Small habits and my journey to self-improvement

What sparked this topic for me

Sometimes I look in the mirror and think, this is not the optimal me. I want to be better. I want to be more productive, more creative, more healthy, more happy. I want to be the best version of myself. But how do I get there? I have a lot of ideas, but I don't know where to start. I don't know how to get there. I don't know how to get better. I don't know how to improve myself.

I've read books like "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" and "Atomic Habits". I've listened to the Asian Efficiency podcast. But one thing was missing. The key ingredient. The missing piece of the puzzle. The thing that would make it all click.

My operation and gaining weight

I used to sport often. I did survival runs, went swimming on a regular basis and went to the archery range, but I stopped. The main reason for stopping was pain. Doing the sports I liked caused me pain in my wrists. The combination of near to no exercise, a desk job, a lot of stress and a love for food caused me to gain more weight than I wanted.

Attempting to find out why my wrists were hurting, I went to a physiotherapist. They told me that my wrists were hurting because of an injury to my Triangular FibroCartilaginous Complex. Hold on... my what? I had never heard of this before. I had to google it. It turns out that this is a ligament in your wrist that connects your hand to your lower arm. I had to wear a brace and give it rest. This helped for a while, but as soon as I started exercising again, the pain came back.

I attempted to get my wrist looked at via our general practitioner, but got referred to the hospital. Getting an appointment at the hospital took forever. Then my dad told me that I could go to a private firm with a referral from the general practitioner, and that it would be covered by my insurance. I did that, and got an appointment within a week. Fifteen minutes in, they took an X-ray of my wrist and explained how my ulna was a bit too long. This caused heavy pressure on my cartilage. Which slowly caused the cartilage to wear down. I got an MRI scan and this was confirmed. I was told that I would need surgery to fix this.

Soooo... I had surgery. During the recovery period, Finnegan was born. The recovery period was a lot longer than everyone expected. My thumb couldn't stretch. For a few months I could not use my thumb. For work it wasn't a big issue, I use my left thumb for spacebar. But try changing a diaper with only your left hand.

Then one day, my thumb slowly started moving. Within a few weeks it got back to near full functionality. Anddd thennnn... COVID-19 happened. The world in lock-down. No sports. No archery. No swimming. No survival runs. No nothing.

Especially "no nothing". Work exploded. Working 60+ hours a week while taking care of a newborn is not easy. More about this in a previous blog post.

The key ingredient

Time to get back to the key ingredient. The missing piece of the puzzle. The thing that would make it all click. The missing thing was motivation. I didn't have any. I didn't have any motivation to improve myself. How do you get motivated? I don't know. For me, it was just starting. Start doing it.

I changed my diet, started exercising and started meditating. Just started doing it. I lost about 20kg in three or four months. I felt a lot better and I was a lot more productive.

Then I got COVID-19

When we were on vacation in Dublin, Ireland. I caught COVID-19. I had a fever, a cough, a sore throat and some other details I'd rather not share online. This caused my stamina to drop. With my stamina dropping, as did my motivation. Weight gain started again. I didn't gain back the full 20kg, but I'm still not where I want to be.

Small habits

So I've read about small habits. I've read about how you can change your life by doing small things every day. A few weeks ago I found the motivation to start doing small habits. t I installed a habit tracker app on my phone and just filled it up with what my ideal week look like if I had the iron-hard self-discipline of a professional athlete. Then I started doing it. I started doing the small habits. Every day I attempt to do everything on my habit tracker. Some days I do everything. Some days I only do a few. But I keep trying. I keep doing it. I keep improving. Everyone has a different ideal week. Everyone has different habits. Everyone has different goals. But everyone can improve. Everyone can get better. Everyone can be the best version of themselves.

If you improve yourself by 1% every day, you will be 37 times better in a year.

Write that down.

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