Goals for 2024:
I think this year (2023) was pretty epic when it comes to my social and health woes. Again, I wouldn’t say I’m there yet, but this year, finally I’m so so close, so close, I can see the finish line. To be more clear, and I think I might have already mentioned it elsewhere, but one of my main goals was to get rid of my social fears and lead a great social life. And this year was the year that I did many things in social contexts that I would have been shit scared of when I was younger but instead I was confident and I just killed it.
So, the cool thing is that my growth has stopped being confused. I think over the last year I cycled through so many habits, and eventually I kept coming back to the same ones maybe just in slightly different forms. So I have a cool idea: this year’s review will be oriented towards those daily habits that I picked up and how I did in them. Here we go.
Great Social Life:
I have not yet been able to come up with a better name for this habit. For the most part I used to call it BE (behavioral experiments) to indicate that I need to do the so called behavioral experiments to test my social fears, but I only recently came to the realization that overcoming social fear is just one facet of having a great social life. In most cases you not only need to be rid of social fear, but you also need to actively socialize and put effort into it. So now instead of calling it BE I’m giving it the more generic name “Social”.
So what is the success metric for this daily habit? For the most part of this year it was of course been something like BE: that is, “did I do something that I was scared of in a social context?”
And so as I mentioned, I think that is just not enough. In fact, one would have a more fulfilling social life if instead of facing their fears, they were just more open to talking to people in general whether they were scared or not. Leaving no social task beneath them. Putting out as many lines out there. Making as many friends, making as many plans, and just going through your day to day life building connections and maintaining relationships.
So over time, and infact actually, only over the last few days/weeks I have been made to realize that while overcoming the fear to flirt with a hot girl at a club is great and will give you a great competitive edge that most guys don’t have, what’s much more important is to have a base of social life, where you’re never really truly alone if you don’t wanna be. You’re always out there exploring and enjoying. And the cool thing about this is that it also breeds into you a non-neediness that will actually make people feel even more comfortable around you. Because you are not desperate, you are just generally speaking very outgoing and explorative and risk-taking, etc. and only say when you see a hot girl, you flirt with her. So it’s not as needy and desperate as just wanting sex, it’s more like, you have a great life, and a woman walks into it, and so you treat her the same way as you do every else.
Ok, anyway, so that was my recent realization, but of course, that means that I spent the rest of my year not doing this, I was mostly focusing on my social fears. And since this is a social forum I cannot exactly say the exact things I did, but I can give an over-arching few of the fact that I did really well. I pushed through my fears in group situations, I pushed through my laziness to go out there and take part in events. I pushed through the biases that other people who knew me from earlier had of me. And so now my entire identity has changed. If you meet me now, you will see me as essentially a very socially confident person. Because that’s literally who I am right now. And I have an entire log of what I did in terms of BE this year.
Looking at the log, it seems that I actually starting doing this at the end of May. So, end of May 2023, so let’s count, starting from April to December, would be 8 months. I did 8 months of so called behavioral experiments. It sounds good, but the truth is that I did not nearly do as much as 8 months of BE every single day because that would be 8*30 = 240 behavioral experiments. Instead, as I look into my habit tracker, it says I have ticked for only 128 BEs in those 8 months. So effectively speaking, I only did BEs for ~53% of the days. Which sounds pretty good honestly I was expecting less, but still it’s not as good as 100%. Of course all of this is pretty muddy, so for example there were days were I did the bare minimum and called it a day, and there were days where I moved heaven and earth in terms of my social confidence and that still counts as 1 but anyway, in the end what matters is I made signifuckingcant progress, not just, yeah it looks ok, more like bro you’re a different person.
So that was the year in review for the “Social” habit. But what now about it. This is the most ambiguous and the most important habit ever, ever since I truly started tracking things, this is the one habit that I’ve never really dropped because it affects me so so much. Anyway, since this habit is so broad and multi-faceted, I need to write what I’m gonna do from now on for this particular habit.
So what now?: (social circle + social courage)
As I mentioned earlier, I think what I need to do now, is somehow incorporate building a social life alongside building social courage (seek and you shall find, break the fucking matrix).
What I’ve seen is that most people who have a good enough social life are nowhere near as daring as I am socially probably but they have invested into it from a very long time, so they have a circle, they have systems in place and most people are very protective of those systems, nevertheless if everything broke down they don’t have the skills to fix that kinda stuff.
Anyway, where I’m tryna lead with that is, the daily success metric for this habit has now changed from “do something social you’re scared of everyday” to instead “make social plans for today”. I know it’s a bit vague and ambiguous right now but it is what it is. So the goal for this habit going forward will be, at least, at the very base what I’m gonna do is every single day, I’m going to find a way to meet people new/old and I’m going to find ways to talk to them and chill out. On top of that, if an opportunity presents itself such that I can also build social confidence I’m gonna do that. Doing weird things in social settings that will result in me getting rejected etc. to make sure I desensitize myself to it and with less emotions then I can perform better and take more action, take more shots.
When it comes to social confidence, you can start with exposure therapy. You can start with something as small as going to a club for the beginning. You don’t have to do anything else. If you are just starting off just going to a club will be difficult and axiety inducing. Over time it will become the new norm for your brain. Then take up the next thing, and so and on so forth. But it is only when you go to a club and interact with people that you realize that social proof / social circle matters.
Final System for 2024: (actually already started this / starting some stuff as soon as possible.)
Social: (2024)
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday: Social Circle Building.
colleagues, neighbours, sports, flatmates.
planning, social apps, service workers.
events, work events, classes, etc.
call people.
Friday, Saturday, Sunday: Social Courage Building.
clubs, bars, picking up hot chicks.
flirting, etc. going out having fun.
travel and meeting new people.
meetups, etc.
System and Success Metric:
for each of the two types of activities:
log each task: log the exact thing (and quality?) you did concisely in your notes (one note for social courage, one for social circle in your apple notes app on your iphone.)
success tick: if you did at least one activity (social circle on weekdays or social courage on weekends) put a tick on ticktick daily habit tracker.
social courage supremacy flexibility: so the thing is, there will be weekdays when you might magically stumble upon on opportunity to test social courage. so if you do that that will also count as a successful tick. however, the reverse is not true. that is, you cannot sit on the weekends and do nothing that requires pushing your boundaries. so go fucking get it tiger.
Diet: (2024)
Every single day: eat well.
(chew a lot and chew well, drinks lots of water, eat well - not less, eat fruits, eat protein, eat vegetables, don’t eat things that your body doesn’t like, don’t eat processed or sugary food beyond the bare minimum to keep yourself from not going of the rails, etc.)
should i try kenko life. wasn’t it too less that i was ordering bad stuff at night? what’s the solution to that? what’s the solution to mindless junk eating at night: mindset and eating well enough during the day. ie part of it is psychological but also schedule, plan, time, quantity of meals should be such that you are not ordering at night. this could mean maybe something like eating dinner late or in a bit more quantity so you don’t get hungry but at the same time even after eating, if you are feeling sad at night you might still cheat without being hungry so there the psychological factor comes in and you have to tell yourself if you’re not hungry at all you are not gonna eat junk.
Gym (Success Metric): (2024)
Monday, Wednesday, Friday: Do a Full-Body Workout.
Yoga (Success Metric): (2024)
Every single day: 30 minutes asana, 10 minutes pranayama. (Preferably in the morning at 7 am.)
Walk (Success Metric): (2024)
Every single day: 7500 steps.
ok, now some of what happened (in 2023):
Ok too much self-improvement notes (lol thats what i like bro dont judge me i genuinely liek it), will note some random things that happened this year.
Went to Bali.
Going to coorg for new year.
Shifted to another place in BLR.
Went on the BLR metro for the first time lol.
Cut my hair short after 4 years maybe.
Office got shifted to another place.
Went to Dharmashala with fam for bday. went to palampur as well.
Improved a lot when it comes to health, fitness, fashion, body language, confidence, etc.
Started properly going to the gym for the first time. Should’ve started sooner.
Became an apple boi. have a phone, watch and airpods now. Though i think android is better when it comes to the software ecosystem and app choices etc. but won’t be switching back anytime soon i guess, don’t wanna focus too much on tech.
read elon’s walter isaacson biography, i think that book really changed my trajectory more than any self-help book ever did. honestly, if you want that pure fucking drive and courage and insanity, read that book. it will boost you up. it made my mind open up to the fact that i was just a loser and making excuse, this guy elon musk as maniacal. he loves risks. he loves chaos. he takes action, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. yes i typed all that didnt copy paste. anyway, i don’t read much books anymore but this guy and they way he handles fear and risk and action is phenomenal, do read it.
went to some easy hike with bunch of college friends.
went to bunch of meetups and shit. (or maybe not as many as i was thinking)
shifted focus from losing weight to losing fat gaining muscle and eating nutrionally well.
reading all this that i’ve just written i feel like: a big goal for 2024 should be travelling a lot. (this can come under the social habit)
went back home for 1 month. in hindsight should’ve stayed for shorter duration even though i love my family, i did atrophy a bit on my systems and it was non-negligible and honestly better to meet family for shorter durations maybe more frequently here and there rather than too long at once. it completely destroyed the social progress i was making.
i dont know whether i did it this year (now that i thought of it i did) but i’ve stopped posting on ig. i have decided im gonna live irl. screens are good i think if you’re learning something, but posting on ig was mostly dopamine hit. if i build an irl life thats amazing, and there comes an amazing moment that i have to share, i will share it but honestly the other way around, that is posting on ig as the root cause not the consequence is not good i believe, we’ll see. I will still of course keep taking photos in my phone as memories for myself to look at.
went to nullcon goa. talked to a bunch of new people. was good.
now that im looking thru my old photos (to come up with things to put here) with my longer hair, i feel i look better now.
lost a bunch of weight that i wanted to lose…. this was around april-may i think. i was hovering around early 80s for almost two years at this point and then since then im around 74-75. idk whether i should lose more weight or not. anyway the goal right now is not to focus too much on weight rather having a good diet and gym and see where it goes, ie, whether i should bulk or cut. idk anything, we’ll see.
didn’t go anywhere abroad this year except bali. will need to make abroad trips from next year ig.