Day 9

Life with 5 good habits

The Advent Cal(m)endar contains habits to increase clarity, focus and calmness. Every second day, I open a door and post about my experiences.

Hi readers! Today’s habit is

Well, it’s probably obvious why I’ve included this one – exercise and yoga are good for physical and mental health. I notice that I feel more balanced when I exercise regularly. My plan is to focus on strengthening home exercises that help with back pain and to do stretching / yoga on days when I am tired.

I do not have any deep philosophical thoughts about exercising, so I’ll instead give you a quick update about how it’s going with the whole set of new habits!

Meditation for at least 10 minutes

I have managed to do this every day, either just sitting quietly and observing my perceptions and feelings, or using a guided meditation such as this one focused on relaxation. On some days, this has given me noticeably more clarity – after meditating, I felt like some mess in my brain was gone and I could focus on the tasks at hand. However, on other days I waited with meditation until late in the evening and then could not properly stay awake… That is not really the idea, so I need to make sure to do it earlier in the day!

Cold shower

I have taken a (brief) cold shower each day. Somehow I thought this habit would change my life, but apparently I just got used to it – I feel alive and fresh afterwards, but that feeling doesn’t last as long as on the first two days. Still, the cold water reminds me of my willpower every time, and that’s a good enough reason to keep doing it (in addition to the fact that I committed to it!).

No more than 15 minutes of mindless scrolling

This one has been a bit difficult. I only now fully realise how many scrolling opportunities there are! I often catch myself scrolling without having set the timer. For example, let’s say I search for an email from my colleague “Paul” in my inbox and get 150 results. Instead of just reading the specific email I am interested in, I might get vaguely curious about the conversations I had with Paul two years ago and start randomly checking out old emails. And suddenly I have been mindlessly scrolling and clicking around for 5 minutes without even noticing. To take this “unintended” scrolling into account, I allow for almost no “deliberate” scrolling now, i.e. I do not visit social media sites – otherwise the total time would certainly exceed 15 minutes per day. I do make an exception for Substack Notes as I just started here and want to engage a bit, so I sometimes allow myself a few minutes. Understanding how much I – someone who doesn’t use social media much and who already actively tries to avoid information overload – actually scroll has been eye-opening.

Stop work at 9pm (or earlier)

I am very proud to report that for the two days since this habit was revealed, I have been successful! I mostly switched off all devices and was just reading, and it was great; I was happily reading for hours. I also got tired much earlier than usual – apparently the screen contributes more to keeping me awake than I thought (even though I use a blue light filter).

Yoga or exercise for at least 30 minutes

Well, this one has only started today, but I can tell you I am about to do these back exercises right now!

I hope your December is going well too!

Hannah