Setting Up Systems
With the beginning of a New Year, a lot of us are feeling a little push to set goals, intentions and think about what we can achieve in the next year. Resolutions may not work for some (and breed toxic positivity in a way) or put an unrealistic pressure on people making some feel that they will become a different human starting new year's day, which isn’t quite possible. I feel that we always have time to reinvent and reflect on ourselves. Everyday is truly a new day and a fresh start in every aspect of life. Personally with my venus in virgo especially, I have a tendency to always write goals, lists and entries in my journal of ways to better myself or things to work on and organize. Flipping through pages of my journal I stumbled upon an entry I made last year titled ‘Setting up systems’.
For a while I was doing straight up resolutions and goals that were so open and broad, making it hard to realistically achieve. Scheduling and writing out a calendar or bullet journaling didn’t really work for me as well since I couldn’t stick to it in my everyday life. I was about to give up. I thought to myself ‘hey, maybe goals just don’t work for me anymore’. This left me feeling a bit lost and unable to grasp what I truly wanted my future to look like and what I wanted to achieve. Was I going anywhere in life at this point? All the big questions started pitter-pattering in my head about life's purpose and what I was here for.
When I started to spiral into oblivion, I decided to purchase Ram Dass’ ‘Be Here Now’. I won’t go too deep into it, but damn, this book really got me. I was in a time of uncertainty, feeling like my energy and creativity was blocked and I had let go of most of my passions. I delved right into this book letting it consume my whole being for the two days it took me to finish it. After completing it I felt as if a weight was lifted off my shoulders. I felt light, filled with eagerness and positivity. I think I may have had a small partial ego death at that point.
Quick note: I want to acknowledge Buddhism and it’s creator Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) and it’s origin in India.
My key takeaways from this book based on Karma buddhism, ego and Ram Dass’s journey with it were to put it simply: -No one is putting you under a microscope -You are literally just a human and no one really cares about your bullshit -Material possessions literally mean nothing and do not make your worth -You can be the most technically educated, but that doesn’t mean shit either. -Worrying about the future won’t get you anywhere. -JUST RELAX
This is when I realized, I need to stop worrying about where I'll be in 10 years, because I have no control of it and projecting all these unrealistic goals will burden me more than help me. A lot of this book also touches on the process of thinking and taking in perspective. At this point I trashed all my old resolutions and goals, tried to curb my shopping addiction and connection to materialistic things (still a WIP) and started tackling my journey with my insecurity and shyness. I felt empowered to be myself and let that take me where I'm meant to go. Embark on my own ‘Sadhana’ (spiritual journey). This got me thinking into what ways I can hack my brain into setting myself up for success, which brought me to systems.
If you think about systems, which by definition is:
“a set of things working together as parts of a mechanism or an interconnecting network.”
That's practically our brains in a way, right? I’m no neuroscientist, but I know our brains constantly send signals throughout. I delved into what my usual thinking habits are, which due to my ADD is ALL over the place, i’m usually thinking scattered thoughts with no structure. If I could set up a framework and way of thinking to gain more perspective and understanding into the root of what I am trying to work on, I can work through my scattered ADD thoughts. So I started to create thinking systems.
I categorized my life into sectors. Body, Mind and Food. Those are the things I mainly wanted to work on and explore. After figuring out my sectors I decided to create a thinking process for them. The important questions to ask myself to get to the root of things.
This is what I wrote. Keep in mind this is ever evolving and always changing and was right after I finished “Be Here Now” so now I was in a deep karma buddhism trance.
In conclusion, this helped me a lot. In no means am I asking myself these questions everyday or referring to it with every thought comes into mind, but I like to keep it in the back of my mind when i’m feeling a bit chaotic. If you made it this far, thank you for giving me your time to spill my thoughts. Let me know if maybe this works for you, or if you have any feedback on it.
By Anna Zeltins










