self-improvement
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A Slight Mind Shift in the Right Direction
Dear Conscience, I am encouraged today by the repetition of a similar pattern as yesterday. Yes, I feel under the weather still. Yes, I have three and a half unwatched seasons of the Crown at my fingertips. I enjoyed the one episode I watched on mute while rocking my daughter to sleep. But I didn’t Continue reading
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Make or Break Period
Dear Conscience, I think that an important element in a quest to introduce a desired behavior is to initially really focus on it intensely in the first week. The failure rate in the first 10 days or so is very high (after about 3 days of initial excitement about a new habit). We know well Continue reading
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No Judgment, Just Habit
Dear Conscience, In order to successfully integrate a practice of managing a daily to-do list, it has to become a habit. In thinking this throng, I realized that my so-called 3 “basic” or “core” habits are more about following rules I set out for myself, instead of the “micro” “tiny” or “atomic” habits recommended more Continue reading
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Back to Basics
Dear Conscience, the big deadline is behind me. With the relief from the deadline came turn for all the high hopes of this post-deadline period, when I “finally have the thing behind me, and the time and mindspace for everything else”. Disappointingly, and yet unsurprisingly, I went off track immediately. I spent the night mostly Continue reading
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D-Day
Dear Conscience, a lot of my recent talk about deadlines was about today. Today is the big event. I don’t think it will be successful enough to open up the opportunities I was hoping for. In the end, probably what I’ll be left with is what I’ve learned in the process. I could have prepared Continue reading
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Choose Discipline
Dear Conscience, This day is off to a good start. Now, it’s too early to tell if it’s a fluke, or a result of my efforts. In any case, this new “choose discipline” method is at least giving me insight, even though it’s still to be seen how well it’s working. So, I have my Continue reading
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I Want to Feel Calm and Fulfilled
Dear Conscience, What’s all this self improvement effort for? What do I actually want to achieve? Clearly I want to feel better, but there are also people who have clean homes and thick retirement accounts, yet also feel unhappy. I read the other day that you need to find what you’re actually seeking for by Continue reading
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Can’t Take Time Off From a Lifestyle
Dear Conscience, Let me tell you, I like taking breaks. I’ll make any excuse to justify trading a break. And what’s a better excuse than a vacation? Even after I decided to use this vacation to keep at it, I excused my lack of discipline as a “break”. But a lifestyle is a habit. And Continue reading
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Wednesday: Body
Surprise, surprise, I’ve been neglecting my body. You may have picked up on a common theme by now, I am this week taking stock of my lifestyle woes across these 7 concepts. I’ve been able to neglect it because of a “lucky” genetic predisposition: I look fine even if I don’t take care of myself. Continue reading
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Tuesday: Time
I am not on good terms with time. I don’t like that it passes. I spend more time stressing about something in the future or in the past, rather than being present in the moment. I am a procrastinator. I don’t have regular routines that are enjoyable or helpful. I estimate time badly. I want Continue reading
About Me
I got my first nickname when I was 4 years old. It was “bakitza”, which means ‘an old lady’. I’ve always been an old lady on the inside. And as I progress towards being an old lady on the outside too, I want to take control of this journey. To reach the full fledged bakitza level with a peace of mind I always associated with that life stage. I thought it would come on it’s own with age. But now I realize that I have to take control over the mess that my life currently is in order to be a thoroughly satisfied bakitza one day.
Becoming Bakitza 