Having done this chore 3 years (2018, 2017, 2016) in a row, let me do this for 2019 as well. Looking back, life does feel small and limited. The intellectual realization is one thing, however, experiencing that this body is mortal and things are just impermanent brings an entirely different perspective on how to lead life and live each and every moment to the fullest.
Let me jump into the statistics right away! (from coach.me)
Meditation (Vipassana)
This is the 3rd year in a row where I was able to maintain consistency like never before. Not a single day has been missed. Yes there were few days where I was extremely tired to sit for a conventional 2 hours, however, I still was conscious enough on those days to keep up with the practice. Having shifted to Spain and need to do a heavy amount of household chores besides running two companies, I am slightly proud that I was able to contribute 2 hours of my day everyday for almost 3 years in a row. I wish this is going to be a routine and that I can remove the goal. However, there are certain important notes I make like the Adhitaana postures I maintain while each sitting. Out of 365 days, I was able to at least be in Adhitaana 132 days. I would say this is a bit less given the intellectual understanding. Perhaps I would want to improve this number this year. And 6 Adhitaana sittings were at least 2 hours or more which is a feat. However, I am greedy to improve both the frequency and depth perhaps this year! I also took a ten day retreat to Dhamma Sacca (pictures below) in July which was a pure bliss!
Learn Spanish
Although there is a streak miss during the year which is because I had to go for a 10 day Vipassana retreat, I maintained this habit all year. I have B1-B2 level fluency in Spanish and I can communicate to native speakers relatively easily so that we can continue a conversation. I am trying to improve this habit further and achieve levels of fluency like a native. Hopefully, I will accomplish and push the boundaries further this year! Moving to spain and having a full time personal tutor (3–4 hours a week) helped me immensely in this goal. Not to mention two different applications — Duolingo and Memrise. And I read many books in Spanish mostly from Juan Fernandez.
To keep my streak going on in Duolingo, I had sought out help from my colleague Mr.Vino to do the checkins manually :) I know its kind of cheating, but who cares !
I also attended a lot of Language exchange meetings in Madrid which helped me accelerate my learning curve and talk to native Spanish speakers that speak different accents, pace, Country and from a variety of backgrounds ranging from Scientists, Lawyers, Receptionists, Military, Academics etc.,
Book Reading
This year I had a humble target for Reading Activity. Only 12 books this year. I was able to achieve this target comfortably by completing 13 books this year. I re-read some of the same books again. Also I focused my reading efforts from self-help mostly in the previous years to Language based, kind of to achieve two goals in one shot.
I know I kind of slacked on this for which I do not have any excuse whatsoever. The target this year for me is to do at least 300 checkins!
Learn German
Having seen how easy (or difficult) it is to learn a foreign language, I thought why not add another one to my arsenal. Yes, I have started to learn German although started this habit only towards the end of the year.
I use three applications to learn this language similar to Spanish 1) Duolingo 2) Busuu and 3) Memrise. It is a bit difficult because this is a bit different from Spanish where you see the words and you can pronounce it easily. Also, the grammar structure is a bit different, not to mention three articles (masculine der, feminine die and neutral das). However, there are millions of people speak this without any problems, so let me join them!
Busuu tells me that if I learn this language only 5 minutes a day I could complete Level B2 by 21 Feb, 2022 - in only in 2 years! And to make things interesting, I am learning German not through English, but through Spanish! Yeah, two birds in one stone :)
Yoga/Gym
This is an important objective for me the past year was to ensure that I was able to keep my physical fitness to my peak. In India, I use to have some sort of physical activity in terms of Badminton, however after April this was seriously lacking. Hence I had to force myself to do some sort of exercise either Yoga or hitting the gym or just running. To my surprise, I was able to push limits further and sow the seeds in 2019 to have the potential to tune the body to amazing physical limits.
2019 also is the year where I was able to start running after a long knee injury I had many years before. I was able to do my first 5k, 6k and 10k! Yes 10k might seem small to you, but for me who has never run a 3k before in my life, to complete this was a feat. I want to seriously aim for a half marathon this year, lets see
I was running, weightlifting doing 100 pushups thanks to Antonio for being such an inspiration and the training guide in Gym. I was able to push my limits whenever I exercised with him. I am truly lucky to train with someone who completed Iron Man Tri-athlete!
Also, I did intermittently Hatha Yoga whenever I had the time. I’d have to say the flexibility of my body has increased a lot! Will keep doing both the Gym activities and Yoga this year as well.
Wake up Early
This has been my nightmare for many years all through my life and I have been battling this disease without much success. However, I wanted to give this a genuine shot in 2019 and I was able to achieve moderate success. The first thing in terms of Goal I had set was to define “early” to be anytime before 7 AM. I think I did a decent job, thanks to my daughter to whom I need to drop her off at school on time, I was able to hit this target a good 85 number of times this year!
Some of the mornings were as early as 4-5 AM. And my yearly average sleep time is around 7–7.30 hrs which is quite embarrassing as my ideal target is only 5 hours of sleep. This is an area that definitely needs improvement in 2020 and I hope I will be able to improve it in the coming days.
At least, I know what needs to be done here.
Wishing you all a fantastic 2020!
