This is part 2 of 2 about our overly ambitious way of making New Year's Resolutions for 2021.
We've divided our resolutions in 4 areas with Epic Mission Statements and all!
- Job: Leaving Earth's Gravity
- Fun: Enjoying the Ride
- Body: Building our Temples
- Soul: Expanding our Stories
How we think about focusing on the journey and how we set the mission in Part 1. Here comes our resolutions on the last two areas - Body & Soul.
Body: Building our Temples
Keeping the ambitions realistic
As said in the beginning, we are very keen on training and fitness, both of us.
In the last two years we've improved a lot in our fitness (increasing muscle-mass while staying lan, hitting records on our running). But still - let's make it a focus.
We've just put in a time goal, of 9000 minutes of deliberate training. And topped it up with at least 3 times 2 mile crawls. We like swimming. Running comes natural.
If we keep that up, we probably can pull of the odd 42 km run as well.
Soul: Expanding our Stories
So the last area. Perhaps the most nebulous one, but on equal terms with the rest. What stories do we tell ourselves about ourselves? And, more importantly, what stories do we tell ourselves that we are NOT?
A question worthy of exploration.
So in the search for expanding our stories, we put things like:
- get a lifestyle / work-life coach
- take the fearless and tougher choice 2 times
- at two social events, having a (tasteful) focus that is 180 degrees contrary to our main personality traits
- identify three stories we tell ourselves that diminishes us
- improve 1 language
As many non-English speakers do, we already speak a bunch of languages, but why stop there? To a certain extent, as Goethe puts it, those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own. And perhaps less about the world as well. If we think of where we will land, our story will probably include a touch of Socrates cosmopolitan - he who is at home everywhere and nowhere.
Antinous German is not quite were it should be, so he should basically be able to have a conversation in the end of the year. He will aim for reading four books and listening to four audiobooks. Lucilius Mandarin is rusty, so he will focus on building vocabulary and basic sentences, and should be able to survive everyday situations in Mandarin at the end of the year.
A word about that thing about going counter to our personality traits. It sounds strange. It should sounds strange!
Two Examples:
- For Lucilius, who naturally is very goal and result-focused, this means going to a social event, outside of work, with the sole purpose of being really nice to everyone. No other results needed, no learning telling mingling with ulterior motives.
- For Antinous, who naturally is a very likeable person, it will mean putting his own will in the centre of a social event and make something happen that just depend on that he wants it. So it's "Expanding our stories" that have snuck into this category a little bit as well.
What about that tougher choice? It's about at least twice taking a choice where we first feel like "nah, this is nothing for me" and say "yes, I'll do it!". It's probably related to worklife, but not necessary. The idea is to push us to expand our story of who we tell ourselves that we are.
We will also try to get a coach this year. We've found a way to finance that, so it's not as expensive as it sounds. We will try to use the coach to identify a few stories that we tell ourselves that diminishes who we are. And just being open to getting new perspectives and ideas.
Let's see how this works out for us, but we hope this way 2021 will become more intentional for us.
What are your missions and how do you go about to reach them?
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