4 years after

I don’t know what happened but I stopped writing here.

It’s almost 4 years since my last post and many things have changed.

I have already left my previous job, moved in to a new house, my kid is already in school. Life got better overall.

I will have to back read all of my previous posts to know how my mindset has changed from 4 years ago to now. I’m still learning how to manage my finances better but I no longer have the tingbits mindset. I am working 2 jobs, my wife is also works now so overall we have more than what we need.

I am still far from being financially independent since losing one of my job could still mean trouble for us. Not necessarily life threatening trouble since we already saved enough for the rainy days but still not enough to set us for life.

Remembering this site makes me realize there’s still much I need to work on to be financially independent and now is the perfect time to reevaluate my self and plan for the coming days.

Hello again.

EoD December 14, 2016

It’s another day and it’s definitely better than yesterday.

Right after breakfast I bought a new bike. I bought this new bike due to a sad incident which happened last month. My almost a year old bike was stolen. I was careless thinking that no one would take interest to that rusty old bike.

Boy how wrong was I.

I was supposed to give that bike to my younger brother as a gift for Christmas. Unfortunately it became a gift to someone else. Hopefully it would serve him good this holiday season.

I bought the cheapest bike available for my size and saved a few bucks. I rode it with my son in tow and we got into the city fine. However I decided to ride a taxi since it won’t be safe riding the main traffic with my son.

It was a fine day when we got home. We had our lunch and I was happy feeding my kid seeing how his appetite is back.

After we cleaned up we just relaxed planning to have another bike ride in the afternoon. Meanwhile he was back playing with his toys.

It felt good so I decided to write my catch up EoD for yesterday. I felt good having accomplished a planned task regardless if I was late into it.

It was gloomy and I looked like it’s going to rain so I decided not to push through with biking. Instead I decided to download and watch a movie. The internet was running slow so I got restless not knowing what to do in the meantime. I tried to avoid going on Facebook since I know I might get stuck browsing feeds without really doing anything productive.

With this I thought hard on what could be the most productive activity Ican do in the meantime. I decided to meditate. I didn’t set up a timer or set up any definitr structure on how I was gonna do the meditation. I just lied down, closed my eyes and started noticing my thoughts.

For me meditation is about being aware. Awareness of one external and internal world is the main definition of meditation for me. So that’s what I did.

Closing my eyes I noticed my other senses. My ears listened to the noise inside my room, inside the house and out on the street. I also noticed my breathing, steady but not deep. I also felt my skin. I feel cold everytime the air from the fan blows to my side.

I noticed a lot of things outside and much more inside my head. Different thoughts everytime I focus my attention. Some of it are about my day, what happened yesterday and what will happen tonight at work. I let the thoughts run loose. I only shifted my focus once a certain thought started to take over my awareness. I focused on staying aware and let my thoughts stay as what they are, thoughts, my thoughts to be exact. I have power over them. I am in control.

It felt really good.

Like they say meditation needs practice and I think I will keep doing it. It reminds me that I definitely can change my thoughts which usually are negative to something positive. I can even affect how I feel. I can feel calmer by being aware of my anger or anxiety. I can practice focusing on something for a longer period of time. I can do a lot of things.

Again it felt good.

I finished my meditation and opened my eyes and saw that the movie is ready and I am more than ready to watch it.

The movie finished and I prepared for dinner. I ate together with my son and was delighted seeing he is eating well. His appetite is back and his colds is almost gone now.

Overall it was a good day and it felt good. Hope to have better and better days to come.

EoD December 13, 2016

Sad day.

No, I’m not talking anything tragic. I am talking about my self and my lack of determination to get things done.

I screw up big time this day.

I ended up not accomplishing most of the task I planned to do.

I walk up early and fix breakfast for the family. All is good and well as I relax drinking my first coffee for the day.

Then I got a text from the online shop that my package will be delivered soon. I ordered an Android Tv Box to avoid upgrading to a more expensive Smart Tv. That got me excited and started browsing for things to do to maximize that little device. Few minutes of searching here and there and 30 minutes have gone by without me moving an inch from my seat. Coffee on the mug has been emptied and the family is starting to rise.

I put the phone down and we had our breakfast. My wife got ready for work and my son started on his cartoons.

Pretty much the usual start of the day. My wife left for work and reminded me to take care of our son.

So I was left with my three year old. He was busy with playing and watching tv so I slack and got lost on social media, got lost on Facebook.

And that’s all I did the entire day.

I didn’t prepare for lunch since there were left over from breakfast. I just Facebook, Facebook, Facebook.

The Tv Box was delivered after lunch and I tinkered with it. That occupied my afternoon. I planned to play with my kid but forgot about it. I got lost exploring my new toy. Totally unproductive. Not to mention totally not a cool dad.

The evening came and I prepared for dinner. We ate. And my son went to bed early.

I planned to write this EoD report but did not. The reason? I don’t know. It could be that I didn’t have anything good to write. But that’s beside the point.

This activity of writing things down is not to ensure that I have meaningful things done on that day. It’s main purpose is to know, to be aware of what have I been doing for the entire day. It’s a means to have some perspective of my day to day life so that I may improve it as the day goes.

Looking back, I can admit that the day is not the best and it is not productive. Bit knowing is enough for me to have better plan for the days to come.

I won’t write much since not much really happened. What I will do instead is to be thankful for the day I was given and the knowledge that I can still make it better.

EoD December 12, 2016

I will start with a disclaimer, this is new stuff to me so forgive me if this won’t look good or structured in any way.

I started the day, meaning work day, sleepily as I only had a little more than two hours of sleep. Add to that the perfect bed weather and you’ll be sure to feel that the bed is trying to pull you back to sleep.

On the positive side, I am still disciplined enough to be at work on time. Though I got out of the house half awake and walking all zombie like, I made it to work on time, like always. This is something I am very proud of my self. Thanks to being the eldest son and mom’s favorite I always get to wake up early and it has become a habit.

I came to work with half eyes open but that did not prevent me from getting swept away by the the mini crisis we have at work. For those who doesn’t know, I currently am working as a Team Manager in one of the biggest BPO company here in the Philippines. Today we receive more calls than what was forecasted. Since midnight(yep I work at night), we were flooded by more calls than what we can handle forcing us to implement a major deviation from our usual process of sales and technical support. For the entire night we implemented sales mode all throughout and transfer all technical troubleshooting to our other site in India.

I guess last night showed how new I am in my role as a manager. The whole nine hour shift I accomplished only one task as I was bouncing here and there trying to “help our people” survive the flood of calls. Looking back I can honestly say that I panicked and instead of being productive by doing my task I ended up slacking as I try to look busy while accomplishing too little productivity.

The usual stuff happened all throughout the shift like answering to urgent emails, talking to bosses, talking to the team, taking supervisor/manager’s call, the usual stuff. However, I missed doing my daily coaching which is a big task that I have to do daily. Guess I have to catch up on coaching on y next shift.

The shift ended and I went out to send money to my brother which he needed for the down payment for a motorcycle. After that I went to the mall to look for some food, initially I looked for a burger but changed my mind and settled for some donuts. I constantly find my self graving for food since I started my facebook diet. Looks like my attention is diverted to food in the absence of social media.

After satisfying my cravings I went home riding a Jeepney and I called home to check with my mom who is in the province. She’s fine and said my brother will visit and spend the Christmas with me.

When I got home I was sleepy from work and feeling tired but still haven’t gotten over the mess of the working day. To relax I had a bottle of beer, while skyping with my wife. Had a brief talk with my son and went a head to sleep.

I woke up early afternoon and I had the feeling that I need to recover from my mess and decided I will write about it, that’s when I noticed that I haven’t written anything in few months adding to the feeling of failure I had earlier.

Writing has always been therapeutic for me and that’s exactly what I needed to be up back in working order again. Like I said in the previous posts I will make this a habit and will be writing daily from here onwards.

This is my day one End of Day log, I’m out!

December Posting

As the title indicated, this post is about my action plan for publishing a post this December.

Goal: Write Daily this December

Action Plan:

Publish 2 posts daily
Posting will be done at the end of the day
Fist post will be like a day journal describing how the day went
Second post will be about the next day
Include in the posts actions done or failed to do
Include in the posts how these action or inaction will affect the big picture
Publish another post per week talking about the achievements and realization for the week
Start Date: Dec. 13, 2016
End Date: January 31, 2016

As you may have noticed start and end date goes beyond December and goes in to the end of January. This is intentional since I am forming a habit about writing and as I have experienced in the past, it takes at least a month to stick in to a new habit. With this I’ll be posting my first end of day post later so watch out for it.

December

I’ve completely forgotten about this side of the internet. I’ve come to realize that I have neglected some of then commitments that I’ve posted here. This is the usual pattern I have in the past regarding my goals:

Gets excited about something
Set Goals
Strive to achieve goals
Stumbles into some challenges
Procrastinate
Procrastinate
Procrastinate
Procrastinate
Forget about it

I think you can see what’s the pattern there. Procrastination is the greatest hurdle stops me from achieving my goals. But that’s not really true. Procrastination is a symptom and not the root cause of my problem. What really stops me from achieving anything is not written above. To be honest, it is fear that is stopping me from making the hard choices that I need to take that could bring me closer to my goals.

The operative word there is could.

While I’m the type of guy who doesn’t gamble, I’m gambling on not finding out what could have happen have I only worked harder to achieve my goal. But you see that is also a problem. Thinking too much about what could have been puts too much emphasis on the goal itself and not on the process of working hard in achieving the goal.

I think too much but doesn’t work as much.

Over analyzing anything won’t bring me closer to any of my goals. Wishful thinking won’t get me anywhere.

In theory, I know all of this. In reality, I’m not making much to make this happen.

The plan for December is to make things happen.

This is something I can do because December is a special month for me. It’s my birth month and it’s the end of the year which signals the coming of a new one. I always believe that December is a gateway going away from the old and moving forward into something new.

To do this I need a solid strategy on how to move forward from this persistent old me to a much better me as I move forward towards the New Year.

I decided to list few goals that I will achieve this year. This time the focus will not be on the goals itself but on the process of achieving those goals. Let me site an example to have a better understanding about this strategy:

Goal: Achieve 100% coaching compliance(work related)

To achieve this here is my action plan:

Audit 3 team members daily
Each team member will get 3 audits daily
Coaching will follow after each 3 audits
Track audit and coaching numbers for each team member
Start date: December 16,2016
End date: January 1, 2017
Send to self, End Of Day accomplishment report
Send to self, End of week report before rest day
Summary: 9 audits per day targeted at 3 team members each day daily

As you can see, the details is not much on the goals itself but more on the action plan. Once the goal is written down all effort will be focused on creating an achievable action plan. The strategy focuses more on doing the items listed in the action plan in hopes that as the effect of adhering to the plan the set goals will be met.

As a disclaimer, in following this strategy, I not think about achieving the goals set but rather think on sticking to the action plan.

There you have it. Looks like I have some goals to list, plans to make and a lot of working to do. I have high hopes I can have good results for this experiment I’m doing this December making me more excited for the New Year.

See my next post for my writing plan for December.

Down the Rabbit Hole

I’m too deep.

Way deeper than I had anticipated.

This month I’ve maxed out my two credit cards. This is on top of an existing loan that I took to manage my credit card debt. Now I’m paying for both. This means that I’m deep in debt. Again. Something that I vowed not to do.

It hurts thinking that this time last year I was still dept free. All it takes was one year and a series of unmanaged expenses. Unnecessary that is.

Now I have to plan how to get out of this mess I’ve made for myself.

It hurts to think that I had to take some money out of my investment account just to stop bleeding from these debts. This account is set aside for my retirement few decades from now.

This is yet another lesson learned the hard way.

I guess that has been what worked for me for a while now. This has to be last of these lesson. I have to learn without getting myself deep in a mess.

I feel bad but at the same time I’m humbled by this experience. I’m still far from financial freedom and I am now seeing some pitfalls that might delay my journey.

With this lesson in hand I will be more equipped in pushing through my journey to personal financial freedom.

Now it’s time to crawl my way out of this hole.

I will see you on the other side.

30 Days hence

It has been 30 days since I’ve posted this self challenge. It has been a great challenge and I’ve learned quite about a few things about myself.

First. I am good at challenging myself. I’ve done a couple of these in the past and was overall successful. This is no exemption.

Second, is related to why I said I’m successful overall. I had some cheat days. More on this below.

Third. Temptation is a daily struggle. The struggle is real. Every minute or rather every second in your day you find a “reason” to steer away from your goal.

Fourth. Doing challenges like these you need to commit through and through. This applies to all your goals in life.

Fifth. No one else is responsible for anything in my life. The good, the bad and anything in between is all on me.

The Challenge

First on the challenge is writing daily. I believe I did well in that challenge. Tracking back on the posts I’ve made over the month, I’d say I did pretty well. I did skip some and forgot to write on certain occasions and posted without writing anything in the other but I am still considering this a success. Looking back the posts I’ve made speaks of how I feel about writing. It scares me. I want to be good at it and I don’t want to fail resulting to procrastination. This is what happened with all my blogs in the past which died right after a couple of posts. The challenge provided me an excuse to keep on writing. I know that my posts are not that well written but its okay. Doing this challenge made me realize that I don’t have to be good to get started on something, instead I have to start on something to be good. Am I a good writer now? Far from it but I can proudly and honestly say that I am better that I was when I started the challenge. Its a start.

Next on the challenge is the daily exercise. I’m already doing good exercise by biking daily to and from work. However there is no other exercise other than that. That is why doing the exercise challenge is a bit of a struggle but I did it. There are off days where I don’t really want to get up and do the push up, crunches and squats. I did it anyway. I cheated twice. No excuse for that. Just like the writing challenge doing the challenge gave me an excuse to do something that I’ve been meaning to do in a long time. And I loved it. Pushing myself to move my body and go beyond what I can previously do is just pure fun. Sure my body is sore after a few exercise but I love the feeling of being strong and healthy. Sure I can do better but it is a start. I will try to find other ways to exercise, get strong, stay healthy and most of all have fun in the process. Biking will still be on the top list. I have plans on going out of town using my bike, some 100 kilometers back and forth will be a good starting point.

Lastly is Facebook access. This I’ve done quite good. I’ve opened my Facebook only twice within the month. Once to upload pictures during my sons birthday and second to check my girfriend’s order online. In each instances I took at most 15 minutes browsing on the latest post on my wall. Temptation is real, sorry. However it really feels good to be away from that world. I mean social media and Facebook has been really good in making us connect to people. It is a good thing using Facebook for what it is created for, meaning establishing or reestablishing social connection. But it is entirely not healthy relying on it for mindless entertainment, constant stream of noise and negativity as well as a means of unproductively killing time. I will still be using Facebook and this time I will be making use of its total potential. One important thing I’ve learned from this challenge is that I can live a normal, productive life even without social media. I had started life without it and I can certainly continue on living without it.

Additional Challenge

A day after I committed to do the 30 Days challenge, a muslim friend of mine asked me to join the Ramadan . That means no meal, food or water, after sunrise and before sunset. Knowing how important Ramadan is to our muslim brothers and sisters I had my apprehension but I agreed nonetheless. It was really hard all throughout and I had several moments when I just want to quit. I continued and felt good being able to control my urges. Being aware of the feeling of hunger or thirst and not be overcome by it felt really good. I ate early in the morning, before the sunrise and have my next meal right after sunset. I was doing good on it and never missed a day until my son’s birthday. I had in mind that I will stop right then and there and continue with my normal routine. However I choose to continue with the challenge for a couple of days but was not able to complete it anymore. I still consider it as a success because I have learned more about myself in the process. All through our day there will be temptation that will call on us. Sometimes we might not notice it and we just go with the flow of our emotion our urges and get carried away. That is something we need to take in mind. I’ve learned that being mindful of my actions and my habits I can choose to act on things and decide if its worth doing or not. That means in everything in my life from writing, exercise, proper use of social media or even being mindful of your habits I have the ultimate control.

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All in all this 30 Days has been a success. I has been the most productive month that I ever had and I am happy with the results. I will continue to work on being better at myself and I hope you too will do the same.

Slipping through the cracks

You come up with something you really like the moment and go on planning to achieve that. With burning passion you put all your energy into action to get what you want. Day in day out this goes on without fail. At the start your passion seems to fire up with unlimited radiance that you thought you can do this forever. You start to believe that you have what it takes to achieve your dream. Day in and day out you do this. Rinse. Repeat. Then along the way you notice you are doing less and less. Slowly you slip through the cracks. The passion is no longer there. The energy is no longer there. Doing any act in that direction is just so hard. Finally you stop.

Sounds familiar?

It sure is to me.

I’ve been in that same spot multiple times. I come up with something that can potentially change my life for the better, work on it, push through it, drag myself to get pass it, then I lost all the energy to go any further. It happened in my many attempts in blogging. It happened in my many attempts on software programming. I tend to think that I am no good in finishing what I’ve started. That has been the story I kept on repeating to myself. I believed it for a long time. Until now.

In my last post I talked about the stories we make in our lives. And that’s just it, stories. My belief system growing up is that I know I can do something but I may fail in the long run. I believed that and so it happened. I kept on telling that story in my head that I take it as a fact without examining the facts about it. I start to defy that story from time to time and put all my energy in proving myself wrong. Thinking that if I can just complete a project or write a compelling blog I can change my belief system and trust myself better. That was all good but it proved only one thing. The stories I’ve told myself is with me and it will be close to impossible to change.

I’ve felt the same about myself just recently. After almost a month of religiously pounding on the keyboard and being true to the 30 days challenge I’ve set for myself, I started to slip. A cheat day here and there. Procrastination started to knock on my door again. I was on my way down the exit door once more. I was ready to quit.

I did not quit.

I wont quit.

I am changing the stories in my head. I am a writer and I write my own stories. I am the author of my life. Things has to change. Change has come. I commit myself to this.

Sometime I just need to remind myself on why I’m doing all of this. I want the good life and it doesn’t come cheap. I’m not just talking about money. It’s also about the effort that I need to put on the things that I want to be part of my life. I wanted to write so I will keep on writing. No matter how hard it gets, I will continue writing. Same goes for my other commitments.

These are all pacts I’ve signed with myself. No one will hold me accountable for these but me alone. I can just quit anytime and my life wouldn’t be any different. But that is just an old story I kept on telling myself. Keeping my commitments on the things that matter will have an impact on my life. I have to write that story down, repeat it countless times until it’s permanently etched in my brain that it will become my new belief. I can change my life for the better. I have the control. You have control on your life as well. If your brain kept on screaming that you can’t, asked a friend to slap you hard on the face because that is an old story, an outdated one. This time you need to make a new story. One that will push you through times like this.

Believe in yourself.

Better yet, create a new story. I am creating one now for myself. You should do too. Know that it will not happen overnight but trust that it will eventually happen. Just show up. Meaning right your story over and over and over again. Until it has become your default story. Don’t stop until your brain accepts it. Remember to select the best story for yourself.

My story goes like this:

I am incomplete. A work in progress. I know everyone else is the same. I believe that I can do what others can do. I know I have what it takes to be the best version of myself. I can be better. I have total control over my life. I may fail sometimes but that’s fine because it’s not the end of the world. I can pick up myself and carry with me the lessons from that failure. I will be equipped and ready for the next fight. I have done this before and can do this again. I can do things and succeed. I can have the good life. I am worthy.

That last part is the hardest and is the most important for me. I am worthy.

How about you? What is your story?