Summary – E & E Via 25% Technique

I once heard a saying, that staying committed to something is harder that holding a burning rock. You will most likely to let it go all the time.

Take exercising for example, one day you were watching a documentary on how overweight people exercise their way to fitness and suddenly you got that extra boost of motivation to start exercising. You ran for 1 hour immediately after work. This went on for about a week until one day you started skipping the routine. It is now thrice a week. In a month or so you find yourself not exercising at all. You are then frustrated and blame it all on your weak willpower.

Does this look very familiar to you? No worry, every person on this planet has experienced the same thing. Like I said, staying committed to something is always difficult.

I however have learnt a technique to keep the motivation high everyday. Trust me this technique is very effective and if you practise it today, you will be seeing the effect of your continuously high level of motivation tomorrow.

This is what I do.

Excitement & Embarassment via 25% Technique

Instead of running for 1 hour daily, I run for 15 minutes. Yes, only 15 minutes. Even though I know that my body can withstand running for 1 hour, I stop running after 15 minutes. I will usually end up enjoying every seconds of that 15 minutes and getting excited for the next 15 minutes session tomorrow.

One of the most reliable way to stay motivated is to keep the excitement level high. This is what I do when I run at about 25% of what I am capable of. I know deep down that I can always do more, so everyday I will challenge myself by saying “If I can’t even run for 15 minutes, I will be very embarassed with myself.”

I don’t know about you, but it works for me.

Why This Technique Works?

1) You know you can do it anytime anywhere. It is only about 25% of your limit.

2) You will feel embarassed if you cannot finish it.

3) If for some reason you skip a day, you can redo the two day exercise by exercising at 50% your limit the next day.

4) After a while your body will begin to adapt to the 25% limit you set. You will notice that running for 15 minutes is not making you sweat anymore. This is a sign that you need to change your limit. Maybe start running for 30 minutes.

In other words, you are actually seeing yourself getting stronger. Who wouldn’t want that?

Other application

• Cleaning the house – Even if you can clean the whole house, try only vacuuming the floor every day.

• Blogging – Instead of posting one entry everyday, why not make it once every 4 days. Even if you already prepared 2 entries, publish it only after 4 days.

• Finishing an assignment – You can choose to work on your assignment all day long or you can set 2 hours everyday and finish it within a week.

Important Note

If you were to run only 15 minutes everyday your entire life, it will contradict with the whole idea of self improvement since you are not improving. This technique is meant only to help keep the motivation high every day. Once you are able to turn the exercise into a habit (action that comes naturally to you), you are free to stretch the limits accordingly.

- I Wonder -
How do you sustain your motivation? Any tips?

———- Personal Note ————
It is one of my resolution this year to reduce my weight to about 65 kg. Now that I have made this public, I will have to work even harder to achieve it.

Photo Credit – Eneas

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Summary – 10 lines you can say to yourself after a failure

I am not perfect. Even though I write a personal development blog, it doesn’t mean that I am the most developed person on the planet. We will always be in the process to be slightly better everyday. That’s exactly what this blog is all about

Personal development is just like life. It doesn’t matter whether you will end up a prime minister or a clerk, what matter is how you get there. And along this journey, some mistakes are bound to happen.

I confess that I procrastinate once in a while (Ok, maybe a lot), I sometimes manage my finance poorly (bought an external drive when I don’t actually need it). My point is, despite my articles that describe how to combat procrastinate and good financial tips, I can still make mistake and I can sometimes fail to follow my own advice.

This is where it becomes a problem. For the average guy like us, each failure can have some effect like depression, stress etc. How then can we effectively come back from a failure. For example, how can I remanage my finance after an out of control shopping spree? Should I start back from zero? Or is there any other way?

These are some suggestion on how to make that come back; a few examples of lines you can say to yourself to reset your life after a failure.

1) Behold! My experiment on making mistakes has completed. Procrastination really takes about half of your life.

2) Nobody was hurt. I am still alive. It is up to me to deal with the problem. I will make sure the external drive I just bought worth every penny I spent.

3)) All the negative feeling I’m having now because of the failure is officially postponed to next week. I will entertain them then. Thank you for understanding.

4) People might not even notice. They are usually too busy with themselves

5) So that’s what happen if (insert mistake here).. HAHAHAHA.

6) My life is short, I’m giving myself 2 minutes to mourn

7) Now where was I?

8] Resetting life… Starting now

9) If I want things to change, I will first need to change

10) Get up and just do something

Conclusion

We all fail ourselves at some point in life. We have two options. Making the come back easier or harder for us. The answer should be obvious – Always aim to make things easier for you.

- I wonder -
What do you say to yourself after a failure?

————– Personal Note ———–
I have a friend who diet. And whenever she failed to follow her diet and ate fatty food, she would literally torture herself by vomitting it all out. She would then be upset and depressed with the failure that even a stranger will be able to see it in her face.

Believe me, nothing good can come from this self torture. So stop it already.

Photo Credit – Hamed Masoumi

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Summary – How To Win The War

What is temptation?

• You are on a diet, and everything you see looks delicious.

• You just got your paycheck, and somehow there’s a voice in your head telling you to spend some time at the mall.

• You are exercising in your house and suddenly that same voice in your head is telling you that all the exercise will not make you healthier.

All of that my friend, are temptation at its best. That feeling of wanting something so much when you are trying your best to avoid it. It is a part of you and thus you will never be able to stop it from haunting you your entire life.

However, not being able to remove it doesn’t mean that you have to surrender to it. You will need to declare a war with your temptation. Of course, not to all your temptation. Just the ones that are holding you back. I personally call this the greatest war of our life simply because it’s very hard to win a war when you yourself wanted to lose the war.

You will have to fight with all your might. If you want to make yourself healthier, you will have to fight that temptation to be a couch potato. And if you want to study, you may have to fight that urge to go out with friends clubbing. This war will never be easy. But it is NOT IMPOSSIBLE either. To actually win this great war, you may want to consider applying these tips.

1) Remember Why You Are Doing This

Again with the diet example, if you are on a diet, remind yourself why you are dieting. If you want a better health, print some articles about people dying of heart disease, or how older people are able to run a marathon when they are healthy. Read the articles a few times a day. Or create a blog specifically for your progress to health. You will be researching a lot of health related issues and that itself will kick the temptation of ruining your diet out of the window.

2) Make Use Of Emotion

There’s always “the shame” to help you win that battle with temptation. Publicly announce your diet plan. And if you ever want to break your diet, make it a rule that you will have to do it in front of your friends. This way, that shame will stop temptation from ever winning that round. Other emotion that can be manipulated are of course “Laziness” (Make the process of breaking your diet to be as hard as possible) and “Happiness” (Make every winning day a celebrated day)

3) Never Let Go

I actually got this idea from a tv series about “Black Hole”. According to the show, our body and gravity are in a never ending war. An example is like rock climbing. You are fighting gravity with every step we took. Just imagine halfway up, you decided to let go, you will fall down to where you started. You may get a hold of a rock but you will be terribly injured and there is no way you can climb the rock as efficient as your first time doing it.

Just like the analogy, the fight with temptation is very much the same. If at any point you give in to temptation, you will fall back to our starting point. And most of the time, the journey to return back to our current place will be hundred times harder.

So whenever you are feeling like giving in to temptation, decide whether or not you want to drop back to where you started, and bear in mind that the next time will be so much harder.

4) Don’t Give Debatable Excuse

The worst way to combat temptation is when you are being defensive. Being defensive means that you start giving excuses. You want to diet, after two weeks, you start craving for chocolate cakes. You will then start giving excuses to avoid chocolate cakes. Excuses like “Chocolate cake is bad for you”, or “There are too much calories in that cake”. These are debatable excuses which means that you will be able to argue with the excuse. You may eventually say that “If chocolate cake is bad, people will stop making them” or “It’s true that there are too much calorie, but what harm can a slice do?”

All these excuses are debatable. And when you start entertaining the conflict in you, you are losing the war by the minute. A good script to put an end to inner conflict are “I’m not discussing this” or “Period”.

5) Believe That Temptation Gets Weaker With Every Defeat

What will happen to you if you were in a competition and you were defeated at every round. Your motivation will get weaker no doubt. The same thing happens to temptation. If you keep winning the war, the temptation will eventually be weaker.

Believe in this and you will see the amazing result faster. It is when you are totally in control of your desire and from that time on, only good things will come to you. What ever you strive to do, you will get it done, your focus will be razor sharp. Now, let me be the first to congratulate you on all the success waiting for you your entire life.

- I wonder –
Any other tips on conquering temptation that I may have missed?

————- Personal Note ———-
For my Muslim friends reading, I wish you all the best with Ramadhan (Fasting Month). This is the time when our control on temptation will be tested. I actually wrote a few articles on Things About Ramadhan You May Not Know last year. Hope you will enjoy it.

Photo Credit – Phooey

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Summary – Newton’s First Law of Thermodynamics
Let me share you a secret. A secret about a technique that if done correctly, you can literally find energy to do anything you want. You can finish up your work, and still have the energy to play with your children (We all know this require infinite amount of energy). And after the children went to bed, you can continue doing your other chores with the energy as if you just woke up from bed.

Interested? Now if only you can wired $20 for the secret to my bank account, I will email you the secret.

I’m just kidding. But don’t you think this unlimited energy is worth all the money in the world. I do. I sometimes feel so tired at work, it doesn’t make any sense since my work does not require me to do a lot of physically demanding things. And how many times have you seen a construction worker that works almost 15 hours daily doing heavy lifting most of the time, and still they can come back tomorrow for more work.

The fact is this energy comes from the mind. We all know this. Now let me share with you the correct way to harness this power.

I’m referring to the first law of thermodynamics – The Conservation of Energy. According to Newton, energy cannot be created and destroyed. It can only be transfered from one form of energy to another.

Obviously Newton was referring to the actual energy like heat, electrical, solar etc. I am just extending the law to cover our mind energy. First a disclaimer, this is just a personal application of the theory. You should never use this concept in real life physics examination.

The Mistake We Did
That said, this is what we usually do, We are feeling very tired after an 8 hour of work, the children at home are waiting to play with you. It’s the only time they see you all day so we can’t really blame them. When we reached home, we make a mistake of trying to create energy. We try to summon any energy left in our body to just entertain them. And according to Newton’s First Law, this is not possible. And that is why we will feel even more tired after that.

The Secret Is…
The secret to unlimited amount of energy is actually to transfer them from one form of energy to another. How else do you think that construction workers gain their energy. They kept reminding themselves that the money is for their family back home, and that if they didn’t work, they will not be able to provide education for their children. They are actually drawing their energy from their responsibility and love for family. And that is why they will still have the energy to entertain their children when they go back after work. They are at the time drawing the energy from the happiness brought by the children’s smile and laughter.

Just like singers getting their energy from the crowd, or a father carrying his sick children to the hospitals on foot. These are all real evidence that such energy transfer really exist. We just need to apply it in our life and voila, you are going to be amazed with the things you do.

So will everyone else.

- I wonder -
Where else can we find our source of energy to be transfered?

———- Personal Note ———–
This is my new source of energy. My 3-months old Zafirah.

Photo Credit – Suchitraprints

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