Thursday, August 23, 2018

Micro-habits can save the world?

So self improvement seems pretty selfish in a dystopian world, lately. This bothers me, of course. My optimistic nature wants to believe that things can always be made better, and it won't hurt to try.

But it does hurt to fail, sometimes, and also not to try. So I am going to try, again. And again and again. I'm doing this daily micro habit thing (since February!) that's turning out pretty well. For example, who knew 1 push up a day could make a tank top do-able at my age?

My micro habits are built on giant systems, like the Passion Planner, the previously mentioned morning pages, and the extensive self-help reading I have done. I would even argue that it's partially based on the quality improvement programs.

In February, I decided the minimum amount of exercise I could do in a day was a forward fold and one push-up. So I made a checklist in the back of my Passion Planner on the graph paper and checked it off each day of the month. It was so easy, in March I added 2 more tiny habits, all the way up to today, in August.

I did have one little problem. At first, I was checking the boxes in the graph paper. But in March, when I wanted to keep going with the same habits carried over, I started using the X instead, only with the right slanting cross first, (then the left slanting cross, and the straight-up and down, then the straight right to left). In the end, I'll have an asterisk essentially, and then I will graduate that habit from my checklist (although maybe not from my life!).

Most successful habit so far has ironically been that push-up. My arms are not gym-jacked, by any means, but I'm not ashamed. The least successful is to dance every day (too vaguely defined, maybe?). I try to do two habits a month, one physical and one mental. August is mountain climbers (the exercise) and tracking my expenditures.

But yeah, still not addressing human trafficking or white supremacy or anything important. This is still just me. Can I build up to addressing these giant problems? I don't think so. I, personally, will not solve world hunger. Why is that hard for me to accept? 

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