They say that it takes 21 days to forget a bad habit, and 20 more to acquire a new one. It's got something to do with how our brains are hardwired to routine and the things we are used to, wether they are actions, mindsets, involuntary reactions or whatever is part of our life.
Having a positive mindset - or at least striving to have it - is an important part of our journey and, despite what our parents, close family and adults around us taught us when we were young and we inevitably grew up with, there comes a time when we must build our own convictions, create our own dogmas, design our own set of principles and, based on the information and experience we acquired in our journey, we must define who we want to be.
This little paragraph above holds some very important knowledge. Knowledge that we all amass sooner or later in life. Some of you may have reached this conclusion early on, and it will take some of us a little bit longer, some others will perhaps gain this insight on their last days. Either way, reaching this conclusion is key to start changing, to redefine who we are and what we want from life, to visualize - and then make it a reality - who we want to be and how we want to love, not only the people around us but also how to love ourselves.
One thing that I have struggled with over the past years is that I lack discipline. Without discipline there's no way that we can break a habit and, it's almost impossible to create new ones.
The secret path of learning is that one of unlearning. Most of us focus in learning new traits, to keep amassing information, to continue growing and stacking experience, but then most of the times we forget to unlearn that which we deem unnecessary or that which simply just doesn't reflect our mindset and way of living our life.
Learning to let go of old habits, to break toxic patterns, to discontinue negative behaviors, to get rid of hurtful mindsets and some times, to say good bye to people that substract rather than add to our life; all of these are concepts we simply don't learn when we are kids and once we are adults, let's not mention the fact that we don't know how to tackle them, we don't even know the idea of unlearning exists.
I'm having a coffee right now trying to spend some time with nature. I feel blessed. I found a small studio with my own kitchen and bathroom, surrounded by this garden - shared, but still great - for only one hundred bucks. Granted, it's not in a big city, there's hardly anything to do, everything is far away - which is convenient for me because I can walk everywhere and get some Actifit posts going - and I don't (or didn't when I got here) have any friends. Yet, the past few days have been amazing and probably the most peaceful I've had in the past 10 years.
I'm able to spend time however I want to, I have my sidekick Alai pictured below, I don't have to entertain people or interact with anyone I don't feel like, I've been drawing, writing in paper (oh yes, I missed that one), playing video games and focusing on my next step. Life is good, but I can only give myself this train of life because I spend 300 bucks a month. Either way, I feel blessed.
I've been using this time with myself to break old habits and create new ones, to let go of old patterns and come up with new ones, to get rid of weak mindsets and strengthen those that reflect my way of living.
Over the next few days I'll be sharing some of these breakthroughs, perhaps only the most impersonal ones as I don't mean to open up my personal life here, and what I learnt during the process, you get the drill.
In the meantime, here's a selfie of me, one of those I used to post a lot here along with my thoughts from a kind of posts.
