candice nina
  • Welcome
  • Zines
  • Drawings
    • Wisdom imparted by Day[9]
    • CliftonStrengths sketches
    • Other stuff
  • Q&A
  • Get in touch

5 habit improvements over the last half year

4/8/2020

0 Comments

 
It is tempting to focus on the future and TODO's, but I thought today I will focus on celebrating the difficult things that I have managed to accomplish over the last half year - breaking out of bad habits and building good ones.
Picture
MORE NAILS
First and foremost, I am proud to say that I am not a nail biter anymore. I cannot remember when I started (childhood amnesia). I was able to stop once in the early 2000's, and another time at around 2017, but I went into relapse both times. I noticed that the my nail biting probability increases when I am 1) stressed out, 2) but not consciously aware of said mental state, so I decided to tackle both problems - being more mentally aware and acknowledging that I am feeling distressed, and also to get rid of the sources of distress as much as I can. Most recently, I made the decision to stop in November 2019, and so far so good.
Picture
LESS CAFFEINE
It dawned on me that a source of distress could be something as simple as a cup of home brewed coffee in the morning. My body is small so it doesn't take that much caffeine to get me going... and for it to be overwhelming. So in February 2020 I cut down my caffeine consumption to 1/2 cup instead of a cup.
Picture
MORE HOT WATER
After getting a cold earlier this year and drinking hot water almost continuously, I realized that I like drinking hot (well, warm) water. So I decided to keep drinking hot water at least a few times a day. Feels nice and warm. I am hoping this helps with my digestion and blood circulation.
Picture
MORE MINDFUL MOMENTS
I dedicated March 2020 to the 30-day mindfulness challenge and I have acquired a mini-meditation habit (5 sets of controlled breathing and being aware of body posture) where I can spend a few minutes to get out of my head and back into my body.
Picture
LESS OBSESSION OVER CHECKING
I started to cut back on social media usage and obsessive email checking. This is a difficult habit to break out of because in my current job and in all of my previous jobs, emails are >80% of what I do since all my roles are/were communicative ones. Recently, when I decided to clear my browsing history, cache, cookies, passwords, etc. I decided to NOT save my credentials on my browser when I log in to social media, and I make a point to log out / close the window when I finish using something. This acts as a filter - if I need to send or post something that is important enough, I will log in to do that specific thing. But if I don't have anything important to do (and I'd just do mindless scrolling as a result), I won't bother spending the time logging in. I'm several days in on this, and I think I'm checking significantly less than I used to.
Here's to forming more good habits!
0 Comments

30-Day Mindfulness Challenge

4/7/2020

0 Comments

 
I decided to take advantage of a service offered through my work: Mindwell-U’s “30-Day Mindfulness Challenge.” It is based on the idea of “Tak[ing] 5” (details here): https://www.mindwellu.com/take-5 and each day I need to watch a short video and do mini-reflections (in addition to taking 5 at least once… ideally 5 times or more). I participated in the challenge from March 3 to April 1, 2020.

​By the end of the 30 days, I would’ve taken 5 approximately 90 times (roughly 3 times a day). I started the 30-day mindfulness challenge at a very unique time (when COVID-19 turned into a global pandemic), and so my conclusion as to whether the mindfulness challenge worked is somewhat wishy-washy: I’m feeling uneasy overall, but I might be feeling way worse if I didn’t do the mindfulness exercises every day.

Action items for the future (which may or may not evolve into my next DK30, we’ll see):
  1. I need to decide on what cues to use to Take 5 and stick to it, ideally in different parts of the day (so far I succeeded in taking 5 when: I’m stressed out, noticing the weather (e.g. oh it’s sunny), before I drink my morning cup of coffee, before I go to bed).
  2. Expanding on Day[9]'s kittens and ninja-stars idea (petting the kittens)*: I decided to spend more time amplifying the small good things like “I harvested a lot of home-grown potatoes from the back yard yesterday!” (because all kittens deserve to be petted), and I may attempt to make this more systematic.
  3. Expanding on Day[9]'s kittens and ninja-stars idea (dodging the ninja-stars)*: To me, Take 5 is a way to patch up the wound caused by a ninja star (e.g. get stressed --> Take 5 --> feels less stressed. Yay). Ideally, I wouldn’t want to get stressed in the first place. So what causes the bad feelings? The next step is to find what causes me to feel uneasy and to stop the ones that I have control over (and prevent the fight-or-flight response from kicking in when the inevitable ninja-stars come flying out of nowhere).
*If you are not familiar with kittens and ninja-stars, check out the illustration I made for it or even better yet - check out the original source.

Some reflections on the 30-Day Mindfulness Challenge at large:
  1. I suspect I wasn't in their target demographic (i.e. I wasn't the targeted audience) in the sense that
    a) it felt like I was getting a lot of sales pitches / buy-in soliciting (“why you should do this” in different words over and over again, although I’m already buying into the idea), and
    b) I wanted more academic rigor (what can I say - I did a Bachelor’s in cognitive science-y stuff and I love brains).
  2. And since I wasn't in their target demographic, the messaging used in the videos sounded prescriptive and I think that contributes to the dryness and the sales-y vibes I mentioned earlier. I was craving for anecdotes - like how did it give someone hope?
  3. I liked how the Mindfulness Challenge encourages the participant to customize the Take 5 practice to make it easier to integrate into everyday life. So I made my own interpretation of the Take 5 infographic as a reminder to keep taking 5:
Picture
High resolution ver. of the Take 5 infographic
File Size: 1616 kb
File Type: png
Download File

0 Comments

    Author

    I'm Candice and I doodle with the intensity of the doomguy.

    hello{at}candicenina.com
    @candiceninasays

    Categories

    All
    Anxiety
    Careers
    Cognitive Systems
    DK30
    Knowing Thyself
    Management
    Meta
    Stirling Games

    Archives

    March 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018

© 2022 Candice McGowan (Candice Nina) | All rights reserved | Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Welcome
  • Zines
  • Drawings
    • Wisdom imparted by Day[9]
    • CliftonStrengths sketches
    • Other stuff
  • Q&A
  • Get in touch