Daily habits

Continuing on yesterday’s topic of doing average stuff, but consistently, having it add up to something spectacular, I give you some wisdom from Seth Godin, from a blog post he published in December 2014 (published here):

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In the past six months, since August 18th 2014, I’ve discovered I’m quite good at this, building daily habits, and just doing it. Because once I committed myself to it (and also voiced it publicly, something that helps me feel accountable!), I have been doing my daily Seven minutes of morning exercise and a Headspace-meditation as well as my daily dose of German in DuoLingo. In September sometime I started doing another daily meditation as well. Also, for the past 39 days I’ve done my minimum of 15 minute #cleanse4expansion, without exception. Just doing it.

Oh, and I have an even longer track record, as it’s just over two years ago that I started to blog daily. There have been a few exceptions there, and I’m cool with that. But I don’t make a habit of exceptions, because then my daily habit is no longer what Seth so wisely points to: something I just do, without having to decide on a daily basis to do them. Rather I can just play around with how to do it, on each given day.

And you know what? I don’t find this taxing. It’s not stressful. And it’s not even something I feel I HAVE to do. I just do them. It’s like brushing my teeth. I don’t fight myself on a daily basis trying to convincing myself to brush my teeth, morning and evening. I just do it. Because I’ve learnt that habit, and I find that it serves me.

The same is true with blogging, Seven and the meditations. In the beginning there was some effort to it. And sure enough, sometimes I’d rather not. But…. it’s like brushing my teeth, I just do it, regardless if I really want to or not. Because I find that it serves me.

The moment it stops serving me (it being any daily habit of mine) – there’s no reason for me to continue. So the trick, for me, is to revisit my Why’s once in a while. I’ll give it a go right now:

Why do I blog daily?
Because it’s self coaching for me, and a great way to reflect. And sometimes it proves helpful to other people as well.

Why do I do a daily Seven minute of exercise?
Because I feel better, I get stronger, more fit, and my back (and the rest of my body) really benefits from the daily movements!

Why do I do two meditations daily?
Well, I started with Headspace because my brother got me into it. Not the reason I’m still doing it though! My reason why has evolved, and now centers around me really enjoying the quiet time with myself and mind, and also I find that it helps me be more centered during the non-meditating times of my day, which of course makes up most of my day. The second meditation is a practice that helps me connect on a daily basis to love and acceptance, and that is also something which greatly impacts my entire day.

What daily habits do you have, and what’s your reason for doing them??

Duolingo

While on vacation in the UK, my brother who lives there, told us about the app/website Duolingo, which he’s using to refresh his French. Me and my daughter Alma downloaded the app, and I got started on German, and Alma on Spanish. We were hooked.

Then we came home, and my son was so eager to download the app onto the kids IPad that we barely got the luggage inside the front door before he had the IPad in hand, demanding help.

He started off with Italian, and man, it’s amazing to see. He asked me if I’d help him, and while I told him the truth that his Italian surely was way better than mine after a day with the language course, he crawled up beside me in the sofa. And while I couldn’t actually help him in any way, I could provide some moral support and also get totally amazed.

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Then today he decided he wanted to learn German instead (after telling me and his father that he want’s to go to Germany for the fall break! Last year we did India, this year he want’s Germany.), so he switched language in the app and set off to gather points in the morning. I could hear the German phrases coming from the vicinity of the kitchen table, but then all of a sudden there was some Spanish as well… turns out my husband also got curious enough to download the app and start a Spanish course.

Have to say thanks to my brother for setting us all off on a wild dash for improved language-skills!

Being a glorious day, we all went to the deep sea swimming-place and were away all day, with my sons best friend tagging along as well. But when we got home, guess what happened? My son and his best friend curled up on the sofa, and immediately started to practice their German. AND their English, which is an added bonus!

We’re Swedish but the app works with English as the base language so here were these two 10-year old boys discussing German and English verbs, nouns, spelling, grammar, scoring points as they went along.

Absolutely fascinating to witness – talk about there being a lot of joy in learning! Or rather, there sure can be a lot of joy in learning. And that’s the way it should be, in my view. Do you agree or disagree with that?