Weekly Habit Experiments

I have been in Pune since September 2015 now and I got to know that here Gudi Padwa i.e. Hindi Calendar new year is a grand festival. It is celebrated with a lot of zeal. I thought I should take this opportunity to try something new and become a better person. 

Now, many of you must be thinking that this is something we all think of doing in every new year. Yes, that is true, I have always been making a list of habits I need develop, the achievements I want to see in the new year, the milestones I want to achieve, so on and so forth.

Well, yep the only problem was that the list of 2015 looked a lot like the list of 2014 and so on and hence I thought this is not going to work at all.

Hence, I thought this Hindi New Year can be an opportunity. I knew I can’t commit for an entire year so decided to try for something really short a duration and settled for one week.

So, here it is, my weekly experiments have started from 4^th April. Now, I wanted to begin with something really small. I just randomly thought how it would be like to not speak any cuss words for a week and yep, that is what I decided for the first week. I had to follow this No Cuss Words rule till 10^th April i.e. 7 full days. If you think it is easy you may go ahead and give it a try yourself.

Anyways, so how was my experience and how did it go? Well, for firsts, I think the week ended really quickly and I faltered for a total of 5 times. I realized that initially I indeed was, quite frequently saying cuss words in my mind but wasn’t just speaking them. But over a period of a few days I realized that I started using some other words to better explain, rather than the cuss words. I seriously recommend you to give it a try.

This was a good experience by the end of the week. I had two decisions to make now, first, what should be the next experiment and second, whether or not should I continue with the previous one. I decided to try no sugar+ green tea daily for the next week and also decided that since it was not difficult so I would just continue the previous experiment too.

So, for the next week i.e. 11^th April to 17^th April it had to be No Cuss Words + No Sugar + Daily Green Tea.

The week obviously has ended so you might be wondering as to how did it go. Well, No Cuss Words went really good, though I stopped keeping the count of the faults because I found doing that insignificant. No sugar regime has been strictly followed and quite easily actually but this Green Tea Daily has been difficult and I think I could only follow it for 3 days out of 7. I think the reason being that following this involved preparing green tea and I have been too lazy to do so.

Anyways, I have continued all three experiments for the subsequent week too and it has been going well. Though I had to add another habit and I wanted to try Daily Meditation but I have failed at that too.

Now, for the coming week I have decided not to add any habits and to carry all four of these habits to this week and see how that goes. If at all everything goes fine. I will start adding more habits, else I will drop some of these.

Current habits to pursue in the next week starting next Monday i.e. 25^th April 2016 are No Cuss Words + No Sugar + Daily Green Tea + Daily Meditation. Hoping for the best!

Book Review: Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

Best thing about this book is simplistic language. When the ideas being shared in the book are complex and difficult to understand and relate to, it really helps to have the ideas in a simple language.

The story is fairly gripping in the middle of the book and starts on a comfortable note too. I would say that the ideologies shared, especially at the end of the book are somewhat difficult to imbibe or even understand in one go and it does require to read them again. Presumably the thought of the author is to give the readers a small insight into the concept and hence this book can just be a beginning for the readers to think on such lines and then explore more by themselves. This book is indeed a short read but it makes you think time and again and hence I would say this is an impacting book to me. Certain sections of the book (some specific conversations) are extremely enjoyable and hence I would surely want to read the book again. I highly appreciate that the author seemed to have ensured that any religion aspect is not touched upon. To conclude, this is a must read book. The book is publicly available online, you can go to http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2500  to get the book. Also, I am happy to announce that this book is going to be the first specific book being discussed in Pune Book Lovers Club.

Why make a fuss?

It’s been a while since I wrote something, elsewhere or on this blog. It literally feels like the fountain pen being used after years. The ink has dripped through inside but is unable to dribble through the nib of the pen, and smoothly on to the paper. As you try to write, you scratch the paper and mildly damage the nib. Just like the ink, I have thoughts in my mind but am unable to carve them out into words.

Why? What happened? Has it not been a good time in the past? Am I so engrossed in the day to day life that I forgot how to express in words? No, I did not; well, I hope not.

I know that the wheels are a little rusty now, but they sure can still move. It will take a little time, I will need a little inertia to push myself and that indeed will take some effort and some pain.

Pain, oh yes. That, we always experience; every time something begins (or ends) that little word pain is like the threshold energy we need, to get started, to begin and to endure.

So, what is there to exaggerate in this? Why make a fuss?  Is this the first time I am experiencing this? Surely it is not. There is nothing new in this. Also, don’t other people undergo the same and just still keep going? There is nothing unique about it.

All you got to do is keep going. Can anything else help? I highly doubt it. But, given my little experience of life and of people, I might be wrong. Over time, everything fades away, just like the early morning fog, like it was never there, was just a dream.

Yes, the visibility is currently low, it is indeed hazy all around; there are some things to remember and there are some to forget. But all I need to remind myself is that; this too shall pass, this too shall pass.