Reflection on 2019 or How to Build Habits

In my college, there was a culture of junior year giving seniors farewell. One of the question, which I was asked by my juniors was, that what would be one thing they should not stop doing and I said — ‘learning’

I have always hedged for learning, knowing from the life that money nad happiness follows if you keep learning. 2019 was a year where this truly got tested. I moved out of my comfort zone. I took a one-way ticket with my family and left Bangalore, my ‘real’ home, where I had a support system, had friends. It was on the belief that as long as you keep learning and keep building new things, life will take care of itself. Now I am working in London, with a belief that it will give me an opportunity to be a part to build a new category. 

The other large victory I had in 2019 was in a way I re-wired my brain to think about goals and habits in life. 

It started with an exercise I do at the beginning of the year. Every year, I set up personal goals, and take feedback from Shweta and try to fulfil them. But in 2019, I decided to rework the way I work on my goals and instead of goals, decided to work towards building habits.

While reading on how to build habits, I stumbled upon the Tiny Habits Framework of BJ Fogg, which flipped things over for me. 

I lost 12 Kgs by focusing on walking and cutting carbs and sugar in the smaller ways from the diet.

I picked up journaling, fixed my sleeping habit, got better at public speaking and did a lot many experiments which I could then willingly move away from, based on how much value they were adding to my health and well-being.

The biggest takeaway from the exercise was that the habits incorporated daily in the schedule, no matter how badly performed are better than doing nothing at all.