lifecycle

The things we never reflect upon are the things we never learn from. We will start a journal to help us collect the events of our day and reflect on them. Here's what you need to do: For the next 60 days, at the end of each day, write in your journal about how your day has been. Write about the things you did, what you ate, who you met, and what you talked about. Reflect on the incidents that happened through your day. • Did I make any social mistakes? • How was my overall mood? • Was today a productive day? • How could I have improved today? • What things did I do wrong that I could have done better? • What things did I do right? Overall, both the writing and the self-introspection should not take more than 20-30 minutes, although, if you have the time, feel free to extend yourself beyond that. You will discover that as you reflect on your day on a consistent basis, you become calmer and more self-aware. This is because the act of writing gives you the opportunity and time to proc...

  Has this ever happened to you? You are extremely motivated to do something. For the first two days, you do it very well. Then for the next two days, you do it, but you compromise on quality. Then you do it half-heartedly. And then decide that you'll take a break for  one day and do it tomorrow. And then it becomes something you did that one time. Then a few weeks or months later that motivation to do that returns. And the cycle begins again. Likely, this has happened to you. It happens to everyone, we feel motivated to go to the gym in January for our new year’s resolution, and half of us stop showing up after two weeks. Half of the rest are gone by the time January is done and very few still show up after 3 months in April.  It's just how we are. We get things done when we feel motivated to get them done and we let them go once that motivation is gone. This is why we need structure. Structure and organization help you get things done even when you don't feel like doing...

Your mornings define the momentum for the rest of your day. For most people, the first act of their day is pressing the snooze button and getting some extra sleep. We are going to do the opposite: we will create a killer morning routine that we will execute immediately upon waking up. This is: 1) Wake up and do 10 jumping jacks. This will get you out of bed and avoid the snooze button trap. 2) Recite the mission that you have set for yourself out loud. This will ensure that your mission is the first thing on your mind as you wake up. 3) Drink a glass of water to offset 8 hours of dehydration. 4) Get done with your exercise routine. 5) Take a shower and drink your coffee (alternatively: beetroot juice). 6) Meditate for 15 minutes. Another advantage of having a morning routine is that it helps you get a  lot of work done as soon as you wake up. Within the first two hours of  waking up, you're already done with your meditation and exercise! Most people, on the other hand, spent t...

This blogger consists of several projects and exercises that you must do to achieve great physical and mental strength, stability, emotional control, and self-understanding. Some of them need only to be done once, while others need to be done every day. Merely reading will not help you. You will only see the benefits if you take action, but I can guarantee you one thing. Finally, I need you to trust me. Some of the exercises in this blog will not make sense to you at first. You might think that something is "fluff" or that it won't work. I would request you to keep that feeling aside for the next 90 days and just do as blog says. I have personally done everything in this blog many, many times, and I know from experience what works best. once this 60-day project is complete, you will see the difference in yourself, your mindset, and your life. And then you will understand why this blog asked you to do what it asked you to do. With that said, feel free to adjust the project...

Note that everything in this chapter is in addition to everything in the  previous chapter. 1. Skip Breakfast If you want to lose weight, you have to create a caloric deficit. Caloric deficit = Calories consumed – calories burnt You get fat when the calories you consume are higher than the calories you burn. (Of course, there's more to it, but this equation is a very good generalization.) By skipping breakfast, you end up eating fewer calories per day, and that will help you lose a lot of fat over time. Isn’t breakfast the most important meal of the day? No, it’s not. The slogan “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day” was invented in the 19th century by James Caleb Jackson and John Harvey Kellogg to sell their newly invented breakfast cereal. Besides, this is not a permanent lifestyle change – you can go back to eating breakfast if that’s what you want to do after you’ve lost all the extra kilograms of fat around your body. You don’t need to ...

When it comes to living best life, the first thing you need to take control over is what you put inside your body. Your food is what gives you the energy to function, so you want your food to be healthy and nutritious, not just delicious. The standard diet people eat is a terrible diet. At some point, the research behind nutrition got infiltrated by people interested in making a buck at the cost of the health of millions of people: namely cereal manufacturers, fast food sellers, and soft drink peddlers. Artificial foods are created to give us ridiculous amounts of taste per bite (and triggering the release of dopamine - fast food is intentionally made to be addictive) – and unless you’re in excellent shape, there is no “moderation” when it comes to these terrible processed foods and oils. What about everything in moderation? Notice how everyone who preaches fast food in moderation is fat. Moderation is an excuse people use to eat whatever they want, whenever they want it. Don’t get me ...

It's impossible to conquer your mind without conquering your body. You cannot have a strong mind in a weak body. Even the Buddha had to learn to conquer hunger and control his bodily desires before he could sit under a tree and meditate for seven weeks straight and attain enlightenment. While we won’t be learning to conquer hunger or meditate for weeks at a time, we will try to make our body stronger and more flexible by giving it 1 to 1.5 hours of exercise, every single day. I won't be going into the "benefits of exercise" bit, because you're already aware of how vital exercise is to both your body and mind and I don’t want to lengthen this blog with redundant information. primarily for two reasons that you're probably not aware of:  1. When you exercise, your body releases a lot of dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins (the release of these chemicals is what makes you "feel good"). When you cut out a lot of pleasure-giving activities from your life (...

The reason behind this is simple: the purpose of this blog is to help you be intentional about your life. When you gossip about other people, you lose the narrative that your life is about you and what you do with it. When you gossip, your life becomes about them. Think back to all the people who keep talking about other people, be it their "friends", coworkers, bosses, politicians, sportsmen, or celebrities. All of these people are not living their own life. They're trying to live through other people. • They signal their "principles" by making negative comments about people they know. They live their principles via other people. (If I was in their place, I would have ...) • They celebrate other people’s achievements like they were their own. If their favorite cricket team or tennis player wins, they live as if it was their own victory, even though their contribution to that achievement was nothing. • They satisfy their need for adventure and popularity by idol...

 "Imagine you were taking care of yourself like you were someone you actually cared for" - Jordan Peterson This is one of the most important chapters in this Blog, and one of the hardest to master. Internal Monologue or inner speech refers to the inner voice in your head. It refers to the conversations the mind has with itself. You use it to think, to memorize things, to analyze and replay events of the past, etc. The problem is that people never attempt to take control of this inner dialogue. For them, the voice in their head is automatic (involuntary), and as a result, the vast majority of people have a negative, self-sabotaging inner dialogue. Your inner dialogue cuts you down instead of building you up. Think of it like this: if your close friend messes up something big time, and you’re trying to help him, how would you talk to him? Would you talk to him constructively and encourage him to think of solutions instead of sulking or would you tell him that he's a worthl...

  I f you live in the modern, fast-paced world, you absolutely must meditate. There are millions of marketers and companies out there wildly competing with each other for your attention, and believe it or not - they keep getting better. Ads become more targeted, junk food gets tastier, and posters become more attention-grabbing. While this is great for their bottom line, it adds 'noise' to your life, and resultantly, people are becoming more and more distracted and mindless. Meditation will help us take our brain back from a world of noise and will enable us to live intentionally. The benefits of meditation include: • Improved ability to manage your emotions • Improved mood and happiness, lower stress levels • Improved alertness and focus (regain your attention span) • Increased self-awareness, mindfulness, and consciousness • Helps you beat addictions and makes urges easier to manage • Strengthens your brain (improved mental stability, memory, and control over the senses) • Ma...

Doing away with these dirty habits is no easy task. It's one of the hardest things you'll ever do. Here's what you need to do every time you feel the urge to indulge in any of the junk activities mentioned in the previous chapter: Take out your phone and on a note taking application (such as Evernote), note down: 1. Type of urge (e.g., urge to use social media, watch porn, etc.) 2. Write down the date, day, time, and place you are at 3. Write down how you feel at the given moment (Am I bored? sad? hungry? energetic?) Once you write that down, meditate for 1 minute to control your thoughts and mind. At the end of every 30 days, I want you to open up your notes and try to look for patterns. Here are some common patterns that you may observe as you review your notes and some proactive strategies you can implement to combat them: • Strong urges to watch porn late at night. (Time Pattern)  Proactive Measure: Going to bed early. • Urges to play video games when you're alone i...

These merely serve as distractions and eat up your time. They sideline your personal goals and make you a low-value person.  If you want to be a high-value person, you have to invest in yourself. To do that, you need time. You will always be “too busy” if you waste most of your day watching entertainment content. It’s just how it is, and no matter how much you enjoy that video game, it’s getting you nowhere in life. We will be abstaining from all such distractions for 60 days. We will also refrain from the consumption of alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes for obvious reasons. Things Will Get Harder Before They Get Easier Many of the behaviors listed above are habits that you have probably been building for years, if not decades. They will not be easy to break. You will find that your urge to indulge in them will increase for the first two weeks before they start to wane off slowly. You will have to really resist the urges during that time, as they try to eat you up. You will find your...

Social media gives you spurts of dopamine (the chemical in your brain that makes you feel good) every 5 seconds. A new tweet, a new Instagram picture, a like here, a comment there.  Your brain becomes accustomed to seeing something new and exciting every 5 seconds. This is how social media destroys your attention span.

  Porn is an addiction. It hacks our brain's wiring the same way drugs do. We have been evolutionarily wired to want to reproduce, but our brain’s dopamine-based reward system in its millions of years of evolving in caves never learned to tell the difference between a real human and a video of a naked girl on a screen. Porn gives you an orgasm without all the other chemicals and intimacy that are involved in sex with a real person. Resultantly, it’s “empty” and highly addictive. Most people who watch porn are porn addicts who cannot go a week without having to take a peek. Further, because of the social stigma attached, most can never openly talk about it or seek help. (Many aren’t even aware that they’re addicts because they’ve never tried to quit it.) Studies have shown that watching porn damages and shrinks your brain. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin found that men who watch a lot of porn tend to have a smaller striatum, an area of the bra...

If we want to become the master of our lives and destiny, we must get rid of the things that seek to make us their slaves. We must throw away the junk habits out of our lives: the things we do that give us no benefit, the things that take away value from our lives, the things that distract us from our mission and divert our attention to  ultimately meaningless pursuits. For the next 90 days, we will eliminate junk habits and activities from our lives. This means that for the next 90 days, we will abstain from: 1.Social media 2.Porn and masturbation 3.Cigarettes, Alcohol, and Drugs 4.Watching TV, movies, and playing video games 5.Reading clickbait pop-culture articles and watching the news. The problem with all these activities is that they give you a quick dopamine hit without you having to expend any effort to earn that pleasure.  They take away much of your time and give you nothing of value in return.  They destroy your attention span and they make your brain weaker.

A lot of the things that we think we want are planted into our heads by third parties – usually marketers and society.  Take a paper and write down the things you want out of yourself over the next 10 years. These could be anything, from having a wife and children to owning a sports car, to running a business empire, to have a high paid job, to living with the Shaolin monks, to getting revenge on someone who has wronged you – all of them, and it better be a long, well thought out list for the next 10 years.  Now, think about each of these goals with an open mind and ask yourself : • Do I want this or do other people want this of me? • Did I want this or did some TV marketer tell me that I should want it? • Do I want to own this, or do I just want to experience it? Will owning this make me happy or will I be just as satisfied by just experiencing it? You will find that many of your wants are not your own. You’ll also find that there are many things you don’t really want long te...

Before we start doing anything else, we first need to know who we are ? You may feel that you already know who you are, but chances are, you’re wrong. A lot of your understanding of “you” is diluted to conform to societal norms and persuasive mainstream thought. When you go about your life, you meet people who praise various aspects of your personality. You feel good when you get that praise, and your brain is hardwired to chase that feeling. You try to be more of what people praise in you and try to do away with parts of you that other people don't like. You do this subconsciously, with no filtering of whether people are praising/criticizing you because they want you to better, or because they (consciously or subconsciously) want you to be like them.  While this makes you socially “adjusted”, it also chips away a large part of 'you'. Notice how people tend to become like whomever they spend time with). The most “well adjusted” people are either faking it or are the most ge...

We work best when we are creating something or working towards a goal. We lay to waste when we are idle and purposeless.While you can follow this Blog and get a lot out of it even if you don't have a specific mission in mind, your results will be much better if you have a mission you want to achieve.  What your mission is for these 90 days depends on you and your vision. If you have trouble assigning a goal for yourself, please select any from the  examples listed below : • Lose X kg of weight – this would involve doing extra exercise and recording your weight every morning. • Set up a side-business – The easiest side businesses are the ones you can run over the internet, of which, the easiest one is setting up niche affiliate marketing websites that generate you some passive income. • Cover X% of syllabus and aim for X GPA (for students) • Learn to code – learning to code is an essential skill in the modern day, and it makes an excellent mission for those who plan to become a...