Holiday Party!

I've kept myself accountable for 3 days straight now...and yes, I'm damn proud of myself!

• Water Consumed: 1 1.5L bottle and another 3 cups of water during meals.
• Meditation: About 10 mins (I'm still having some trouble sitting still for this long)
• One Happy Thing From Today: Today was the our company holiday party at Tamarine restaurant in Palo Alto, and it was fun to have an opportunity to spend time with co-workers outside of work and to meet their significant others. 

Company sponsored events are always nice--all food and drink is paid for! It's also another excuse to leave work a little bit early and to let loose after months of hard work. The holiday party was a well deserved break from hectic schedules with meeting after meeting while trying to squeeze in the actual work that comes from the meetings. 

I've identified a couple reasons why I like my job:

• The people I get to work with are good, genuine individuals who enjoy their jobs.
• I get paid to learn a skill that I am interested in.

There are times I get fed up with commuting and going through the daily grind, but I suppose if it were really that horrible I would have quit by now. Sure, sometimes the work is tough and frustrating, but having great co-workers really makes all the difference in job satisfaction. I might not be getting paid a ton, but the amount of  money I give up is a small price to pay to have co-workers I enjoy being around. 

Who Knew Doing Nothing Could Be So Difficult?

Today's Update

• Water Consumed: 2L (I had to go to the bathroom pretty often... luckily I work in an office)
  
• Minutes Dedicated to Meditation: 5mins
• One Happy Thing From Today: I actually had time to go have a nice sit down lunch with my co-workers.
• I also spent 20 mins on Tuesday night writing and recording any thoughts that came to mind during the day and used this as my dedicated quiet time for the day. (I decided to start a journal a couple months ago just so I could look back and get some idea of exactly where I'm spending all my time.)
  

Let me say this...it was damn hard to sit myself down and to try to just sit...in silence...doing nothing. No email, no TV, no sports talk radio... nada. I thought I was going to pass out from the lack of sensory stimulation. Yet, I managed to settle down and after a minute or two, take some deep breaths and then I actually found myself enjoying the peace and quiet. Even after just 5 minutes of this, I noticed my mood and stress level decrease. It felt gooooooood after being bombarded by information all day long at work and sitting through the 60 mile daily commute.

These three activities haven't had any huge life-changing effect on my life as far as I can tell, but I suppose that isn't the point. I'm starting to notice that there is a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction from actually setting a goal and accomplishing it in addition to the benefits of these activities themselves. Sweet!

Blast...

I've slacked and I take complete responsibility. What I need to do is keep myself accountable. I will report in each day giving an update of these three habits I'm trying to work on.

Now exactly why has it taken this long (nearly a month?) and what excuses have I used to avoid working towards these habits?

• I have so many other things to do, and I can't fit it into my schedule. B.S. I spend at least 30mins watching TV after I get home (Deal... or NO Deal?!). 
•  I'm afraid to fail. Now, I found this one hard to type. Maybe because it's true! This seems perposterous now that I think about it. This might sound like something my parents would say, but I would have only failed if I never tried to begin with. So, avoiding these habits would be more of a failure than actually giving this a good effort and then not accomplishing my goal. It now seems so obvious!

The Habits:

1. Drink 2 liters of water: For the most part, I sit at work with my 1L bottle of water and usually fill it up at least once...the weekends will be a bit tougher. I will track my water consumption more closely from now on.
2. Meditate: I haven't really been doing that regularly... so I will try this before I head to bed and will report in tomorrow.
3. One thing that made me happy today: Finally getting around to writing an entry and breaking the pattern of procrastinating. Yes!

Time to make this happen.

Mission Not Accomplished

Thirty half-days and one attempt at two new habits later... we discover that this was harder to do than we had anticipated. So here's our second attempt:

The Plan:

• Drink 2 Liters of water per day
• Meditate/Sit in a quiet place for 15 mins per day
• List 1 thing that made me happy today.

Why?:

• Drinking enough water is a basic human need, but we noticed that we weren't drinking the recommended amount of water each day. Instead, we drink things like coffee, artificial juices... anything but water. Proper hydration prevents fatigue, headaches, and can even alleviate some skin conditions. Read "The Benefits of Water." The benefits of water make sense and we'd be stupid not to take this simple step for improved health and quality of life.

• Meditating: With our lives getting more stressful and fast-paced everyday, we find ourselves living for the weekends and find our lives passing us by. That sucks. After a hard day of work, we plop ourselves down on a couch and spend a couple hours watching Heroes (which is getting really good by way!), the news (Barry Bonds indicted!!), or escaping the real world on the internet by stalking our friends on MySpace and Facebook. These activities are all fine and dandy in moderation, but we can't let them burn away our precious lives. We might realize how much these escape activities are keeping us from our real goals. 

• List one thing that makes us happy. We're tired of focusing on lack, complaining, being bombarded with negative news. We can't always change the events that occur around us, but we can decide how we react and deal with them. 

More to follow...

60 Half Days???

We had a clever idea...why not start a blog called "Thirty Days"! Well, it looks like someone else beat us to it. So, we've decided on the next best thing--the mathematical equivalent--"60 Half Days". Ha!

There's this idea floating around that habits can be formed in thirty days. Some say less. Some say more. We say 60 half days! Jokes aside, we've decided to test out the theory and this blog will chronicle our findings. We want to pick a few "healthy" habits to try out to see if firstly, they can become habits, and secondly, if and how these habits can benefit our lives.

The first of each month will bring a new habit for us to try out, and we hope as the habits start forming, they can become more challenging as well. Whilst we're not entirely sure what that entails right at this very moment, we look forward to finding out. So come join our habit-forming adventures, as 60 Half Days begins..now!