Is This Year Going To Be The Same As Last?

• Written by Vibha Bharaddwaj

Really this is the question that came up when I looked into the mirror this morning and back came the response –
If your actions are the same everyday then your Results too will be same and not differ a bit.

And if you continue doing this for the next 209 days, believe me this year is going to be the same as last!

I was shaken up actually!

Hence I wanted you to ask yourself the same.

If you want different results. you got to take different actions in alignment to your goals.And you got to take responsibility for the actions and the choices you make.
For example – I choose to entertain myself for the next 2 hours. As a result, my actions involves opening the app for either Amazon Prime or Netflix and get glued to one of the tele-series.

What do you think will be the outcome of this?

Momentarily I transport myself to a world of fiction and I am excited, and filled with thrill.
It feels great as long as I continue to watch.

However when I switch OFF, to get to bed, I feel terribly guilty because, suddenly I am reminded of all those Pending tasks and commitments that I have made to myself and also to my business and then I have few friends who choose working on their dream goals rather than watching Netflix have made tremendous progress!

Come to think of it, it is not just the choices, it is the decision to make that kind of choices, with complete awareness of the effort that it would take and the outcome that it will generate.

It is not that they were like perfect since day 1 it is just that they got fed up of seeing the same results for themselves and not moving much.

While every leadership Guru on the social media is advising us to lead a balanced life, which in other words means, balance our days with right amount of work, exercise, food, family, fun, rest and relaxation, the things that we think are relaxing are actually not of much help.
I notice that on the days I watch Netflix, quality of sleep suffers as a result I wake up with a headache. The blue light (rather multiple coloured lights) hurt my eyes and keep me away from sleep. And I regret so much.

Social Media is no different. Not every post or video adds value and yet we end up wasting time watching it. There is only so much of cute babies we can watch or admire some one’s culinary skills (because mine turns out to be a disaster and I do not have such a well equipped kitchen)
.
There are several ways to take control of our lives , feel less guilty (or regret) make more progress and live our dream life.

Some years ago, I took up the habit of journaling and I am so glad I did. Some of my friends made fun of me because they said, aren’t you bored of writing the same activities over and over. Waking up- breakfast – office – conference call – dinner with family – Netflix time – Sleep.
If some would take a look then it just appeared as though I have done a copy paste except that I actually hand written it and so there was some effort put in writing.

While I was very proud that I was journaling everyday, I did not feel very accomplished as the activities from one day to the other looked almost the same.

What did it indicate?

That I was very much in my comfort zone, repeatedly doing stuff that had a very predictable outcome “Mediocrity”.

And I was OK with it.

However, there were times when I would feel like a loser when I saw my friends and colleagues make progress in their career.

In other words, my colleagues and friends were living a “Dream life”.

Then one day, one of my colleagues who decided to move to another organisation with higher pay and position, sat with me for an hour and told me where was I going wrong and why I was not making progress even though I had the potential to do it.

He shared his journal and we compared.

I was surprised to see that he too had “Netflix time” in his journal but then that was restricted to the Weekends.
I also noticed that he had dedicated time slots for “Reading” , “Writing”, “Me-time”, “Meditation” to name a few.
I had to ask him what was this “Me-time” all about and what activities did it involve.
He was thrilled to explain about that as it was his favourite.
Me-time was the time in solitude that he spent to get new Ideas and to develop on some.
He said, every person should have a Me-time blocked in their calendar everyday so that they are not disturbed by anyone or anything and they get to think and contemplate.

I thanked him profusely as I had learnt a very big lesson and I promised to incorporate that from today so that the rest of the year becomes
my best year ever!

How about you? How do you plan to spend the rest of the year?

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