Happy New Year! Its been almost 2 years since my last post and I must say it feels nice to put pen to paper. The pandemic left with hunkering down at home lacking inspiration for posts and then life got busy at the end of March 2021 when I welcomed a tiny, translucent, wrinkled bundle of joy into this world. Life has been anything but quiet since then.
I missed writing. I started writing back in 2018 because I was itching to be creative, itching to have total control over my work. It felt good to share my thoughts (with my rather large reader base haha) and more importantly develop my voice. I have enjoyed writing and dare I say I’m decent at it. The first time I received praise was for a report I wrote in 6th grade. I don’t remember the topic but I do remember it was for Ms. Bunting’s class.
All this is to say that I’m getting back into writing this year. Starting small with the goal — I mean habit — to continue building this blog one post at a time.
This is a good segway into the main topic of this post – habits I plan to cultivate or continue in 2023. I read somewhere that goals help us prioritize our behavior and measure success, but they do not help us create routines or behavior that will enable us to meet our goals. Habits help us do this. So this year I am going to commit to habits that will help me achieve my larger goals.
- Read 3-4 times in a week. Over the past several months I’ve started to read again and it feels great. I love learning about a new topic or getting lost in a story crying my eyes out as I did reading The Wish by Nicholas Sparks recently. Stories are powerful. By following through with this habit I hope read a healthy number of books this year.
- Write for 15 – 20 minutes 3-4 times a week. I really do miss writing and this blog. By committing to this habit I want to get my creative juices flowing, to have complete ownership over my work and continue developing my voice. (And let’s be real I’ve paid top $$$ to Bluehost to host this site and it’s time I got my money’s worth again.)
- Workout at least 3 times a week. Over the years exercising has played a big role in helping manage my stress and anxiety and make me feel strong. I started working out 2 weeks after giving birth and that really helped with my post partum anxiety. I recently started taking personal training classes, which have had a positive impact on my endurance, strength and I hope to lose weight (coupled with a better diet of course!).
- Meditate for 10 minutes everyday (or at least 5 out of 7 days a week). I dropped the ball on meditation last year but am looking forward to maintaining this habit. At times I do wonder if mediation has been a positive force in my life or not and I can’t say for sure but what I can say is that the “pearls of wisdom” that Andy Puddicombe shares at the beginning of each Headspace session has definitely stuck around.
- Say yes to social activities/invitations more frequently. This is a bit vague and likely not a habit but after moving around over the last decade and feeling lost and seeking that sense of belonging, I’m realizing that I have to create that sense of belonging for myself. That means taking the initiative, making the effort, socializing with parents who have kids the same age as mine even if all I want to do after work is drink a cup of tea for an hour (warming it up several times of course) while watching CNN on repeat.
- Praise myself and my work every chance I get. Again, whether this is a habit or not you can decide for yourself but advocating for myself, in particular at work, is my larger goal. Fulfilling my larger goals means taking small steps on a regular basis to showcase my leadership and the great work that I do.
- Set boundaries. Some examples include: calling my family often but not everyday because my life is busy and I want to be present with my son, finding time for myself during the week instead of just watching TV every evening before going to bed, not checking work email/phone from 5-8:30pm when my son comes home and we are busy with our evening routine. Setting boundaries is a fairly new concept for me because in the Southeast Asian culture boundaries are fairly non existent. Boundaries you say — what are those? I have to be involved in every aspect of your life.
- My larger goal is to improve my communication with my family, but in terms of setting habits this entails using “I statements” to express my feelings, avoiding using black & white language “you always or you never” statements, regulating my feelings, processing them before starting discussions (especially with my husband) and directly asking for what I want. Thre is quite a lot of work to be done on the communication front, but by precisely setting habits I can slowly but surely achieve my goal of improving my communication skills.
I hope this post serves as inspiration for my readers to reflect on the habits they want to develop this year to help achieve their goals.