Hi everyone! Time for Goal Check Sunday Week 6/52! π
Goal #1: Manage My Eating Disorder
β (1) Goal met in eating between 1200 to 1700 calories during the hours of 7:00 AM and 7:00 PM for Week 6/52.
After not meeting this goal in Week 5/52, I’m incredibly glad to meet it this week. Because I’m never quite sure that I will.
Goal #2: Become more organized starting Week 2/52
β (2) Goal accomplished in spending 15 to 30 minutes organizing every day using a timer for Week 6/52.
Sometimes I ask myself, “Will I end up loving, hating, or feeling neutral about the first 30 minutes of this Instrumental Pop – Work Playlist | Productivity Music because I’ve been playing it on repeat almost every day while I’m organizing.” Currently, I’m loving it and hopefully, I will continue to love it.
Maybe one day I won’t need the music to remind me to organize!
Goal #3: Write consistently
β (3) Goal accomplished in writing between 2 to 8 hours every day for Week 6/52.
In Week 6/52, I was feeling extremely tired and unmotivated likely due to me feeling terrible about not managing my eating disorder for Week 5/52. I’m grateful to James Clear’s words, “Every action you take is a vote for your new identity,” which was extremely helpful in completing my writing. I greatly desire to be a writer and I need to take action to reflect my desire.
Additionally, my dedicated time blocks and listening to lo-fi music when writing has kept me on track!
Goal #4: Read books to gain knowledge and new perspectives
β (4a) Goal accomplished in reading 30 minutes a day for 5 days for Week 6/52. I’m reading Trevor Noah’s Born A Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood and I’m loving it!
π§ (4b) Goal in progress: I will summarize/review 6 books in 2022 and post them on this blog.
Book 1/6: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
Book 2/6: If I Had Your Face
Currently in the process of summarizing Atomic Habits for Book 3/6.
Goal #5: Improve my listening skills
β (5a) Goal accomplished in listening to one Design Matters Podcast for Week 6/52. This week, I listened to Debbie Millman interview Dr. Dori Tunstall (design anthropologist).
Should we imagine the future being more positive or negative?
If you imagine dystopia then you’ll design towards that. But if you imagine utopia then you are actually making the possiblity of that especially as you share with other people that this is the way which we can go forward.
Dr. Dori Tunstall, Design Matters with Debbie Millman
What’s your outlook on life? Currently, I imagine the future to be closer to utopian than dystopian.
β (5b) Goal accomplished in listening to one TED talk for Week 6/52. This week I listened to My son was a Columbine shooter. This is my story | Sue Klebold.
Every time someone asks me, “How could you not have known?”, it feels like a punch in the gut. It carries accusation and taps into my feels of guilt that no matter how much therapy I’ve had, I will never fully eradicate. But here’s something I’ve learned: if love were enough to stop someone from hurting themselves, suicides would hardly every happen.
Sue Klebold: My son was a Columbine shooter. This is my story. | TED
“How could you not have known?” is a question likely many of us asked ourselves sometimes in our lives. After my late father’s passing, I regularly asked myself, “How could you have not known his disease is terminal?”
It would be easy to blame the doctors who never said his disease is terminal, instead, they said, “there is no cure,” or “we don’t know how long he has, maybe ten years, maybe twenty,” or “miracles can happen.” My father was diagnosed with cerebellar ataxia in early 2016 and became wheelchair-bound in 2017, unable to do anything for himself in 2018, and entered hospice in 2019.
If I wasn’t so afraid of the truth, I would have realized everything his doctors were saying was hinting at my father was going to die real soon. I think the doctors were also afraid to lay out the specifics because they were worried I wasn’t going to be able to handle my father losing his ability to walk, talk, and eventually swallow.
If I had known, I would have tried to complete everything on his bucket list instead of trying to heal him and cling to the stubborn belief that he can beat his disease. If it wasn’t for my amazing therapist, I would have let those questions consume my mind. Thanks to my therapist, I learned to forgive myself and mostly look forward with an occasional glance at the past.
Goal #6: Emulate Krista Tippetβs (Winner of the National Humanities Medal, Peabody Awards, Webby Awards) way of speaking.
β (6) Goal accomplished in emulating a sentence of Krista Tippet’s for Week 6/52 from this Design Matters Podcast.
Goal #7: Learn how to grow microgreens from Mark starting 6/1/2022 (Week 22/52)
π(7) Goal N/A for Week 6/52.
Goal #1: Maintain my mental and physical health
β (1a) Goal accomplished in singing two positive songs and one song of my choice every day for Week 6/52.
β (1b) Goal accomplished in meditating and practicing 25 minutes of yoga 5 to 7 days for Week 6/52.
β (1c) Goal accomplished for lifting weights 3 to 5 days a week due to my stiff/sore neck for Week 6/52.
It took around 10 weeks for my neck to recover after sleeping on it wrong for one night. I feel privileged to be able to feel physically able to lift weights again!
β (1d) Goal accomplished in doing a physical activity for Week 6/52.
I played table tennis for 3.5 hours and did a nature walk for 1 hour this past week!
β (1e) Goal accomplished in sleeping before 11:30 PM every day for Week 6/52.
Goal #2: Work on my marriage
β (2a) Goal accomplished in continuing my weekly marriage meeting (#184), financial checkup, and date night with Mark for Week 6/52.
β (2b) Goal accomplished in helping Mark organize for 15-30 minutes every day this past week for Week 6/52.
Goal #3: Encourage my mom to expand her worldview starting Week 6/52
β (3a) Goal accomplished in teaching my mom English for Week 6/52.
Starting this week, my mom is memorizing a sentence by heart in addition to her practicing reading English aloud and learning 10 new vocabulary words a week.
My mom likes to say δΈη₯ι (don’t know) a lot in an impatient tone. To tell her directly to stop saying that is controlling, but not telling her is me not speaking up. The solution I found was to encourage her to say the phrase in English and add a few more words.
She readily agreed to substitute saying ” δΈη₯ι,” to “I don’t know. Please explain.” I think she deeply desires to converse in English but she is afraid to voice her desire loud because she fears failure.
By substituting all the phrases my mom uses in Mandarin into English slowly, I’m confident that she and I will be conversing in English sometime in the future. That confidence stems from the fact that after four years of speaking only Mandarin to my mom, she now speaks back to me in mostly Mandarin despite having spoken only Shanghainese to me prior to 2018.
β (3b) Goal accomplished in practicing Senior Yoga with my mom for Week 6/52.
β (3c) Goal accomplished in teaching my mom how to become more proficient at using her iPhone for Week 6/52.
This week, I continued to help her get more familiar with voice memos.
Goal #4: Prioritize friendships
β (4a) Goal accomplished in meeting up with friends 1 to 3 times a month for Week 6/52. I played Taboo and Password with my friend, Sure Sure, and a few new friends at board game night.
β (4b) Goal accomplished in chatting with 1 to 3 friends over the phone/zoom for Week 6/52. I chatted with Monkey, Nala, and Catan.
Goal #5: Remember my late father through cooking starting Week 9/52 on 3/3 (my father’s birthday).
π (5) Goal N/A of posting recipes on this site for Week 6/52.
Week 6/52 Goal Summary
β Accomplished goals: 19
β Goals not met: 0
π Goals N/A for Week 6/52: 3
π§ Goals in progress: 1
This week’s completion percentage: 100% (19/19)
Week 1/52 completion percentage: 91% (I missed the 5 to 7 days of mediation and practiced 25 minutes of yoga goal.)
Week 2/52 completion percentage: 100%
Week 3/52 completion percentage: 92.8% (I missed the sleeping before 11:30 PM everyday goal.)
Week 4/52 completion percentage: 100%
Week 5/52 completion percentage: 94.4% (I missed the eat between 1200 to 1700 calories everyday goal).
Week 6/52 completion percentage: 100%
2022 Average completion percentage thus far: 96.4%
Dear readers, how was your progression towards your 2022 goals? π
90% completion for me this week.
Your smile seems more and more natural now. It is difficult sometimes for me to grasp how much you’ve changed. Friendly. Happy. If I wasn’t by your side every day, it would be very surprising to see those changes.
I stepped out of my comfort zone this week, going to a new place to play board games with strangers. But I can’t remember a single instance I’ve regretted going to social events. I loved it, as always. A few more times and it’s a new habit.
Happy to hear of your 90% this week!
In the past my smile was unnatural because I rarely smiled, smiling every day has helped greatly in making my smile “natural.” π