What true rest looks like

To create space for what is meaningful, focus on important tasks.

Pick just 3 (or even just 1) and focus on that first. Put aside everything else (you can come back to all that later) and create space for what’s meaningful in your life.

If the activity is important enough to include in your limited time, it’s important enough to give it your full focus.

If you’re going to write, close all other tabs and just write. If you’re going to brush your teeth, just do that.

Overcome your mind's resistance to get started by saying, "I'm all in. I'm going to start today." Then get moving. If you're not good at this, commit to making a small habit change this instant.

Many people want to learn a language or start exercising, but then don't take action. It is because they haven't really committed to getting started.

The skill to master is getting started. You don't have to exercise for half an hour; you only need to start.

Often, we're supposed to do a new habit, and we procrastinate, turn to distractions, and rationalize our resistance.

It comes from Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book Black Swan. The main idea is that many human-made systems are fragile. Something comes to stress the system, and it falls apart. Some systems are robust or resilient, which is much better than fragile.

Even better is the idea of being anti-fragile: stress makes the system stronger.

We can make human-made systems more anti-fragile by designing ways that stress will make the system better able to handle stress.

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1. Changing your identity will automatically lead you to discard some behaviours that are not associated with that identity, helping you stop smoking or eating meat, for example.
2. Your behaviour will align with the behaviour of the chosen identity.
3. You will not have to lecture yourself every day about your motivations.
4. You will be surprised about the many old beliefs about your abilities suddenly vanishing.
5. The mindset change will bring new growth and new possibilities.

1. The best and fastest way to change your identity is to do it intentionally and consciously.
2. Visualize yourself as the person in the new identity, like a writer, a minimalist, a non-smoker or a vegan, and write down the same to reflect on it.
3. Get into action mode and see yourself being the new person, like getting up in the morning and witnessing yourself wearing the running shoes and going out for a run. See yourself in your new identity while in action.
4. Appreciate and reinforce your new identity on yourself and be the change. See how easy it is to be an early riser or a runner or a writer.
5. If you miss a day or two, don’t give up and visualize yourself as the new identity handling the disruption.

Instead of imposing a daily habit, where self-expectation is bound to happen, we can simply appreciate the habit and let ourselves move naturally towards it.

This takes the stress out of the activity, and we enjoy it more. Due to zero expectation, we change a mindset from ‘have to do’ into ‘want to do’.

Any failure in the habit does not lead to any discouragement or demotivation, and we start to do the activity more often and become more and more present in it.

Dropping all expectations isn’t that easy.

We usually do not look at reality as it is, due to it coloured by our beliefs, ideals, fantasies, frustrations, and assumptions. Expectations become part of our ego and becomes the reason we feel discouraged, overwhelmed and inadequate.

Our work, whether it’s a report we are making, cooking or on a Zoom video call, can be done with ease, in a relaxed restful manner.

The key is to not do any multitasking and give your full attention and devotion to one task. You'll finish the day feeling more refreshed than before.

To go through the day with ease:

• Be nourished by nature when you walk outside, instead of being engrossed in your thoughts about work.
• Talk to the person in front of you, being present in the moment
• Be grateful that you are alive, and put a smile on your face.

When we do something out of force, even though we don’t want to do it, it creates stress, and feels uncomfortable and difficult.

When we procrastinate, we feel guilty because something important is in front of us and we are distracting ourselves with an unproductive, time-wasting activity instead of completing the task.

• Our mindset can help us to do challenging, difficult tasks.
• If we choose to participate in an experience, which we know is uncomfortable, difficult or taxing to us (like running, for example), it does not feel forced.
• If we love the activity, or the experience, the rush, the sweat, the wind, then it is not difficult for us. We are doing it on our own accord.

The first and foremost step is to find a deep reason to do our work, which has to be beyond financial and obligatory reasons. If we don’t have a deep reason to work, it will feel meaningless and stressful for us. A deeper ‘why’ of our work provides us with inspiration and makes even challenging work stress-free.

Find a reason greater than yourself, like changing the world, helping people you care about, reducing pain in others, or to protect your loved ones, and even self-love.

As we get in the ‘doing’ mode we lose track of why something was important and meaningful to us in the first place.

Creating certain rituals that calm the mind and connect us to our basic nature can help, like a short meditation or simple prayer to remind us of our main motivation.

When feeling overwhelmed, try some steps in order to feel better, such as the below ones:
Try to rest your mind, even for a few minutes at a time
Make a list that contains three most important tasks that have to be accomplished and focused on them before solving everything else that is less important

You decide on how you experience your day, that is one thing we are all well aware of. So why not choosing to fulfill one task at a time, to focus on one person or challenge at a time? Take things easier and enjoy all the moments your life is made up of.

We often have an urge to do things that have no productive value, but we still do them due to the forces of habit or when we cannot say no to others.An effective way to deal with such tasks is to delay them.

Whether it is snacking, playing a video game, browsing videos, or even smoking, one can delay the desire for doing the activity by keeping oneself intentionally busy.

While listening to others speak, a million thoughts come to our mind, about how we have handled similar situations, and how many mistakes the other person has made in what is being stated. We normally blurt out at the first chance and criticize the other person, or boast about our superhuman abilities.

A better way is to delay that, keeping quiet and simply listening to the other person, focusing on one's breath if needed.