I Brushed My Teeth For 30 Days, This is What Happened!

Actually, before I tell you what happened, let's discuss last year...

For me, last year was a bag of mixed emotions. Almost none of my 2020 goals were achieved. I wanted to travel to new places, I wanted to finish early with my Doctoral studies (I talked about it a lot though!), I wanted to squat over 450 lbs! and I wanted to start other income streams and find financial independence.

Although I didn't get to any of my goals, I feel it was one of my best years ever!

I am 40 now,

I am healthy,

My family is happy and healthy,

And other countless blessings to be grateful for.

If this is the case, then what is the point of setting personal goals?

Sometimes I feel I plan solely for the sake of planning. For me, planning gives a sense of direction, something to look forward to every morning when I wake up at 4AM (",)

Probably the purpose of life is better understood through the goals we set to achieve? But isn't misery await us if we don't achieve these goals? Don't you think that living a life of gratitude with no goals is better? Yes I agree, achieving our goals brings more joy, but statistically speaking, 80% of us will fail to achieve our goals as early as February!

Wait, but we can have goals, not achieve them and be happy as well. It is my choice, I choose to care about the things I have control over. If the reasons for missing my goals are my doing, then more reasons to be better. If the reason is entirely out of my control, then why worry?!

I love a quote referred to Robert Byrne which says “The Purpose of Life is to Live a Life of Purpose”. The beauty in this quote is that it leaves this purpose open to me, whatever fills my buckets!

I am most definitely not trying to coach you about the purpose of life, I need coaching myself. So if you found someone, or you are a life coach, please DM me and I will reach out to learn from you. 

So is it too late to plan for the new year? Is there a point anyway?

Well, it is never too late for anything so long as there is fresh oxygen in my lungs!

Oh, still wondering about my hygiene habit? just give me a minute, I'll get to that. 

For this year, my planning will be different, as much as it is personal, I will share with you the umbrella goals that I have set for myself. This by no means has any particular order, I feel all are equally important:

·       Health goals; this includes eating healthy as much as I can, working out consistently, and sleeping & waking up according to a strict schedule.

·       Develop new positive relationships, and care for the most important relationship one can ever have, my family. We are social animals, and we will always be surrounded with people. I set a goal to surround myself with positive successful people who will lift me higher, and I can find joy in lifting them high as well. I truly believe that I am the sum of who I surround myself with.

·       Personal growth; pick a skill or a topic I would like to learn, and start learning it everyday. More on that later.

·       Financial; achieve financial independence by saving more, and creating new income streams (more on this in future articles / videos).

But there is one goal that I would love to achieve more than anything else. For me, the main goal of this year is to make new good habits stick! If I can make any new habit I choose stick, then I can concur the world!

When I think about it, what is one of the most successful habits we have, and is sticking with us since we learned our ABCs?

It is brushing our teeth, twice a day, for two minutes each time.

I doubt brushing our teeth induces dopamine, and the consequences of not brushing our teeth are not immediate! and yet we do it almost mindlessly, I even get to the state of flow when brushing my teeth!

Think about it, brushing your teeth is only a two-minute task right? 

WRONG!

Brushing our teeth is not exactly a 2-minute task, you have to be in a specific place (the bathroom), you need to prepare the tools and setting (the tooth brush and paste), and after you finish the two minutes brushing, you need to clean and dry. So really the task is probably over five minutes, but the core activity is two minutes only!

If I go back to our umbrella goals, and select the habit I would like to stick, and then "really" mindfully work on those habits for "two minutes, twice a day every day", I have a feeling I will achieve my goal of making my habits stick for this year!

At the end, it is our choice to plan, and then go ahead with our plans. 2021 is just another year, nothing special for me unless I do something about it. Our success as a community, is necessarily the success of all of us individually.

What are your success goals for 2021?