On the value of being persistent..

Too often we take on new habits, new activities, new ideas, we work on these while the novelty is there, and then these get dropped. Till we find the next new shiny object to play with!

Happens to all of us. Has happened a lot to me too.

But there are many new ideas and activities that I have also persisted with for long, and those are the ones that have changed my life. Whether in providing a certain richness to life or in terms of self-improvement.

To give you some examples:

1. Few years back, I switched to wearing a white shirt and jeans at work. Sometimes these ideas can be short term fads. In my case, it was like a genuine change in my lifestyle. Elsewhere I have written about why I made this shift, so I am not going to talk about that here. Just to say that for several years, the routine continued, and has only been broken by the pandemic, since we were working from home!

2. My daily journal. That’s been going on for a few years now! Daily!

3. Around Aug 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, I got the urge to take up gardening. Since we were not going to get the gardener coming in, to maintain our sky garden. It’s been about 1.5 years, and we have not called the gardener back, and I have been pottering around, maintaining my garden.

4. A few months back, I got inspired to do a weekly (Saturdays) walk, exploring different parts of Mumbai. Last weekend I completed my 28th walk! I have missed an odd Saturday or two in between, but it’s largely been going on!

5. A few months after moving into my current residential complex at New Cuffe Parade, in Mumbai, I realised that we had an amazing gentry of residents. Experts in a wide variety of subjects. And wouldn’t it be lovely to have such folks share a little bit of their knowledge and experience with the rest of the community? And of course, in the process, there is also a meeting of people, making friendships etc that happens. With that in mind, I initiated an idea called the Sunday Knowledge Session where approximately once a month, I invite one such expert to speak, and share the knowledge with the rest of us.

Last week, we had our 27th session of the kind!

These are few examples. There are other such things too, that I have persisted with!

Even as I mention this, some of the above activities could stop at a time. But for the time that these have been on, it’s been a decent run, and I do feel that I have managed a sense of persistency and consistency in doing so.

Real change, real growth of any kind, I believe, happens only when you are at a thing for a longer time. And I would hope that the above examples inspire others to take up things and be persistent about them.

I have to clarify that I do not necessarily have the same success for all things that I take up and try. I have been inconsistent in many areas, started and stopped on many other activities. But I do value the idea of staying on to something, and if something is valuable to persist with, I would hopefully come back to it, give it another try, and hope that the next effort on that activity is a longer and stickier one.

Cheers!