Noisy Deadlines

This month (February, 2017) I decided to start the Minimalism Game. It’s an idea by The Minimalists (awesome blog!), you can read more about it here. This is the second post about it, from Day 10 to Day 18. You can read the first part here.

The “Gamification” Effect

This is when the game starts to become challenging. After day 10 the selection of items is not so fast anymore. You see, I didn’t have a box already full of stuff previously collected to donate/trash/sell. Each day I go through my stuff and select which items will go away that day.

And since I didn’t have previously collected items, I started to plan ahead my game every week. I know which areas I can go through the next day and I even separate the next number of stuff so that I can deal with it the next morning. And this “gamification” keeps me working! It’s less likely I will find an excuse and let the decluttering for an undetermined day in the future.

When I reached Day 18, I started to think that I wouldn’t get to the end. But there is always one more pile of paper, some books here and there and CD’s. I discovered a drawer full of CD’s. I knew I had them, but I didn’t remember how many. I used to back up my data on CD’s before having external hard drives. I had old PC games I no longer play. I had CD’s with MP3’s before there were streaming services. I had old electronics! I had installation CD’s and manuals of a computer I no longer own! So many obsolete things!!

So far, I got rid of 176 items :)

This month I decided to start the Minimalism Game. It’s an idea by The Minimalists (awesome blog!), you can read more about it here. It’s very simple: you choose someone to join you, to create accountability. Then on Day One you get rid of one thing, one day two, two things, so on and so forth, until day 30, when you get rid of 30 things in one day.

The game is meant to create momentum while decluttering and eliminating the feeling of overwhelm when you want to tackle a great number of stuff. You can either donate, sell, or trash the excess stuff. By the end of the 30 days, if you keep it up, you’ll have 465 less things in your life.

In my case, since February has 28 days, I’ll have 406 items!

This will be a three part post!

Why have I started it?

I’ve been into a minimal mindset since 2013. It’s a long process, and I started to get rid of unwanted or forgotten clothes and shoes at first. I realized I was hanging on to too many items that didn’t correspond to my life style anymore. I had shoes I never wore. I had old clothes that were setting in my closet forgotten. First, I’ve decluttered my wardrobe. Then my CD’s, my books and my kitchen utensils. But I still had other areas of focus I wanted to tackle. I have office supplies, old electronics, mementos and miscellaneous stuff I want to go through. So, I thought the Minimalism Game could give me the right amount of incentive to start up this process.

I don’t like to fail. Whenever I fail at something I feel like I will never accomplish anything in my life. My mind is filled with negative self talk. It is a feeling that brings me down and makes me unproductive. But why is that? Why is it so important to never fail? And what is failure, anyway?

If we go to the dictionary, failure is defined as “lack of success” or “a state of inability to perform a normal function”. So, failure is like the opposite of success and everybody wants to be successful, right? Yeah, we are taught to crave perfection and we are bombarded with this message all the time.

But I think we need to practice failure. I want to be able to say, without shame or fear, that “I am good at failing”. We all learn from our mistakes, right?

Why do I dislike failure?

The idea of failure makes me insecure. If I have a plan and suddenly that plan has to be canceled or postponed I loose confidence on my planning. I know planning is not made to be static but I enjoy certainty. And that’s why I run away from failure: my need of security makes me not want to fail.

I also have a fear of discomfort. Leaving our comfort zones requires courage and the ability to accept change and, consequently, failure.

I do not like being vulnerable. I do not like to expose myself. And maybe that is only a reflection of my introvert self. I have a loud mind and small failures can become huge disasters inside my head.

The path to practice failure

So, my mind does not accept failure lightly. It is hard for me to give space to imperfection. I feel like I struggle to be imperfect.

When I say “imperfect” I do not mean something bad or unacceptable, just something real and authentic. The media nowadays sells us a notion of perfection that is artificial. We do not need the perfect car, or the perfect house, or the perfect appearance to be happy.

But after acknowledging that I want to change my perfectionist mindset, I have started to practice failure and be okay with it. I am learning to enjoy imperfect experiences. I am letting go of my “perfectionist” self.

Our notion of “perfection” can vary. A perfect weekend for me may not be the same for you. Perfection does not exist in reality, right? It is just a matter of what is your reference. And when we start to believe that the reference for perfection is what the media sells us, then we start to crave the impossible. And I want out of this vicious cycle!

How I managed to write on my journal every single day of 2016

When journaling was a thing…and then it disappeared

For years during my adult life I struggled with starting a journal. You know, simple, personal daily journaling where we sit down and write about our day. It doesn’t need to be public. It is a space that is all ours, with our own reflections and sorrows.

The weird thing is that I remember having lots of “Diaries” when I was young. I enjoyed writing on my “Diary”. It was a daily practice that soothed my pre and adolescent despair. I decorated it with drawings. I even did collages with small souvenirs of my young adventures. By the end of the year, my diary was huge!! And kept them hidden from view, of course.

What happened to this habit? It has suddenly disappeared by the time I entered the “grown-up” stage of my life. I don’t remember when it was exactly, but it just happened. Poof! One day I was journaling, the other I was more interested in, what? Internet? Sometimes I wonder if the Internet destroyed some of my habits. It probably did… See, I grew up without internet and then this new amazing technology appeared and dominated me. It was fascinating. Maybe it is Internet’s fault…I don’t know.

Anyway, when I reached my 30’s and started to worry about productivity, I found out that there is such a thing as adult journaling!

Wait, what? Adults have diaries too?

I wondered how I could start this habit. There are tons of articles online stating that journaling is good for your brain, good for stress-management, good for creativity and so on.

You know when a fictional story catches your attention and you want to dive into the imagined world? You know when you like so much the main character that you wish she was real?

I enjoy reading romance. But not the old formula romance that is full of tropes of women being the passive part of the story, like the old “Damsel In Distress” plot line. Romance is usually about two people building up a romantic relationship. That’s the main core of any romance story. But we often see the female depicted as a virgin, innocent, young girl who has her heart stolen by some alpha male dude.

I prefer romance stories where there is no sexism. I enjoy reading strong female characters and gladly we have many options today, we just have to search for them.

This sci-fi romance “Paradox” trilogy by Rachel Bach has this “no sexist” atmosphere that I look for in a romance story. The protagonist is a bad-ass ambitious mercenary, Devi Morris, who finds herself working on a small ship full of strange occurrences.

I will not explore the plot here, so feel free to go on because it will be spoiler free.

What I loved about this trilogy, in general:

• Fast paced writing style, it can be considered an action packed space opera.
• Cool alien creatures.
• Mystery and intrigue in a sci-fi universe.
• Plot twists, because, why not?

And here goes some notes regarding each one of the books:

Fortune’s Pawn (Paradox #1)

Action packed, a female bad-ass protagonist, amazing world building with a bit of romance. Yes, I think the combination worked pretty well and I really got into the characters. It reminded me of fem-Shepard, out of Mass Effect video game (because well, I played as a female Shepard) and the book created in me that surprisingly familiar feel of great sci-fi/space opera focused on role playing. It was a very fun, fast read and I wanted to jump into the second book right away.

My favorite quote, where Devi, the protagonist explains her line of work:

“You spend enough years as a soldier for hire and you find that most mercs tend to fall into three categories. There are the career professionals like me who are in this business because they’re excellent at what they do and love to do it; there are the grunts who put on the armor and do what they’re told because it doesn’t take too much thought and the pay is good; and then there are the skullheads, the macho idiots who do it for the power trip.”― Rachel Bach, Fortune’s Pawn

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg

• Print Length: 402 pages
• Publisher: Random House (February 28, 2012)
• Kindle Edition

I’ve had this book on my to-read list for a quite a while. Some of my friends have highly recommended it. One of them even said that this book changed his life!

Well, for me it was not exactly all that life-changing experience, but it sure helped me understand more about my behaviors and the patterns that drive my own habits.

The author describes some interesting researches devoted to understanding human habits and some very curious applications of the so called “habit loop”. MIT researchers discovered the habit loop and described it as a three-step process:

“First, there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use. Then there is the routine, which can be physical or mental or emotional. Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future.” — Charles Duhigg

How habits work. Source: http://charlesduhigg.com/how-habits-work/

• Everything That Remains: A Memoir by The Minimalists
• Print Length: 234 pages
• Publisher: Asymmetrical Press; 3rd edition (January 1, 2014)
• Publication Date: January 1, 2014
• Read from April 22 to 30, 2016

I love reading about minimalism! I think it infuses us with a thought process that helps us be happier and mindful. It makes us think outside the box. And this book is very authentic. As Joshua F. Millburn says on The Minimalists podcast, this is a book about the big “WHY”. The “what” is just the easy part, it is the action of getting rid of our stuff, but:

“Minimalism doesn’t work like that. By simply embracing the what without the why, a person gets nowhere. It is possible to get rid of everything you own and still be utterly miserable, to come home to your empty house and sulk after removing all your pacifiers.” — Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, Everything That Remains: A Memoir by The Minimalists. Kindle Edition. pg. 70, loc. 848–850

The book is written in a kind of memoir format telling the story of how the founders of “The minimalists” blog began living more deliberately.

The Art of Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill by Matthieu Ricard

• Print Length: 308 pages
• Atlantic Books (September 1, 2011)
• Kindle Edition
• Read from December 17, 2013 to January 15, 2014

— This is a curious book, because it mingles scientific approaches with Buddhism philosophy. It was actually my first contact with a book related to Buddhism. My main reason to pick up this book was that it brings some findings on the effects of meditation in our brains.

The chapters about meditation and inner peace were enlightening to me. This book has made me start a persistent meditation routine. I was amazed at how the practice of meditation can result in significant changes on monks’ brains who meditate for long periods daily. It brings information about the methods of meditation and also the fundamentals of Buddhism. There are examples of these fundamentals being used in cognitive therapies as a way to deal with anger:

“Buddhism takes a different position. It stresses enhanced awareness of the formation of thoughts, which allows for the immediate identification of an angry thought as it arises, and for its deconstruction the next instant, the way a picture drawn on the surface of water melts away as it is sketched. We repeat the same process with the next thought, and so on. So we need to work on our thoughts one by one, analyzing the way they emerge and evolve and gradually learning to free them as they arise, defusing the chain reactions that allow thoughts to invade the mind. This method, which presents some similarities with those developed in the West in the cognitive therapies of Aaron Beck and the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program of Jon Kabat-Zinn, is essentially centered on the present moment.”