What if I would constantly repeat the things that contribute to my well-being?

It started over a year ago. Shortly before I was going to write 8 exams in 2 weeks. I wanted to find a way to keep my sanity. So I decided to repeatedly do what I know makes me happy, but don't always have the discipline for.

I was going to do the following things:

1. Get some excercise

2. Meditate every day




3. Daily yoga







4. Put up at least 1 Loesje poster every day.

Chapter 1

Looking back at my notes from the time, all of this started to have an effect very quickly:

I had never done much poster sticking, but before the end of the first week, I was already in conquer the city mode.

On week 2, the daily meditation and yoga had already made me happier and mentally stronger, and by the third week, due to the daily repetition, they had already gotten as habitual as brushing my teeth.

As for the excercise, it wasn't particularly new to excercise a lot. What had changed was explicitly stating to do some form of excercise at least 3 times a week. This matters because excercise is absolutely vital to my happiness and health. And skipping one week, leads to skipping two weeks, leads to being lazy, stiff and miserable.

In summary, this kicked ass.

Within a very short time, I was happier, healthier and mentally stronger, and also got a regular dosis of adventure and purpose from conquering the city with posters.




Also, I no longer let busy weeks change my habits. I continued doing all of this, even as I was studying for all those exams I mentioned earlier. Having to sit behind my desk for three weeks had never affected me this little. And my new habits happily continued.



Two of the highlights of these months had to do with the poster sticking.

(I lost my camera during this task, which is how I lost most of my photos of the Loesje posters I had stuck.)

1. I wanted to stick in Berlin, but lived in neighbouring Potsdam at the time. So I went sticking by bike from Potsdam to Berlin. I biked about 50 kilometers (31 miles) and stuck about 50 posters that day. However, much more importantly, as I was biking in Berlin, I got the sudden realisation that visiting Berlin just wasn't the same as living there. Within seconds I had made the decision which I had been pondering about for weeks. I moved back to Berlin and haven't regretted it since.

2. At some point I was at a demonstration against the pope.

(Going to demonstrations is kind of a Sunday hobby for Berliners.)



By that time I had stuck about 200 Loesje posters because of my crazy habit, and it hadn't gone unnoticed.

One of the people that saw our signs came up to me and said: "I really like them, I've seen your posters all over Potsdam."

That sooo made my day :D

Intermezzo

At some point I temporarily stopped however. Losing my camera shortly followed by going through a rough patch, caused me to lose these habits. I didn't to anything sf0 related until I bought a new camera about half a year later.

Chapter 2

But now I'm back :)

And so is doing this task.

The thing is that your mind can trick you into stupid things: you've already done parkour a million times, it's boring, meditation is quite pointless, etc.

But that is absolute bullshit.

Right now there's nothing more fun to me than walking around and doing parkour, being outside for many hours. And right now there's nothing better for my peace of mind than meditation. The thing is that you have to start feeling this (again), instead of just knowing it (and not doing anything).

I have slightly changed what I'm doing though.

Instead of meditating every day, I now meditate at least once a week. This is actually an improvement. Instead of doing seven short meditations, I now do one or two longer ones. Mostly when I anyway have to sit in the train on the way to university. These longer ones have proven to be more effective.

My ongoing challenge is that if I'm happy I might fool myself into not needing it, and if I'm not happy I might fool myself into thinking it doesn't work. This can be a bit tricky.

As for yoga, I still do a lot of it, once a week being the minimum, but often more. Especially if I have to work behind my desk a lot. Maybe I want to do it every day again at some point. Any amount of yoga feels great.

I still do a lot for Loesje, but I no longer keep track of it. This task helped me get into sticking, but after putting up at least one poster a day for quite a long while it sort of took the adventure out of it, which was kind of the original point. In other words, I now go sticking less often, in order to keep this more exciting. Instead, there are lots of other ways to introduce some adventure and purpose into my life, sf0 being one of them.

Doing sports at least 3 times a week has simply become essential to me. And keeping this going has become about a 100% easier, now that I'm teaching one of my friends parkour. I otherwise started hiking and biking a lot more again. And I have a task completion in mind that would require me to improve my running skills, so I might start jogging again.

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Doing this task has helped me improve my quality of life. It's interesting to see how we constantly fool ourselves to avoid the things we know would contribute to our well-being by making dumb excuses. But the thing with habits is, that just like brushing teeth, all habits are learnable.