I was planning to post this earlier, but I decided to wait. With New Years behind us, the surge of what I call “New Year’s Hype” has quieted down. I refer to it as hype as there’s this undeniable energy we all get at the prospect of starting a new year and working towards a better life. But, at least for myself, I know that I can get carried away when experiencing this feeling. It’s why I only shared my goals for the decade, goals that I still feel capable of achieving. But for this year I broke it down into a fewer simpler tasks.
Doing Light Exercise Everyday
Something I discovered about myself recently is that exercise helps to recharge my body better than I expected. For the past couple weeks I tried exercising with dumbbells after work and the results surprised me. I found I was able to have the energy and focus to work on my projects. The evening slump I would always find myself in was no longer as difficult an issue for me. I didn’t do anything too difficult, just a few sets of curls. My goal for the year here would be to do light exercise every day, alternating between weight training and cardio. I’ll have to do more research to determine what will help rather than hurt my body, but I feel it will definitely help achieve my writing goals.
Eating Healthier
Emotional health being tied to gut health has been something I’ve heard repeatedly but never really focused on. Recently I’ve fallen into a bad habit of eating fast food way too much again. I’ve noticed, to the surprise of no one, that the days where I eat fast food I feel utterly terrible for the rest of the day. My motivation and self-esteem seem to break whenever this happens and it stops me from writing and drawing as much as I want to. I won’t stop 100% right away, but a “once in a while” indulgence to eventually never would be the best.
Getting 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night
The Mathew Walker interview by the Joe Rogan podcast is one of the best podcasts I try to listen to once a month to remind myself about the health benefits and consequences of sleep. It is amazing how impactful a good night’s sleep can be for both physical and mental health. If you haven’t seen it I highly recommend it as a must.
Carefully Monitoring Spending Habits
While saving is always a good idea, I find now I have a purpose in doing so that feels more tangible. Ever since I released the newest edition of my book, I started a marketing campaign for my book and noticed that I’m seeing consistent purchases of my book (yay!). The only issue with this, however, is that marketing on Amazon can get fairly expensive with how the keyword searching works. While I’m starting to see more consistent sales, I’m still seeing an overall loss when I examine the revenue. This is to be expected though as I’m still building up my profile as an author and hopefully someday it’ll become positive. However until then saving to allow my book to flourish is one of the best things I can do.
Improving Self-Confidence
While saving for marketing is one of the most helpful things I can do, what would definitely help more is learning to be more confident and proud of what I’ve done. What I’ve learned about marketing is that a lot of it does come down to confidence in what you have to offer. I can’t lie that this is incredibly daunting as I’m not one for the spotlight. I’ve never felt comfortable being the center of attention or putting myself out there. When I meet new people I try to be proud about being an author. Overall I’ve found people are overall positive when you talk about things you’re passionate about. The only real stumbling block is my own confidence in what I’ve done. This is what I hope to focus on the most this year and everything else helps to achieve this.
These are some of the insights I’ve gained over the last few weeks on how best to improve my life. I hope that in sharing this that anyone reading this might gain some ideas to help themselves as well. 🙂
– Raphael
Raph's Cozy Musings 