When I first thought of this concept of daily improvement, I was optimistic to think that I could – in the midst of my reality – inflict a ‘new’ tidbit of change every day.  I was absolutely wrong.  And after only two weeks of declaring this commitment to the www dot, I have already failed.  It’s not that I haven’t been working on myself, but making changes every day is far more challenging than I had imagined.  I’ve also realized that it’s not possible for me to add new things into my life or change old ways without giving myself time to absorb and figure out how it could work in my life versus it being a burden.

Lesson Learned: Don’t Expect Change Instantly.

Over the weekend, I realized that I can’t expect change to happen instantly and these daily ‘challenges’ for self improvement came with the expectation that I would, by the end of the year have found 365 things that I promised to make better.  Why didn’t anyone tell me it’s not realistic? Thankfully, my BFF came back from audit hell to suggest that I could take these challenges a week at a time.

Project Me was supposed to be a fun process for me to grow personally and professionally.  It’s a project that pushes me to think about and reflect about the person I am now, who I want to be in the future, the relationships I have and all else that is important in my life.  How do I become a better version of me in one year’s time?

A Fresh Start:  Budget Me Green

What I started 2 weeks ago hasn’t been left behind, in fact we can call it a head start in the race for me to become a better person.  Swear Jar count is now at $47. … if anyone was curious. #lesigh

My challenge for the week is to stay on top of my budget and track every penny that I make and spend.  I started the year with a 2011 Budget excel sheet all organized with pretty colours and categories,  and although I have been sticking within my budget, I can’t be 100% sure until I put it all on paper right? Right. I’m going for the green baby, but not in Q1!

Happy Savings!

- C

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SIGH. I’ve already missed two days as my friend John pointed out… clearly I’m not ready to commit to such a program, or well at least writing about it!

Day 4 – Find an extra productive hour each day (or maybe just the weekdays).

Day 5 – Read the news.

Day 6 – Enjoy some me time.

The weekend  seems to always include a lazy day for me and although I very much enjoy sleeping in until the afternoon on weekends, I find that it will also be important for me to find that extra hour to be productive each day (Monday to Friday at least.)  With that extra hour either at work or in the morning, I would be able to do so much!  Waking up  earlier will allow me to fully enjoy breakfast or being more productive at work will mean that I get off at 5pm!

Something I’ve also been doing is trying to keep up with the news.  Key word here being try. It’s embarrassing when I feel like I don’t know what important things are happening around the world.  If I fit 30min into my day to reading the news, it’s a productive way to learn about the world.  2 birds with 1 stone? Yes!

Today’s commitment was about enjoying me time, which I’ve talked about in the past. I think this makes me a better person because it allows me to get to know myself better and just be comfortable in my own presence.  It lets be reflect about the week, the things that are important, my goals and most of all, just relax.  As an extrovert, I always find it amazing what you can learn about yourself, just by being alone.

Swear Jar Update (re: Day 3): We’re at $23.  Thank you MIAMI Heat for losing today’s game against Boston.  #lesigh.

- C

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@#$%! -ing for Charity

<photo courtesy of http://pineapplelicious.deviantart.com>

It’s true, my name is Cheryl Ho and I have a swearing problem.

I really don’t mean to be offensive, rude or inappropriate… but there’s just something so liberating about using the F-word.  lol  It’s so versatile.  It can be used as a verb, noun and adjective, not to mention that it can be paired with oh so many emotions too! I won’t say that I’ll never swear again cause that’s just crazy, but it can certainly be minimized.  There’s really only one place and time that I can think of for swearing haha but I’ll leave that to your own imagination. (;

I will agree that substitutes (like “F” or “B”) for these words are probably not much better than the swear words itself but at least it sounds better and less vulgar.  The most challenging part of this is playing sports because we all know, it’s impossible to control my emotions during a competitive game of volleyball!

For the next 30 days: I will donate $1 per full swear word I use to charity.  Sounds easy enough? And wow, there’s even an iPhone App called ‘iSwear” that helps you keep track!

-C

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8 Cups A Day?

In my quest to adopt a healthy lifestyle, I’ve been trying to determine whether drinking 8 cups of water a day (excluding other liquids consumed) is necessary to maintain a healthy diet, but there doesn’t seem to be much scientific evidence behind this popular belief. According to the article published by Harvard Medical School, this is indeed a myth and in fact, research strongly suggests that large amounts are not needed.

Here are some of the advice:

So what to do?  It’s nearly impossible for me to measure the water content from the foods that I consume but I am sure that  I could commit to drinkinking 6 cups of liquids a day at the minimum (excluding the water I have when working out/playing volleyball).  As for minimizing caffeine, carbonated drinks and alcohol… we’ll keep those beverages as a weekend treat or a cheat day kinda drink only (for 30 days)!

Cheers!

- c

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“Imagine yourself making 1% changes every day that compound and consequently make you (and Zappos) 37x better by the end of the year.” – Tony Hsieh, Delivering Happiness.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what Tony Hsieh said in his book, Delivering Happiness (btw it’s a good read) and even more so tonight because I realized that I can be a shitty person to someone I care a lot about; and as much as there are a lot great things about me, there’s also a lot that isn’t…  I definitely could be a better person and I definitely want to be in all aspects of my life.  So why wouldn’t I (or anyone else for that matter) want to make myself 37x better than I am today by the end of the year?

For those who are reading, thank you for joining me on this journey.  For the sake of being realistic, I’m going to try this for 30 days and hopefully work myself to 365 days.  Some days may involve bigger more noticeable changes and other days will be the little things that may consequently end up being the most significant.

Today I make a promise to myself that I will make that 1% of change everyday for the next 30 days.  Please feel free to call me out if I don’t embrace these changes fully.

This will be a slap in the face.

Day 1 – Stand Back

I appreciate life, people, opportunities, lessons and everything that I have been fortunate to experience.  But despite the fact that I do express this appreciation daily to people I love, my downfall is that I also pick at the details that sometimes don’t matter as much.  Why am I so petty? It annoys me to think that I could be this way.

I fail to see the bigger picture sometimes because I’m so focused with the emotions that are attached to what I am feeling/thinking at the moment that I don’t stand back and evaluate the situation.  It’s also really hard for me to talk myself out of it, because at that moment I feel like it is what it is at face value. But I will start.

The reality of the situation is most likely not as bad as it seems if I would just step back and take myself out of the situation.  I need to look at the bigger picture as much as I look at the small things that I spend so much time on.  Professionally this has never been a problem but somehow in my personal life, I take things literally to heart because the truth is, it’s all or nothing.  Either I care or I don’t, and if I choose to care, then I care a lot a lot.  Relax girl, you need to take a chill pill.

It’s funny (not really) that I am good with helping friends in these types of circumstances and can give the best advice in the world, but  I completely fail at applying what  I know in my own life.

Stand back and think for a moment, will this matter to me tomorrow?

- c

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