How I Changed My Life (Pre-POL 2023-2024)

Before we begin I’d like to make a disclaimer: This post is going to be much more personal than any of my other posts. To me, this was more than just a PGP project, it was an evaluation of my life, and an exploration of what makes me happy.

Hello! My name is Daniel, and this is how I changed my life. This was partly my Blog Post for the PGP 10 project titled: “New Year, New me!”, but I also decided to make it a little more than that. This post will explain how I interpreted the project, and what I gained from it.

Stage One: Clearing Backlog

The first step to taking control of your life is evaluating what you want to keep, and what you should get rid of. In Class we did an activity where we organized and re-organized the physical, digital and mental areas of our lives.

When organizing the Physical areas of your life, you’ll hopefully notice two things. Being organized will add clarity to your daily activities, as well as make you feel more productive. Especially if you organize things as they get messy, instead of waiting until the end of the week or even later. The discipline of making things neat and tidy can help you focus better, as working in a clean environment in which you have control can help you be more creative and thoughtful, but it really depends on the person. For some people, organization works really well, but for some, there are more effective ways of achieving that. The same can be said about digital organization. It might be more worth your time if you spend more of your day in the digital world, but for some people it just might not be necicary. After all, these practises aren’t end-all solutions to problems, but things to try and may help.

In my opinion, the most important area to clear is your mental space. What goes on in your head affects what you actually do, and having a clear idea of your goals will help you achieve them. Being stuck on things in the pasts, as well as things that don’t actually matter to you will just distract you from the things you genuinely want to achieve. I don’t remember where I heard this from, but there was this video I watched that talked about goal setting. “Pick twenty-five things you want to achieve in your lifetime. Now pick the five you want most. Those five are your life’s goals, the other twenty are your greatest distractions.” The numbers may not be exact, but it’s not meant to be. There are lots of small things in life that you think you want, but are really just distractions and don’t really matter to you as much as you think.  It’s not to say that you can’t pursue smaller passions and goals, but to be aware of what you put your time and energy into.

Stage Two: Building Habits and Systems

Your habits and systems are what make you who you are. They are either what helps you achieve your goals, or what drive you into the dirt. At the end of the summer and the start of the school year, I’m gonna be honest I had a lot of bad habits preventing me from getting things done. I was constantly spending way to much time watching YouTube, and playing videogames. I would never get to sleep on time, which not only made me extremely tired the next day, but I’d often find myself late to class or activities in the morning. Being exhausted all the time was also decreasing my performance while Rock Climbing, which was hurting my self-esteem a little bit. It was really frustrating that I didn’t seem to be improving at all, even though I was training so hard. It took me a while to realize that it was because of the bad habits I had outside of the gym.

Screen Time and Distractions

The first two things I tried doing to manage my time were using the apps “Things” and “Stoic“. Things has really helped me stay on top of my assignments. Every time I have something I need to do, I write it down in Things and I almost never forget it. At the start of the year, I was using some Repeating To-Dos in for all the things I wanted to do daily. This didn’t work as well as I hoped, as they quickly just ended up being a bunch of boxes to check off everyday, without me actually doing them. The other app I started using is Stoic. Its a mental health tracker that I used for journaling, and daily mood check-ins. I found with Stoic I was getting the same issues as with the Repeating To-Dos in Things. It would eventually lose its meaning and be something to click off at the end of the day. I still use Stoic to do check-ins, I just do them at random times of the day and whenever I’m feeling stressed.

As a way to try and limit the amount of time I was spending on screens, I turned on some settings on my Ipad to put limits on certain apps that I was wasting way to much time on. After using these limits I’ve been watching way less YouTube, and playing meaningless games on my Ipad has transitioned into having game nights with my friends in which we bond and have a more social based interactions with Video Games. This change in the way I’ve been playing Video Games has had decent impact on how Video Games make me feel. Instead of being a distraction that I waste time on, its something that feels relaxing and doesn’t make me feel bad afterwards.

Focus and Well-Being

There were a five different activities that we tried as a class with the goal being to increase our well-being and happiness. We did a different activity each day for three weeks, reflecting on them as we went. The way we did them in class didn’t really work for me, but when I started to do them in my own way, I realized just how helpful they were. The five activities we did were Meditation, Conscious act of kindness, Exercise, Journaling and “Three Gratitudes”.

Meditation is something that really grew on my over the course of this project. I started doing it in the evening before I went to bed. I chose this time because I wanted to make sure I was calm and relaxed before bed. Once I started doing it more often, I found that it was also very helpful in the morning. Being nice and calm before my first class at school has helped me make more mature decisions in class, and has helped me focus better during lectures. The best meditation session I’ve ever had was abut 30 minutes before a climbing competition. I felt so unbelievably calm and collected that my comp strategy was near perfect. I ended up comfortably winning the competition, which was something that I was very proud of. I think that meditation works best for me when its not part of a routine, but a tool I can chose to use when needed. To me, it loses its power when its mindlessly repeated.

I already do a ton Exercise, but I had never really looked at how it affects my mind. I only really started taking exercise seriously in Grade 9, and ever since then I’ve noticed I have a lot more grit and perseverance than before. Something I’ve noticed in specific is that I’ve been able to work on homework assignments for longer periods of time. Part of this might be because I’m getting older, and hence I’m maturing. But I do think that working out has played a role in how I think when it comes to overcoming challenges. I also noticed that exercise just makes me feel more productive. I feel ten times better about my day if I worked out, or went for a run. If all I you was sit around all day, it doesn’t make you feel very great. The problem I’ve started running into is that the more exercise I do, the worse I feel when I’m not doing it. I think it’s because the more I’ve been benefiting from it, the difference between doing it and not doing it is larger, making me feel way worse, even though it’s not actually any different. Its kinda weird, and hard to explain. Thats not to say that benefiting from exercise is a bad thing, it just means that my mindset needs to change from being “Someone who always exercises” to “someone who trains and does exercise”.

Stage Three: Not Messing It Up (The biggest step)

The hardest part of any routine is lasting more than like two weeks. Like seriously, 90% of all self-improvement journeys fail because something changes that they can’t adapt to. Becoming someone who doesn’t fold in the face of adversity will make your life more enjoyable regardless of what comes your way.

To be honest, I’ve only just barely passed this step myself. It’s taken me a while to find out what works for me and what doesn’t. Everyone goes through a different process, but here are the things that I recommend if you want to succeed in your journey. Not all of them will apply to you, but they’re just things to keep in mind in order to stay on the right track.

Today’s hardships are tomorrow’s triumphs. Remember that if whatever you’re doing now is difficult, uncomfortable, or scary, tomorrow you’ll look back at those moments with pride. If you don’t try your best, and push your limits, you’ll regret it the next day. Especially if you’re trying to avoid doing something, like Drinking, or Eating Junkfood, or whatever it might be. It may feel good now, but that dopamine is gonna be gone in the morning, and you’ll be left with just the negative repercussions.

Stop making start dates. Every time you say “I’m going to start meditating once 2024 starts” or “in two weeks time I’m going to start waking up early” you’re actually just telling yourself that you’re not ready. If you’re taking something seriously, start immediately, Let me explain. Let’s say that the choice you’ve made is that you’re not going to drink soda anymore. Then, you say that you’re gonna start next week, and that you’re gonna enjoy one last week of soda. What you’re subconsciously doing is telling yourself that soda is still going to be a part of your life, making it way harder to stop drinking it. It’s showing that subconsciously you still value how soda makes you feel over its effects on your health. When you stop or start something immediately, you embrace your new change, and it becomes permanent in your mind. When you set start dates, you do things as if there are end dates. You subconsciously act as if your new change is temporary, even if thats not what you wanted.

People who tell themselves they CAN, and people who tell themselves that they CAN’T are both correct. When you tell yourself that you can’t, or that you’re not that good, you believe it. It’s not to say that you should recognize the level and abilities that you’re at, but you should never say that you can’t get better, because when you say that, it becomes true.

My Reflection On The Project As a Whole

I know I didn’t talk about the work we actually did in the project very much, but thats because to me, the specifics don’t matter. “New Year, New Me” is about making ourselves aware of how our habits affect our productivity and happiness. We participated in activities and organized different areas of our lives, not to immediately fix our problems, but to give us a starting point. Highschool can be really tough if you’re not prepared, and having the knowledge to make it easier for ourselves will carry out and help us throughout the rest of our lives. Doing daily reviews may help some people plan out there day, and it might not work at all for others. But the reason we did them was to teach us the importance of having control in your life, and being able to adapt to all the obstacles that life is going to throw our way. If you’re living your life and it makes you feel good no matter what happens, you’re succeeding.

The Actual Requirements For This Post:

The final product for this project was some sort of representation of the growth we’ve made in this project. After considering this for a while, I decided to make a drawing to act as a road map to the things I want do and achieve in the future. I chose this because it represents the main idea I’ve been following ever since this project, which is to make sure each day I spend on this earth is purposeful and is progressing me towards the things I want to achieve. It can all be boiled down to at the end of the day asking myself “If I lived like this every day for the rest of my life, would I feel both for-filled and satisfied with my accomplishments? Would I be proud of my time on this earth?” And if the answer is “no”, I know something needs to change. This road map will act as a reminder of who I want to be in the future, and act as a reminder of what I need to do to get there. That way my future-self isn’t some I want to be, but someone I’m going to become.

To Wrap Things Up

To be honest this project was different than anything else I’ve ever done in PLP, which is why  I spend so much time writing this post. I feel that the message behind this project is just worth talking about. Whether you’re an athlete, or find school or work stressful, or for whatever reason have decided that you want to take control of your life, I wish you the best on your self improvement journey. Thanks for reading.