Back to School

About a year ago, when I decided to quit my comfortable, well paying corporate job to look for my passion, I wasn’t sure what exactly I was going to find. I had some notions, but things were uncertain. A part of me thought I was insane. But there was another, bigger part that was sure I could not spend my life doing what I was doing, and needed to look for something different. It helped that I was moving to a new country, and I started this journey looking forward to new beginnings.

Not surprisingly, the last one year has been one of the most phenomenal ones in my life. I have had so much fun doing things that I always wanted to do - learning new things, exploring new places, getting to know myself better, and reading...oh, just reading for days at length. But it has not all been a piece of cake as well. There have been times when I have been plagued with self-doubt and fear. On some days, I have been tempted to take up a job just like the one I had quit. And there have been instances when I have wondered if risking my established career for a vague dream was worth it, or if that small part of me that had called me mad was right, after all.

However, I was fortunate enough to have a few things that kept me going. My husband’s unwavering support, for example; a community of people who believed in my dream, because they were at various stages of living their own crazy dreams, and knew it was possible for me to live mine. And more than anything else, my why - the reason I was doing this, the justification for risking it all. Like I had mentioned in this earlier post, almost all my life, I have sought peace. At the time, I was not sure how this would translate into a career option for me, but the idea had been seeded. Over the next few months, things became clearer, and I realized that after having learnt how to have more peace and happiness in my own life, I wanted to help others do the same. This finding led me to positive psychology, which is the science of human flourishing. As I read more about the field, I knew that this was the best place for me to be, because it aligned beautifully with who I was and what I wanted to do.

As the next step, I wanted to learn as much as I could about positive psychology. And that’s why, I am absolutely thrilled to share that I am now a student of the Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) program at University of Pennsylvania. I will be spending the next year studying positive psychology, and though I am not sure about what exactly will I do with what I learn in the course, I am fairly confident that this will also become clear in the next few months.

For me, it has always been easy to look back on life and see the big picture of why things happened a certain way and what I learnt from them. And when I look back on the last one year, one lesson that stands out is that sometimes, it is important to remember just why you decided to do anything in the first place, and then stand by it. In retrospect, you will find that it all makes sense.

Building a Habit

As mentioned in my previous post, one of the key things that I wanted to do in 2015, was to build a daily writing habit. But I didn’t do too well due to reasons already mentioned in the last post. The good news is that I have written pretty regularly in the last two weeks, using what I learnt from a wonderful book - The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. It shares insights about how and why habits form, how they can be changed, and the science behind it. 

The biggest lesson that the book taught me was that “willpower is a finite resource.” As long as I relied only on my willpower to push myself into writing everyday, I was going to exhaust this resource and give up sooner or later. What I needed was to make writing a part of my routine, a habit - so that I did not have to think about or decide if and when to write. I needed it to become as automatic as brushing my teeth in the morning.

Here’s how it works, as per the book: all habits follow a simple loop (called the "habit loop,) which is made up of three components: first, there is a cue (e.g. my leaving the bed in the morning with an unpleasant taste in my mouth); then, there is a behaviour (my heading to the bathroom and brushing my teeth); and finally, there is a reward (the feeling of clean teeth and a fresh mouth.) The days when the act of brushing my teeth gets delayed, I feel unhappy because I crave that fresh feeling. This craving is what drives my habit loop of brushing every morning. I never ever have to think about whether I should brush today or not - it just happens on its own. It’s a habit.

So, for building a writing habit also, I needed these three components. Here’s what I have been doing for the past couple of weeks:

1. The Cue: Every morning, when my husband leaves for work, I see him off and then head to my desk. I love this time, because I feel a strong sense of purpose and am ready to get to work - which can range from taking courses to writing something to reading. This is a routine - something I do almost every weekday. And it occurred to me that this was a good cue - as soon as I close the door after my husband leaves for work, I can write with full concentration.

2. The Behaviour: Yes, writing, of course. But, there are too many distractions that are ready to pounce on me the moment I switch on the laptop. Facebook updates, mails, bill payment reminders, whatsapp messages...there is a lot that needs to be paid attention to. But, before I do any of this, I want to write. The solution? I put my phone on silent for half-an-hour, close all windows on the laptop, and open just one document where I can type. And then, I focus on writing.

3. The Reward: The immense satisfaction I get from doing this. The craving for this satisfaction drives this habit loop.

A couple of other things need to be mentioned here. First of all, I have brought my daily target down to 200-300 words a day (as opposed to 1000 words a day that I set at the beginning of the year.) This is much more realistic, and I have since learnt that it is important to start small when trying to build a new habit. Once I able to meet this goal for a couple of months, I will look at increasing it. Secondly, my cue is something that happens on weekdays only. So, as of now, I am targeting writing five days a week. 200-300 words every weekday - simple.

It has worked for a couple of weeks already, and I hope to keep it up.