Here comes the ugly truth about my first week of the Micro Habit Challenge 1.0: Not many things had changed. This is not a surprise applying the rule of the ”three r’s” – repetition, repetition, repetition.

Well, I don’t consider the first week as a failure, but definitely not as a huge success. It just motivates me to keep going, to work on my personal goals with slightly more discipline.

In the first part I’m presenting you my diary as promised. The second part concludes my learnings and insights.

My Habit Diary

Day 1 – Throwback

Well, on day one I had this valuable insight about changing my habits in manageable steps. I felt so much wisdom growing inside of me. This was probably one of the most succesful days I had in a long time.

Day 2 – 12:02 pm – Fragile Relaxation

This is Micro Habit Challenge Day two – right after meditating:

Okay, to be honest – my meditation practice didn’t worked quite well so far – I couldn’t really find a comfortable position, but at least I found motivation to “just sit” and listen to my body: I can feel that the right side of my body is totally stiff and strained and uptight. It starts at my head: It feels like my right ear is somehow plugged and I feel a pressure in the whole right side of my head. This feeling of tight pressure goes through my jar into my neck, where it puts screws on to the area of my shoulder. My right shoulder nearly burns, when I’m starting to relax. It feels like I never let the pain be felt, which is kind of ironic because I’m dealing with pain so often. Well, from there this uptight feeling goes deeper to my upper back, where I feel especially one vertebra blocking my whole spine from pain-free moving. From there the dark stress wanders down next to my spine towards the area of the kidneys. From there it transforms into diffuse feeling of uneasyness in the area of my hips, but than it manifests again in the sacroiliac joint. From there it slides down unremarkably down to my calfes and down to my foot, where it stiffs my ankle a little bit.

All this tension already became obvious during my first rounds of meditation, when I reached fragile states of relaxation.

Day 3 – 10:04 pm Hungover Excuses

Alright, today was a bad day. Well, I didn’t meditate yet, due to a massive hangover from Oktoberfest yesterday, but I will do a meditation session before I go to bed. My plan for the next days is to do it in the morning in order to start relaxed into the day. Anyhow – even if it was not the most successful day, I feel motivated to make another meditation before I fall asleep. Anyway I had some insights today: I kind of felt an acceptance for my body. I understood that I have to take care of my body in order to balance my mind.

“A healthy mind lives in a healthy body”

This is what I learned from my hangover today – I really need to recover regularly – not only, when my body is completely exhausted.. The last months or better say years – I have always lived to the fullest, pushed my personal boundaries to the limit until I really needed recovery as I was so exhausted from living. – This has to end. I need to find a little relaxation everyday.

Day 4 – 21:31 pm Energy Household

As I found out yesterday householding with my energy is something I have to learn. Today I meditated two times already. And I tried to integrate more deep breathing into my day. And I just “let go” and decided to enjoy the sun one hour longer than usual. What happened? Today I felt a bigger boost of energy than ever before (at least more than within the last weeks). Well, this showed me how much a little change already can help to improve my day.

Update: 00:13 am

Well, it is already late now, but I decided to insert a short qi-gong session before I go to sleep. I did the same two days ago. And tonight I understood, that I really have to calm down before I go to sleep – no matter what time it is. Just before the qi-gong I felt still agitated by the day – in a positive way, but also I felt this stiffness in my back, that I always feel, because my body is strained most of the time. After the qi-gong I feel an inner quietness and relaxation, which makes me just want to go to sleep with my hot water bottle. FINALLY, I’m learning what it takes to relax my thoughts – FINALLY I feel, that I can learn the strategies – EVEN ME, I thought I need to run a marathon, walk for ten days, travel for 15 months – fuck no, I just need to practice qi-gong and meditation and that will do the job. (It won’t stop me from the desire to reach physical and mental limits. But I already feel, that it will improve every single day of my life from now on…)

Day 5 The Heartfire keeps burning

Somehow, the last two days have been strange days. I can’t really express why. On the one hand I was more relaxed than in a very long time, but on the other hand I felt a little bit over-motivated, strained, “heartfired”… I think finally I understand the difference between fatigue and tirednes. When you are tired you should go to bed, against fatigue you need to relax and settle your chi. 😀

To be honest – I can’t quite write today, I feel very uninspired and exhausted – even if I didn’t have a tough day. It just reminds me that I have to keep going.

Good night, now I’m just tired.

Day 7 Resolutions

Well, I have to skip day 6, because I didn’t write into my journal yesterday. I had to work in the morning (luckily after a good nights sleep.) and than I went to a barbecue/housewarming party out of town. I meditated in bed in the morning, which felt like a slight cheat..

The Payoff of Week One

Well, I did my “excercises” everyday, but the way I did it was not perfect. Successfully I abandoned my smartphone from my morning routine and before I went to bed I turned it on flight mode as early as possible. (When I came home late sometimes I missed the 30-minutes rule, but in general it worked quite well.) And did I feel any differences? Too be really really honest with you: Today I’m not sure if anything had changed.

What did I do?

• On 2/7 days I felt more relaxed than normal (okay, it was a special week due to Octoberfest)
• I practiced the 8 brocades video 4 times this week
• I listened to much more music again
• I felt fatigue and physical exertion
• I started dancing and working out, when I felt very stressed

What did I learn?

• Qi-Gong is good for me and really regulates my energy and helps me to find ease
• Dancing improves my mood 100%
• Listening to my body can be quite helpful (Ok, this is understated: It is fucking important!)
• It’s a loooong way

What do I want to change next week?

• I’m going to intensify my meditation practice by determining a fixed time (or time of the day) and by sitting in one spot in order to train my mind more specifically
• I’m going to integrate another small change – exercising daily in order to reduce my stess level much more
• Keep doing what I do with the smartphone, might add more timed smartphone breaks as I have to work a lot next week
• Not getting drunk

I will keep up the fight – throwing the towel is not my style anyways.

“It doesn’t matter, how slowly you go as long as you don’t stop”

A few days ago I published this massive Not-To-Do List. I realized, that there are way too many things I want to change. Of course I can’t (not) do it all at once. So, I asked myself, what is my biggest issue at the moment?

Well, the answer is easy: I can’t focus. And why is it so hard for me to focus? Because I’m working on too many projects at the same time (two blogs, and the pre-production of a video project), plus I have two part-time jobs (in video production and as a barkeeper). “On the side” I’m trying to change my way of thinking – from negative to positive. And in the back of my mind I’m constantly thinking of my climbing shoes, which are catching dust.

Everyday I pressure myself  to reconcile everything, but at the end of the day I get nothing done and I’m super exhausted. Plus: I’m prone to procrastination and smartphone addiction, which doesn’t help. I realized:

Before I can master my life, I have to master my mind.

In order to change something it is important to comprehend, how habits work: Depending on the resource you want to believe it takes around 60 days to internalize a new habit. Around 60 times you have to force yourself to do something differently, to excercise, to eat healthy, to not smoke a cigarette and so on. 60 days sounds scary doesn’t it?

Luckily I stumbled upon an article, that introduced me to the micro-habit challenge (Thank you Amina Moreau). Let’s forget about the number, because everything starts with day one. Finally I find the motivation to approach my goals – in small steps:

Trying to make too many big changes at once is all too often destined for failure. It’s the small, incremental changes that end up sticking.

Now it’s time to put up or shut up. Today is my day one of a 14 days challenge.

The next 14 days I want to:

1. Meditate for 10 mintes a day

Since a few years I’m trying to learn meditation. I joined meditation classes, I tried to practice with youtube videos and by myself. A few months ago I decided to renounce meditation. “I’m just not the meditation person.” But, what I didn’t understand was, that my expectations were just way to high. You can’t learn meditation with a few sessions – It’s a process of learning step-by-step.

To make it easy I picked the easiest form of meditation for a start: breathing meditation.

2. Turn off my phone 30 minutes before I go to bed and turn it on after breakfast

Slowly, we find out, that smartphones are not only bad for our social interaction but poisonous for our brain. The brain of a smartphone addict reacts like the brain of a gambler – every ‘beep’ releases dopamin, which arouses a short rush of happiness and satisfaction in our head. And because we want it over and over again, we tab the screen around 150 times a day. That’s insane and because I see similarities with an addict in my own behaviour I want to make a change.

I’m hoping to really make a difference by splitting my personal goals into digestible bites. As a side-effect I’m hoping to build up more patience with myself. More and more I consider impatience as my biggest weakness. But I know I can work on it – step-by-step.

And now?

Well, day one is nearly over. This morning I meditated and turned off flight mode at the subway with a smile on my face, because my brain was already much clearer. And: I published this article – yaayy! 🙂 The next days I want to maintain a small diary, where I will capture my progress. I will publish it by the end of the week.