My 2018 Year Review

This year felt like a hurricane sweeping through my life. I experienced more challenges than the last few years but I still had plenty of great adventures.

1. Going on a trekking adventure (8/10)
2. Taking care of a cat for a week (6/10)
3. Getting hammock therapy (6/10)
4. Experiencing Zen (9/10)
5. Experiencing Ecstatic Dancing (7/10)
6. Doing a Live Drawing Class (8/10)
7. Going to a Bodybuilding Show (8/10)
8. Trying Tantra Dance (6/10)
9. Breath workshop (8/10)
10. Going to a Karaoke (8/10)

Chasing fun, exciting experiences isn’t something that resonates with me in the way that it did a couple of years ago. Naturally, I’ll be fine with doing just 12 things in 2019.

Where did I travel to this year?

• 1 day in Seaford, UK
• 6 days in Berlin, Germany
• 3 days in Caernarfon, UK
• 8 days in Tetouan, Morocco
• 2 days in Bath, UK
• 80 days in Chiang Mai, Thailand

Total: 100 days

Big Discoveries for the Rest of My Life

Be Less Attached To The People In Your Life

“You care and think about the people in your life way too damn much. Naturally, you end up giving them more than they could ever give back. Or you end up giving your attention to the wrong people”.

Those were the resounding words echoing in my mind on one particular day during Vipassanna. It’s been humbling to realize that.

Communicate Via Text Less

This kind of ties in with the previous point. A text conversation with someone creates an inner monologue in my head of me having a conversation with a person that’s not there. In a sense, it almost feels like I’m talking to an illusion when prolonged i.e. let’s say a 10 mins WhatsApp conversation. The echo of that conversation ends up affecting my state of peace, and I no longer feel calm.

What’s the best course of action then?

Keep messages short, and sweet.

Go back and forth no more than a few times with someone. Calls or meetups are infinitely more meaningful and healthier.

Don’t Write Paper Journals Anymore

Although it does feel kind of poetically romantic to write in long hand daily, this habit hasn’t been serving me in the best way. There are a couple of reasons for this.

1. Unless I slow down, my handwriting is illegible, so much so that I struggle to read what I’ve written back to myself.

2. The speed at which I can write a considerable number of words is vastly greater when typing on the computer. By typing I’m also training myself to write better quality content for readers in the future. Effectively creating a double win.

No More Spotify/Movies/Pocket App/Documentaries/Daily Instagram

Object consciousness as Eckhart Tolle refers to it, is a state of being attached to the various phenomena in existence. Conversations, media, etc (essentially ‘input’).

With the intention of connecting more to the ‘formless consciousness’ or ‘space consciousness’ as he refers to it (fancy names for being present and in your body) I’ll be eliminating the above vices from my life.

At one point in 2018, I tried eliminating Spotify but it didn’t quite work out. I tried to go cold turkey on music and that was too extreme on my part. Now, I’m giving myself the license to listen to three different songs each month.

Highly Limited: YouTube, Podcasts, Songs, and Articles

I’ve set a permanent ban on YouTube for all days of the week. Meanwhile, the following sites has been blocked on the weekend: Gmail, Facebook, Reddit. I’ll be deleting Pocket so the number of articles I read is going to be greatly reduced.

Meanwhile, I’ve unsubscribed from nearly all my newsletter subscriptions. I’ve got my friends list on Facebook down to 100.

I love the simplicity that brings to my life.

• YouTube Videos to Watch in 2019: None (if you feel the need: 3x per month)
• Podcasts/Interviews to Listen to in 2019: None (if you feel the need: 1x per month)
• Songs to Listen to in 2019: 3x per month
• Articles to read in 2019: 10–30x per month (120–360x for the year) (I’ll be keeping a log of the articles I read).

The reason why I’m going so nuclear on deleting these vices, isn’t so I become ‘more productive’. It’s simply so that I have less stuff in my head. So that I can focus on being instead of learning. One of the reasons why I’ve developed neck issues, is because I’ve overburdened my nervous system with too information over the last 4 years.

I’ve read 200 books, watched more than 1000 videos, and likely read more than a thousand articles. This voracious consumption of mine started out with the innocent desire to learn more and become a more aware individual. In time though, it snowballed into a monster of its own making, leaving me feeling like I *need to consume* more to learn more, when really a bigger part of leading a good life comes back down to *unlearning* and being fine without *adding”.

I don’t regret the amount of time I spent burying myself in digital and literary consumption. It’s made me a better writer, reader, and thinker — I just could have done with a little bit of damage control. Thankfully now, I’m glad to say that I’ve got a lot better at the art of learning without overtaxing myself.

Small Discoveries

Walk As Often As You Can With Your Vivo Trainers

It’s funny how much more present I feel walking in them. I notice a remarkable increase in groundedness (I feel more connected to what’s beneath me and naturally more stable internally).

When You Walk, Tilt Your Feet At A 30–45 Degree Angle To Reduce The Pressure On Your Heels And Activate More Of Your Glutes

For some odd reason, I’d always presumed that you need to walk with your feet straight. But in fact, this has been contributing to my heel fat pad issues (funnily enough I realised this on the TENTH last day of my Vipassana retreat.

Use The Words ‘I’ And ‘My’ Less Often

Pay attention to how frequently people use these words in conversation. A heavy emphasis on these labels, in some respects, reflects the level of identification a person has with their ‘story’ and ‘ego’.

Breathe Through Your Body

Breathe through your belly, heels, knees, and feet and balls. Notice the knots in your neck, solar plexus, and belly that ensue as a result of any resistance/s to the present moment. It’s the backwards way to realign yourself with the nature of reality.

Care Less. About everything

Not in an apathetic or nihilistic way. But in a way that represents your trust in nature. Care less about your growth. Your journey. Your story. Your past. Your future. And the world. It’s in your nature to want the best for myself. But care, is in a sense, a low-level virtue.

It doesn’t solve anything on its own. In short, ‘care’ can often be a misnomer for giving too many fucks. Form is constantly changing. Why care about it so much? It’s transient. Do what feels natural without the care but with a sense of freedom and you’ll paradoxically be more likely to get what ‘you want’ anyway.

Take Weekends Off

Be normal in some respects. Don’t work 6–8 hours day on these days as you often did in 2018. Limit it to a max of 3, either in the morning or late at night. Make your weekend, for the most part (particularly on Sunday) a blank canvas.

Buy Less Stuff and Experiment Less

Overall thoughts: A lot of the things I did, and a lot of the tools I used in previous years, are going to be phased out. Over the last two years, the amount of items I would purchase items each month through Amazon and eBay has been mind-boggling.

Client Work

I noticed how much angst working gave me in 2018, because I’d previously decided at the start of the year I won’t be working for anyone. Paradoxically, by now being okay with working for a client this year, I might just end up not working for anyone.

Either way works.

Discipline, Self-Quantification, and Habit Management

Being able to quantify your performance across the different areas of your life sounds like a tough job. But after three years of iteration, I do feel like I have reached a place where it’s no longer something I need to work on refining much more.

Health

Towards the end of the year, I let go of being a vegetarian and started incorporating a bit more meat into my diet. It felt good. Moving to 2019, I’ll be eating more beef and lamb. Interestingly, I always feel like absolute crap after I eat chicken or turkey, and I’m sure Ben will tell me that’s nocebo ha!

Over the course of a couple of weeks after getting back on the meat train, I noticed my muscles looked better. I also realized vegan protein powder really is shit. I’ll be going back to whey isolate — I think one of the reasons why I didn’t feel as ‘strong’ this year is partly because of my reliance on this vegan protein crap. Whey beats vegan protein any day of the week.

Question-Based Review

1. What movie genre would best describe this year of my life?

- A movie about big narcissistic desires turned into ashes so that I could rediscover the simplicity and power of the present moment.

2. What two or three major themes kept recurring?

• Loss
• Experimentation
• Grinding
• Pressure

3. What are the experiences I’m most thrilled about?

Living in Thailand for 80 days

More than that though, I think what I’m most proud of achieving is realising that whatever I experience or achieve on the outside is in no way near close to the kind of internal shifts I can experience, however trite that may sound.

4. What could I have done better this year?

• Being less hard on myself.

Summary

This was a unique year, one where I burnt boats behind me, where I told myself, I must do this and that. Through that however, I came to realise what I really wanted to do with my life more clearly.