You are constantly thinking of how to do things better, be it at work or in personal life. How could you have done that project differently if you were to do it all over again? How could you probably improve this recipe a little better the next time? How could you shop more productively? Does it sound familiar?

Read the below checklist and tick against the ones you think applies to you. 

1. You watch the ‘Brightside‘ videos more often than the music videos
2. You read articles on ‘Medium‘ over browsing on Instagram
3. You learn from everyone around you irrespective of their age, caste, sex, experience, education
4. You try to find positivity even in the darkest places.
5. You beat yourself to death if you do the same mistake twice.
6. You crave criticism like pregnant women crave chocolate and you find feedback as a blessing in disguise.
7. You constantly improvise, that’s the only way to get better at a skill right!
8. You practice what you preach. It’s a sin to say something that you wouldn’t do yourself.
9. You hate it when people use jazz that they are not even aware of.
10. You feel suffocated if you find yourself in an unproductive session or a directionless discussion.

Now if you answered ‘Yes’ at-least 7 out of 10 times, you are a self-development junkie. If you answered ‘Yes’ in over 5 instances but less than 7 you are not a junkie yet, you are content with your self and less worrisome with what others have think about you. If you got a score of less than 5, you enjoy life on your terms and you probably don’t care what the world around you does and probably are in self-denial. Not always but might apply to a few.

This was just a fun way of probably knowing oneself better, and the above indicators are by no means any signs of telling you to follow this or not. That is totally up to you and no one else can/should dictate those terms to you. If you are content with who you are, that’s probably the best for you and need not always look for improvement.

I was just wondering if we ever stop for a second to think about how our last week was, how you are doing in the current role or how your business is growing or not growing, what have you studied and what’s left to study, what we ate and didn’t eat, what stories are we consuming, how much screen time do we have in the day, how are we contributing to make this world better, are we giving back to the community?

Sometimes, it is important to unwind to perform better. We have all probably heard about the saying that sometimes you have to take one or two steps backward to pivot forward in the right direction.

So whilst we might agree that it makes sense – not most of us really do it. When have you taken some time off from whatever you have been doing to do just what you have wanted to and ALONE? Yes, that’s the key here – ALONE. Not with your spouse, not with your family or friends. Just spending time with yourself. Now you might think it’s difficult, but it isn’t – you just need to plan a day in a month or fortnight when you wanna go to some quiet place, take your arms and ammunition to amp up the fire inside you – your laptop, your diary, your headphones, your camera or your phone and some snacks and just go on a trip of self-discovery – Start in the morning and give yourself ample time to think through all of what I mentioned above and come back with a more productive self. Read, write, run, jump, exercise, click, eat do whatever you please but alone – so you have had the best company in the world you can ever get – Yourself.

Now some might say this ain’t me – ‘I can’t go alone’ or ‘I can’t eat alone’ or ‘I can’t be alone’ – sorry to break your myth, it’s just in your mind – you are always on your own, always. Period! We all have a family and friends and colleagues and social circles but we need to live our own lives and the way we want to, so it is essential we spend time with ourselves asking ourselves those big questions – ‘What we want to do’, ‘Where we want to go’, ‘How things have been so far’ and ‘If there is anything we can do to make it better.’ And if that doesn’t convince you, I just have one last question for you – If you can’t stay with yourself, how do you expect others to stay with you?

Another popular myth would be what do I do? Oh, my God! there is no dearth of things you can do and trust me it can be done, in any part of the world – go to a park, beach, temple, cafe, trek wherever you can break the monotony of your routine and somewhere you won’t be distracted

Now there are some do’s and don’ts for this to work

Do
Write your thoughts
Pen a poem
Shoot a movie
Read a book
Reduce screentime if possible
Reflect on things (office, work, business, school, people)
Be creative
Plan the entire day
Have a positive attitude
Wear comfy clothes

Don’ts
No calling anyone
No wasting time commuting a lot
No shopping
No indulgence
No sleeping
No procrastination
No cutting corners
No exploring (like a tourist)

If you work out or even if you don’t you might have heard about the concept of a recovery week when you need to rest a little to be able to perform better, this is exactly the same thing in life but yet we fail to do so and that includes me. I have said the same thing using different perspectives to stress the importance of doing it.

So don’t think, probably plan your next Sat or Sunday to take time off from your usual life, pack your bag with some essentials, choose a location (need not be just one location, can be multiple, just need to plan it better) where you can sit, relax, unwind, do some deep thinking and come back rejuvenated. Hope it helps.

We never truly believe in ourselves, I mean there are some over confident assholes who do but I am talking about the other normal people like you and I. Most of us choose the comfortable option even when we know the risk-reward quotient of this other option is way higher than option 1 – have you ever wondered why do we do that? Because we don’t really believe in ourselves. We never fully believe we can do something spectacular, create something magnificent, make it big in our career, until we do.

We aren’t the best judge of ourselves, and so most often we underestimate our true potential and our beliefs. We constantly doubt the outcome of our choices and are too afraid of going the unknown path. And that leads us to the life of an average Joe going through the daily struggles of life just the way it is doing little to almost nothing to change this. 

Coming to my story, I doubted myself too. Should I pursue writing? Should I create my blog? What if no one reads it, what if people don’t find worth in it? What about those millions of books and literature that is already published? Should I check what is already out there? Like there were a billion thoughts and I call these a billion noise that I had to shut down. I just said to myself, I want to write because I WANT TO. There, just right there I had my answer in those three words – ‘I want to’. I want to write because that gives me satisfaction. I want to write because that is my avenue to reach out to you. I want to write because I get to explore my creativity. It was simple.

When you find this purpose, you easily overcome those earlier doubts – so what if there are a million books already written – that would still not solve my purpose, what if no one finds merit in what I write, but guess what I will never know unless I put them out there and let people decide

You see what I mean? Do something because that is what you love to do. And when you do that, you would believe in yourself. Because trust me, you are limited only by your own thoughts. Spread those wings and soar high, the world is your territory or your canvas if you are a painter or your notepad if you are interested in writing like I do.