inventory, Uncategorized

Micro Habit Challenge 4.0 – Social Media Breakdown

“The one who knows something, but doesn’t act accordingly only knows it partially.” This is the rough translation of a quote by french philosopher J. M. Guay, which I found in “Geistestraining durch Achtsamkeit” by Nyānaponika, a Buddhist monk. [I haven’t found the correct english equivalent title yet.]

As I found out in the past changing my behaviour takes time. At the beginning of my ‘journey’ I tried to achieve all at once – I still do on many levels. Slowly I understand I have to take one step at a time in order to climb that mountain.

What I found out recently is that I still distract myself with so much stuff from achieving my daily goals (which adds up to my overall life goals). The thing I still abuse the most by far is social media.

I keep telling myself that facebook is important to keep up my social connections and instagram inspires me.

BUT – let’s face it – mostly it holds me back from living in the moment – the only thing that I really want to achieve in my life. Additonally to that I’m wasting my time instead of investing it into articles like this one. Plus – I become a victim of my device.

I get caught up in reaction to the notifications on my phone. And this is unacceptable.

It’s time for another micro habit challenge. Here we go Nyānaponika. I will get there eventually.

So – what am I gonna do?

Limit my time on social media (including whatsapp) on 30 minutes daily for the next two weeks – man, writing this down it sounds a lot. But probably I reduce the time I spend on my phone already around 200%. Yeees, I have to be clear with this – no matter how painful or emberassing.

I don’t want to push too hard and still want to take the time to answer messages.

What had changed already?

– Today is already day two. Yesterday was easy. Already the decision was liberating and I was in flightmode allday – actually I spend only a couple of minutes online – good start, haha.

– I already feel like having some control back. I want to use my phone and don’t let my phone use me. Technology has advantages and that’s why I want to keep using them.

– Limiting the amount of time helps me to prioritise length and content of my messages. Let’s see if the quality of my overall conversations increases by the end of the first week.

Why I’m doing this?

Interestingly my experience shows that writing this stuff down here on this blog helps me to manifest things.

About a year ago I pointed out “I suck at meditation”. And guess what – since I found the “valve” I get access to this gap between me and my thoughts once in a while – more and more often over the time. I don’t have a regular practice but I practice multiple times a week at various times.

This makes me more than gratful – thanks Nyānaponika – or better say Erich Fromm for introdrucing me to this teacher of mindfulness.

Cheers, I let you know how it went next week.

February 4, 2018 by Uli on Micro Habit Challenge, Transformation Inventory, Uncategorized

Micro Habit Challenge 3.2 – Pomodoro Mastery

Alrighty, the second week of my challenge is coming to an end. Honestly, sugarcoating is not my style and not the purpose of this blog. I just have to be honest with you – even if it hurts. Well, what had changed? Not much compared to last week. The meditation challenge faded into mediocrity, but at least I started to collect tomatos. But I won’t pull myself down into the pool of self-pity, instead I’m pointing out my learning – which are reasonably powerful. 😉

What had changed?

I refined my individualized pomodoro method: Basically I started to use the traditional pomodore concept in order to tally every task of my day. Every day I collected between three and twelve tomatos. These 25 minute-slots helped me to stay focussed. The timebox proved to be one of my favourite tools of effectiveness since I heard the word “agile” for the very first time. 😉 But the good old pomodoro technique is even better: The concept includes my hobby “procrastination” – a five minute creative break is scheduled after every high-concentrated working-slot. Finally time management became fun for me. Sometimes I extended the slots and sometimes I shortened it a bit, but there was no excuse not to finish a slot without interruption.
Again I screwed the meditation challege. This time I meditated only three times before I went to bed (if you include dancing as meditation than five times 😉 BUT: I made “meditation” my energy boost during the day! How? When I reached the afternoon low or a peak of my “priority-confusion” (Wwaahh, I don’t know where to start!! The panic monster is beckoning over…) I decided to get off my desk and go for a walk to the roof top terrace of the office building next door. I climbed the stairs and set the alarm for a ten-minute-open-air-meditation (The weather did it’s bit last week, because it was unusually warm and sunny).
As I mentioned last week I wanted to set a weekly goal: My aim – finishing some backend tasks (e.g. photo editing, SEO measures) on my blog uliquitous I accomplished successfully.

Conclusion

At the end of the day I’m still a chaotic person and I have to admit that this kind of stuff requires a lot of discipline of me. But as I can see small steps into the right direction I will stay motivated. Tiny “bites” of focussed work let my to-do list shrink. The next week(s) I will definitely continue with the simple but yet powerful pomodoro method. And meditation? As a support I ordered another book of Osho, which will hopefully provide some guidance on my way towards the silent mind.

Ooooommmmmmmmm…..

January 29, 2018 by Uli on Micro Habit Challenge, Transformation Inventory, Uncategorized

Micro Habit Challenge 3.1 – Finding Routine in Chaos

This challenge didn’t look hard to me in the first place, but somehow it turned out to be demanding. To make it short: I failed – at least in the meditation challenge I couln’t cheat my weaker self. I meditated only on 4/7 nights due to a lack of motivation or tiredness. But to be fair – I mastered the second part of the challenge with flying colours: Finally I managed to find time slots to get something done. And actually this challenge even pushed me to integrate more of these 25 minute slots into my day. So finally there are a bunch of tasks I completed which I postponed since weeks or even months. I understood that I can achieve things, if I just do one step at a time.

What had changed in detail?

My downgraded pomodoro method (25 minutes slots) actually helps me to get in the flow. I finally stoped postponing.
I learned that it is hard to integrate routines if I don’t have any other routine. The solution: I find flexible times during my day to integrate a small meditation. For example at lunch break or during the afternoon low.
Plus: I was more aware of my breathing during everyday activities like driving in the subway, just sitting in the sun, walking or even working. During my day I tried to go for short walk, which helped me a lot to stay energized during the day.
Finally: I learnt that meditation is not a practice, it is actually a state of mind. Every action can be meditation.

What do I want to make differently this week?

Still keep trying to meditate to finish my day – additionally to every type of relaxation I’m doing during my day.
Setting goals for the next day before I go to bed.
Setting a weekly goal I want to achieve.
Keep growing!

Time is the enemy.

January 22, 2018 by Uli on Micro Habit Challenge, Transformation Inventory, Uncategorized

Micro Habit Challenge 3.0 – Finding Morning and Evening Routines

The new year is already in full swing. The new years resolutions are not forgotten yet, but the activism is fading with everydays madness. Basically not much had changed: I’m trying to harmonize my work-life-balance, find the time to realize my own ideas, live up to my own beliefs and in the meantime I’m trying to stay calm.

What can I say? My brain is still tickling me with a thousand ideas and focussing on my goals gets hard sometimes. Today is Monday, the calender already shows the end of January. I decided that this month can’t pass without another challenge.

This one is another experiment. On the long run I’m hoping to find the best routine for my meditation practice.

1. I will work on my goals for 25 minutes every morning

Either if it is working on my blogs, writing in my journal, excercising or reading a book. Every morning I want to invest 25 minutes into my personal development. This implies a bit more discipline in the morning – getting up a bit more early and not getting caught in distress already before the day even really started. The idea is to think of what I want to do in the morning, the night before.

2. I will meditate for 10 minutes at night

Basically my only new years resolution is to chill out more, because I’m still stressing myself with my own demands. It’s getting less, but it is still there.

Everybody is talking about there morning routine. But I don’t have one – sometimes I get up at 5.30 because I have a videoshooting, but sometimes I work until seven in the morning at the bar. To be honest with you, I tried to integrate meditation into my morning routine, but it was impossible for me.

Also I found out that sometimes after a working day my brain is full of clutter. This clutter holds me back from calming down at night and I assume from a healthy sleep. So, instead of morning routine I will try to cultivate an evening routine, a really nice procedure to finish my day.

The “Why”

There is something that I learnt from last year: Pressuring myself doesn’t lead to anything besides slowly burning out. So I decided to change my approach a bit and practice more and more to “let go”. Hopefully I’m not over-stretching this phrase in this blog. But “letting go” seems to me more important than anything else in order not to strain my nervous system more than it already is.

So, I go for small steps and I try to do the possible in order to reach the impossible.

I already started with this challenge this morning. And this blog post is the result of investing roughly half an hour into my personal goals. Crazy, isn’t it?

December 4, 2017 by Uli on Micro Habit Challenge, Transformation Inventory, Uncategorized

Micro Habit Challenge 2.1 – A Life without Coffee is Possible

Allright, ten days without caffeine are over. What had changed in the meantime?
At the beginning of my challenge it seemed like an insurmountable hurdle not to drink a single cup of coffee for an entire week. I was already so used to have a coffee in the morning and the next one before lunch. In light of the fact that an existence without this dose was unimaginable for me, I easily renounced. It actually turned out to be just a small change of my morning routine, but the effects were mind-blowing.

What are my learnings?

Ginger tea and a cold shower substitute coffee perfectly. The additional plus: It is actually much better for my health. Instead of “poisoning” myself I detox in the morning.
Indeed the monkey in my head calmed down a bit. Well, I’m still hyperactive, but my mood and my ability to focus stabilizes without caffeine intake.
My sugar consume increased a bit. At the middle of the week I bought chocolate cookies and I ate half of it at once – probably as a surrogate-satisfaction. But I will manage that. 😉
Decaffeinated coffee is not toooo bad. Well…

How do I want to handle my consume in the future?

My most valuable insight: A life without coffee is possible. Yes, it is. I still love coffee and I can’t deny a good cappucino or italian espresso. But the experiment proved my addiction. One approach in my life is enjoying the good things thoroughly without abusing them. If you listen to your favourite song every and every day it gets boring at some point and isn’t it the same with coffee or any other addictive substance? From now on I want to be a pleasure drinker not an caffeine junky anymore.

November 27, 2017 by Uli on Micro Habit Challenge, Transformation Inventory, Uncategorized

Micro Habit Challenge 2.0

Hold on – this is a tough one! 😉 I already introduced you to the concept of the micro habit challenge a few weeks ago. The last time I challenged myself with three new habits, this time it is only one: I don’t want to drink caffeine for one week.

This might sound like an easy challenge, but for me as a “coffee person” this is definitely a serious task.

Why do I want to reduce my coffee consume?

I have noticed that the monkey in my head breaks free after too much coffee. Sometimes I can’t even focus on household chores like washing the dishes.
Usually I have a strong coffee in the morning. It puts me instantly in a good mood but it can instanly switch into anxiety – especially if I have a lot of tasks on my to-do-list. Sometimes I even get passive aggressive.
My monkey mind hinders me from going to sleep at times. And I suspect that there is a relation to my consumption of caffeine.

Caffeine acts as a serious central nervous system stimulant. As soon as it reaches our brain it puts our body in a state of alertness – we might feel more awake and our heartrate is increasing. At least for a certain time this might be useful, but when the caffeine level drops, we are even more tired than before and our body wants more coffee to function properly.

Of course – probably there are other causes of these issues, but I believe that caffeine has a massive impact on my psyche. And because I like to adopt brutal measures I decided to cancel all sorts of caffeine (coffee, mate, green tea, guarana, energy drink,…) from now on for one week and see how it goes.

What happened so far?

Today is actually already day four of my challenge. I want to continue until the weekend with this challenge. So far I already feel the positive side effects of my cold withdrawal: I was in a better mood today. My midday low was not that heavy and my mood didn’t drop to the bottom in the afternoon as it every so often does. And: It is nearly 10 pm and I’m sitting here writing this post with somewhat clarity and calmness.

I keep you updated by the end of the week…

October 15, 2017 by Uli on Micro Habit Challenge, Transformation Inventory, Uncategorized

Micro Habit Challenge 1.2 Week Two – My Breath Becomes my Friend

Week two is over and so is the Micro Habit Challenge 1.0. What had changed? Actually more than I expected had changed. It seems like tha first week was dedicated to “becoming aware of my body” and the second week “becoming friends with my body”.

After these two weeks I have way more trust, that I can actually reach the goals I’m setting myself. My level of happiness had increased (not sure if it is due to my meditation practice or due to external factors, but I like the idea, that happiness grows within me:). Well, the downsides of this week are that I didn’t write much into my diary, but the insights I gained are powerful! Happy scrolling.

My Habit Diary

Day 1 9:39 am – Meeting an Acquaintance

Okay, new week new luck. I meditated this morning on a matt on the floor, which worked quite well. I thought about my breath as my friend. When I’m meditating I’m caring for my breath, I have some warm thoughts about it and I’m really thankful that he is always there for me. Thinking of my breath as a very close friend does make it a bit easier for me.

Day 2 8:22 Uhr Deep Conversations

I consider my breath as a good friend now. Normally I don’t listen to him closely. Even if he demands my attention from time to time. Today he’s a bit angry and he shouts: “Come on, you expect me to care for your every day, in every situation, even when you are very stressed out I provide you with oxygen and you are not able to listen to me?” So I promised him to listen more closely from now on. 🙂

Day 3

(no entry)

Day 4 21:52 Uhr Empty Brain

What can I say? I’m so so tired and I need to go to sleep immediately.

Day 5 6:32 am – Is it Love?

Okay, I practiced meditation everyday – yesterday I cheated a bit, because I was at the physiotherapist. So I was laying down during my fango packung and enjoyed the silence to meet my friend – my breath.

It seems like this is a very strong way for me to connect with my body – to consider my breath as my (growth) “buddy”. And even if the meditation doesn’t work out well, I’m trying to meet my friend the breath in my daily life more often, every now and than during a short break from work I’m practicing meditation to calm my thoughts down. That works better than I thought.

Two days ago, when I didn’t write something in my diary, I had probably the best day in the last six weeks – jobwise and also emotionally. I had an outdoor shoot with the fleet of BMW. The sun was shining the whole day – it was an incredible day. And somehow I felt like finally I’m able to show my real me. I think it was due to my meditation practice. But now I got to take a shower, I have a long day of work ahead.

Day 6

(no entry)

Day 7 Final Conclusion

Well, this week had been a very intense week workwise. I didn’t only finish three video editing projects, but I also had two days of video shootings. I didn’t have such a productive week in a long time – also due to some tough deadlines. So it was an extra tough week to cultivate new habits into my daily life.

I step right into the conclusion of the week for you.

What did I Do?

I meditated 5/7 days, 4/7 days on the matt in front of my bed
I kept my phone on flightmode more often during work automatically
I was happy 7/7 days – at least most parts of the days (probably the happiest week I had during the last 6 months – EVEN if I was on holidays inbetween)
I didn’t work out much, but went for extensive walks of 8-12 km on 5/7 days and included stretching before I went to bed

What did I Learn?

Happiness is a state of mind (nothing really new, but I “experienced” it the first time)
meditation/working on my goals helps me to feel more satisfied and grounded
Loving myself means loving my whole body
I don’t miss much, if I leave my phone on flightmode
writing a diary is helpful to manifest insights (as it is my biggest issue to have an overview over my insights AND keep re-reading them to seed them into my subconsciousness)

What about the Future?

I gonna keep writing a diary on a regular basis and in ONE document
I will keep meditating regularly for two more weeks to extend my personal tool set
Keep not being a “victim” of my devices (including my beloved Thinkpad – no offence :*)

Final Words with Love

Well, after my two weeks Micro-Habit Challenge a few surprises had happened. I didn’t forsee to find a new friend within me. 🙂

I believe, that I can learn to be happy, if I become friends with my “companions”. In this case of course my breath is not my enemy, so companion seems to be a more appropriate phrase. All the last times I tried meditation, I just couldn’t focus on my breath. Sometimes it even felt like he is working against me (or I’m working against him.)

Giving my breath a personality helped me to focus. Probably this is not the same for everybody, but it helped me a lot – even during my day to day life.

When I was in a stressful situation for example during a live-videoshooting with an audience of 1400 people, I remembered that my breath is here to support me. As soon as I became aware of it, I already started to calm down. My heart rate started to decrease.

I believe, that this strategy could help me in several situations. Also it helps me to ACCEPT my body, if I consider my whole body as a loveable friend:

“Love yourself”

The phrase “love yourself” gets a different meaning for me and it adds much more value to my day-to-day life as it means, that I have to actually love my whole body. It sounds logical, but somehow I never considered my body as a part of this “self”. So from loving my body, I discover love for my weirdness, love for my odds and weaknesses…. If I don’t love myself, who else will do?