Working on a Self Upgrade
I’ve been thinking for a long while on things I want to do better at. I’ve been putting in some work on some of them, but there’s been more thinking than doing so far. Now I’m trying to get more action going, or even just be more disciplined about doing the things I keep telling myself I want to be doing.
My list of things I want to do/upgrade is pretty short and sweet. I have the core of it in a “life Practices” project in Todoist, with an accompanying daily to-do item to review that in the early morning:
As that list shows. I want to lean into: my spiritual side, Buddhist principles of kindness and compassion; Qigong as a core and favorite part of daily exercise for mind and body; healthier eating, stripping away processed foods, tracking food intake; using AI to make me better in “mastering my domains”; prying myself away from computer screens of all sizes and spending more time out in the world with people and dogs; and cutting down YouTube rabbit holing and spending far more time reading.
Side Note: I asked ChatGPT to create the image above with this prompt: “Create an image that evokes Ikigai with a side table piled with books (novels), a notebook, and a cup of tea”. It’s a fun coincidence that I’ve read all of those books except the second from the top, though it’s been quite a while since I read them.
Buddhism, Qigong, trying to eat healthier and exercise daily, are things I’ve focused on (always with lots of room for improvement) for many years. Going down YouTube rabbit holes is proving to be the hardest habit to break. I have a variety of allowances I make in that area - just that last game highlights clip, lets see what the studio analysts say, one favorite music video leads to five others listed in the sidebar, and so on.
Ikigai is a concept I only just heard about for the first time a few weeks ago. I read this wonderful book on it, and took a lot of notes and even more inspiration from it.
My - very rudimentary - understanding of Ikigai that I made notes about is something like this:
What gets me up in the morning?
What do I value in life?
What brings me joy in life?
Does any of that cross over with anything that I think I’m good at?
One other thing I think I know about this is that my goal shouldn’t be to sit in a dark room for hours until I discover my Ikigai; it should be something that comes to me more naturally. And I feel that happening. I feel it in basic ways like recognizing how happy I feel when I see my dog having a blast playing with other dogs, and when I’m talking with other dog owners while the dogs play, or when we’re out on walks and spur of the moment chats with people we come across,
Learning and reading is another area where my upgrade goals and Ikigai discovery come together. I have this pile of books calling out to me, and a 25 times bigger stack on my Kindle :)
Another big Ikigai piece for me is that I really enjoy helping people. I try to do that whenever I can in the course of everyday life, in any small way that presents itself. I’ve also recognized an area that is a big Yes for both of these questions:
What brings me joy in life?
Does any of that cross over with anything that I think I’m good at?
That is mentoring. Mentoring people who want to get into or advance a career in cybersecurity. It’s not at the curing cancer level of helping, but it’s an area where I know I have helped people and I know that it always something I enjoy doing.
I’m excited that I have a new project in that area that is coming soon. Maybe even very soon.
Are any of you working on self upgrades? Are you already perfect? If so, got any tips on how to be perfect?
Working on getting that reading habit back! Less scroll, more read. The trick is finding books I love