One person in my life who seems to be good at everything is Steve Pavlina. 😀 Once he commits to something, he succeeds. If he wants to learn something, he will look at it from every angle and learn it well. He approaches new things with curiosity. I used to approach new things with curiosity, but nowadays, I get impatient. I want to see results fast. So instead of enjoying the process, I’m too focused on the end.
Three daily tasks that I do automatically are making breakfast, combing my hair, and unlocking my phone. Making breakfast is easy because it’s just cereal. I get a bowl and spoon, retrieve and open the cereal box, pour the cereal into the bowl, put the box away, open the fridge, pull out the rice milk and nutrition shake, pour the rice milk into the cereal, put the rice milk away, and then I can eat my cereal and drink my nutrition shake. I know cereal isn’t the healthiest option, but I purposely chose it because it doesn’t require a lot of effort to make. I guess I could swap for fruit instead, or even make a fruit smoothie. But, preparing a bowl of cereal each morning is automatic for me. Once in a while if my mother made something like masala dosa or puttu, I might have that. But, usually it’s cereal.
I comb my hair every day after changing my clothes. I start with my right side, beginning with my ends. Then, I bring the comb up closer each time to my roots until I can pass through my hair without it getting stuck. I go through each section of my hair from my right side to the back of my head to my left side. When I finish, I take the hair that came out from my comb and throw it in the trash. Then, I comb back my hair where I want to part it, usually on my left side, and then I use the tip of the comb to make a line and comb my hair in place. It doesn’t take more than five minutes. I usually leave my hair down and apply oil to it the day after I wash it. I might style it differently if I am going out someplace. That might take a little longer. But most days, I just leave my hair down because it’s easy, it looks okay, and it’s good for your hair to leave it down as opposed to tightening it with a hairband, which leads to thinning and hair loss.
Unlocking my phone is simple. Click the home button to have the screen light up. Then, swipe up. It will ask for a pattern to unlock the phone. I use my finger to make the pattern, and voila, the phone unlocks.
Okay, so now I have to choose something that I’ve been afraid to do and break it down into steps like I did with the three daily automatic tasks. I wouldn’t say I’m afraid to do this, but I’ve been procrastinating on doing it, which is producing music. The first step would be to open the program Logic Pro X. The next step would be to choose to make either a new song from scratch, work on an old song I made (original or song cover), or start searching YouTube for possible song covers. The next step would be to figure out the BPM and key of the song. Then, I would work on creating the instrumentals from the beginning, starting with a sound that’s easy for me to replicate (like piano or guitar). When I get a basic tune down and have a significant chunk of it done, I can add vocals to see how it sounds together. Then, I would work on creating each instrument section by section, and record all the vocals and harmonies, and the edit each sound so that it blends well together. And then, I would ask a friend to review it and let me know if there’s any changes they’d recommend. Then, I would edit the song based on those recommendations. And voila, I’ve created a song.
If it didn’t take any effort, I’d definitely master how to produce music, develop a singing style, master beginner Spanish, and learn dance. I’ll start with Spanish first since I set a goal earlier this week to finish a Spanish lesson by Tuesday. The steps would be to log into Udemy, select the next lesson, go through the video, complete the quiz, review any mistakes I made, and download and go through the PDF for the lesson I’ve completed. I would do this until I get through all of level 1 in my Spanish course. I could set this to be a daily goal or a weekly goal. There’s 16 lessons for the first level, and I’m on lesson 4. So if I did one lesson weekly, it’d take almost two months to complete. It’d take less than two weeks if I did it daily.
Since I’m trying to complete Success Triggers by doing one lesson daily, I think I’ll hold off from daily Spanish lessons so I don’t overwhelm myself. I’m also trying to produce music more, so I’d have to prioritize one over the other. I think producing music would benefit me more in the short-term, but learning Spanish is definitely easier. Maybe I could alternate between producing music and learning Spanish. I remember a few months back, I set a goal of learning how to use Logic Pro X three times a week. It worked for some time, but eventually the habit died down. I was trying to learn an hour a day. I think the time was too much for me. And, it was hard to measure my progress I guess, because it wasn’t a curriculum I was following. I was just learning through random videos and articles on YouTube and Google.
It’s interesting that Ramit doesn’t equate confidence to a feeling per se, but rather a series of steps that you take. It’s more about taking action. If you don’t take action, it shows a lack of confidence. I definitely have been taking less action these days, and I know I have less confidence than I did in the past. But, I didn’t really make the connection between lack of action and lack of confidence. It makes sense. People who are more confident are more likely to take action in general.
2020-08-15
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