#alexa21days

[alexacancio-blog]

Minimalism Day 10: Everything

My best friend and I are doing a Minimalism challenge which you can check out here.

As mentioned, I didn’t follow the standard challenge of clearing out my whole space--I simply don’t have the time for it. (And I realize this post is very late from Day 9 but) I’ve realized indeed what I need or at least use regularly. 

Although I’m not the type to fall in love with a lot of material things, I admit there are times when I say I need something when I know I actually don’t need it. I’ve been reflecting on this statement from the Day 10 challenge over the past days:

How often do you say you need something? I need a new pair of shoes; I need to run to the store to pick up that new widget; oh my god, I need mo’ money!

Yes, I have said things like that. 

I need my own copy of that book. I need another piece of cake. I need more hard drives for my photos. I need the new One Direction CD. (For those who cringed...I am not ashamed. Hahaha.) I think this post comes at quite a perfect time because for Lent I’ve decided to give up “excess”. That generally means:

Not buying anything I don’t need. (Because let’s face it, we actually DON’T need more shirts, shoes, gadgets, etc)

Not eating anything beyond what I need (focusing on the simple foods, the healthy ones that my body NEEDS. Nothing more than that. Not even an extra serving of fruits if I’ve already had my fair share)

Not spending too much time on things that do not add value to my life (i.e. social media, watching TV or movies--unless it’s with friends and there is nothing else to do)

Normally a challenge like this, if done under my own volition, would stump me. I sometimes have a hard time pushing through with self-projects when I know I am accountable to no one but myself. I don’t disappoint anyone else. I don’t hurt anyone else. But this time around I made a commitment to a Higher Being.  That’s something that’s a bit tougher to break.

If I had to do even one of these challenges just for myself, I probably would’ve given in within the first two days. And admittedly, I did have some popcorn Saturday (Lord, we talked about this. In the moment, given my emotional anxiety, it was justified. Somehow.), which sucks a bit. But all the other days have not been as tough as I thought it would be.

I’ve managed extra servings of food, especially of the really delicious not-so-healthy stuff (like that frozen brazo cake from Sunday. My goodness.) I’ve spent my time away from my TV series and have been very productive in practicing my Italian, editing my photos, and doing my conservation research work. I also haven’t bought anything yet, which is pretty normal for me I guess. I’ve also left an empty box in my room where I can put things in every time I find that I don’t actually need it anymore. This will help me get ready for the succeeding days to donate, sell, etc. 

So for the first few days of Lent, I’m pretty happy with my performance so far. [Still sorry about the popcorn.] And I’m hoping this combined journey will help me understand what I really need and what other things in my life I truly value.

[alexacancio-blog]

Minimalism Day 8: Beliefs

I’ve maintained this belief about my life of it being meant for something bigger than myself. This makes sense given the things I’ve been doing with my career and the other things I want to do in life. Coming from my degree in Business Management, I wasn’t sure if I would be able to make things work out for me that way. You see, my passion is really with environmental conservation. It’s called me ever since high school, and now I’m pretty damn lucky that I’m in a job that gives me the opportunity to grow in my skills and to pursue my passion at the same time. It’s great stuff, and while I love it, I realize that I don’t practice this belief enough in the rest of my life. I try, trust me. But with the knowledge I have on environmental impact on various daily activities, I know there’s so much more that I can do. I know for sure this minimalism journey will help to reassess how much of a better environmentalist I can become.

I also have this belief that self-care plays a huge role in life satisfaction and productivity. Sounds professional and serious, but I believe this wholeheartedly. That’s why I try my best to keep my work from 8AM-5PM (expect for those rare OT moments where there just isn’t enough time in the day to do everything), exercise when I get home (hopefully 5 times a week), and sleep as long as I can. This has been a tough thing to learn AND live out because sometimes there isn’t enough in the day to make all of this happen.

Anyway I’m looking at these two beliefs and I realize that these might seem a bit contradictory, but it makes sense to me because you have to be able to take care of yourself in order to give your best in the thing that is bigger than you.

Sorry, I’m rambling.

I’ll share one last belief, and it’s something that I want to change. 

I make myself out to believe that if I try hard enough, I can make everything I want in my life to work out at the same time. Experience has proven otherwise, in forms of very sad life lessons. I, unfortunately, have the tendency to be stubborn. I convince myself that there’s a way to balance things out in my life and I’ll be able to keep every single aspect together. But from experience, I know I can’t have everything. I need to learn to prioritize, find out what is the most important for me at this point in my life and for my personal growth. Some things you can keep, that’s great. Some things you need to let go off for now, or set on the third, fourth, fifth priority for later.

Haven’t come to terms with that yet. Currently struggling with it now. I guess I convince myself that discipline will fix everything. Unfortunately, I don’t have much of that either. So we’ll see how this journey goes.

[alexacancio-blog]

Minimalism Day 6: Fear

My best friend and I are doing a Minimalism challenge which you can check out here.

To reflect upon fear for me is a tough thing...I fear a lot of things.

At this point in my life, my biggest fear is not meeting expectations. This is applicable to all things going on in my life right now, because I am being challenged to give at least my 100% in my responsibilities. For example...

At work, I’ve been given a new assignment that requires a good amount of new learning, financial computations and analysis (cringe), and research work beyond the internet. It’s not something I’ve done before, not even in school. At least, not on my own. But in my department, I’m the only one handling my own projects, so I have to get a grasp of things and really really really think things through so I don’t get my analysis wrong. And I am freaking terrified I won’t be able to deliver.

On the side, I am part of a group that’s preparing for a big competition this March 2016. I actually just got back from training at 11PM on a Sunday night. By this coming week, we’ll be training like mad until we get this down. I’ve never been in a competition outside of school-related stuff, and I also haven’t been attending training regularly to consider myself confident in this craft that I have loved for over 10 years. Yet here I am, expecting to give my all in these practices--and even practice beyond the training hours so I can excel. That’s how it should be, and I hope to make it work that way. But I crack under pressure sometimes, and for me to learn something in just a week...is definitely going to push me to my limits. 

With regards to my personal project, I’ve given myself a deadline and targets to complete every week, and as of tonight, I have not been meeting those deadlines. Which is also fine because there’s a big part of my project that I’m waiting for before I can move forward, but I want to get the other things done so once the other thing is ready, I can move forward quick. So...I just need to make time. And the worst thing for me right now is to let myself down. I want to meet the expectations I set for myself. So I must get this done.

I definitely must meet the responsibilities for my health, which requires me to 1) exercise regularly, 2) eat healthy, and 3) get good sleep. It’s a tough combination given all the things I’ve set for myself. Worst is the eating...I am so bad at it (as you might have read from Day 5). 

I also put pressure on myself with regards to my relationships in life. I’ve been dealing with a lot of internal personal conflicts over the past months that have pulling me back from doing what I need to do---whatever that need is. And I need to figure that out soon. I can’t keep delaying my decisions.

Pressure. Fear of failing. Fear of realizing I’m not that smart. Fear of realizing I’m not that skilled or talented. Fear of delaying this once again. Fear of my health affecting all aspects of my life. Fear that my laziness will overpower me. Fear that I’m not giving enough.

It’s really quite a lot. I know I need to take a step back, assess what the priorities are, and focus on just a few things now. Minimize. 

Otherwise...if I try to deal with all of these things at the same time, I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to follow through well. Besides, there are underlying fears to all of these aspects. But that’s a discussion for another time.

To add to the physical minimalism challenge, I was able to do the following today:

Put back some items into my desk that I think I’ll still need. The items have definitely reduced, though once I put a photo up of my desk, you might be surprised why it seems I still have a lot of things. I just feel like I’ll need them later on, but I’m always open to reducing later on. Either way, this is a good start. I gave up some things I’ve been holding on to, including my star wars keychains and this tiny colored pencils set that was given to me by my US pen pal back in high school.

The things I didn’t keep, I brought to the usual family lunch for my family to choose from. They just took what they wanted, so there’s much less for me to worry about. I’ll post photos soon.

[alexacancio-blog]

Minimalism Day 5: Things

Since there’s no activity for this day (and my past 2 days have been quite packed so I haven’t had the time to clear out other parts of my room), I’m going to focus on reflecting based on what The Minimalists talked about during their Day 5 thoughts.

It’s amazing to realize we often don’t need the things we think we need. And it’s equally amazing to consider the true costs of these things: everything we buy has extra costs associated with them, not just the prices on the price tags (the dishwasher from Day 4 is one example). They cost us money, which costs us time to earn. Then they cost us even more time, because we must use time to take care of them. Then they cost us even more money, because we must procure more square footage to house them all.

There are definitely a few items I thought I really needed or just really wanted that have collected dust over time. I’m not much of a shopper (in fact, I quite abhor the experience...), but there are a few things I regret buying because before, I wasn’t as conscious about the impacts of what I buy. As an environmentalist, I have to be wiser about my decisions.

But today, I’m not going to talk about the things I thought I needed. Instead, I’ll be talking about the food I eat because I want it.

To sum it up, my back is acting as a constraint in my life path right now, and so it is important to do all I can to:

Strengthen my back

Exercise regularly to keep my body strong

Eat healthy so I don’t put extra weight on that my back needs to handle

This means that health is an essential part of my life. I do well with the exercise part. I work out at least 5 times a week. Even I have to admit, that’s a pretty good routine for an average person. While this is a good habit to keep up, I can never seem to fully match it with a healthy diet. You see, I love my food. And I love them unhealthy. Problem with me is, I have difficulty not just controlling myself from eating unhealthy food; I also can’t stop the proportion of all this junk. I’m a “once I start, I can’t stop” kind of person. The irritating thing is, I KNOW this isn’t good for me. I already know what I NEED to do and what I NEED to stop doing.

Yet tonight, I binged away on pasta, quiche, and fries during my friend’s birthday party. Which sucks. Because the whole day, I controlled so well. I controlled from having a hearty breakfast in Refinery. I stopped myself from having popcorn in the cinema. I only had one round during the dinner buffet--and it was fairly healthy options at that. But tonight, when faced with free food and a lack of concentration due to social interaction, I gave in. So. Easily.

I didn’t need it.

I didn’t think things through. I didn’t give myself the opportunity to listen to my standard speech which makes me understand why I shouldn’t eat another serving of pasta, which is:

“You’ve been doing so well the past few days, and you know that eating this dish is not good for you.  Your health needs to come first, because the outcome of your health will affect the outcome of your dreams. Whatever you eat, you invest in your body. If you eat that plate of pasta, you’ll have wasted the past few days of good control. You’ll have wasted that cardio session you did this afternoon. You’ll have to make up for it with even more exercise--even though you know exercise can never fully compensate for healthy eating. So basically, you’ll set yourself back. You’ll set your goals back. And that plate of fucking pasta is just not fucking worth it.”

Damn I need to write this speech down.

So, now I need to figure out how to fuse minimalism into this aspect of my life. Minimizing the junk I eat and focusing on the essentials. 

I read this great article that’s been driving me pretty good (until tonight). You should check it out here. 

[alexacancio-blog]

Minimalism Day 4: Essentials

One To read more about the project my best friend and I are trying out, you can check The Minimalists’ website on their 21-Day Journey Into Minimalism.

While I didn’t follow the strict instructions for Day 3 to pack everything up in my place/room (since that’s the extent of my space in this condo), I did clean out my desk yesterday.

From this morning to tonight, these were the things I hypothetically would have pulled out from my filled-out boxes:

Toothbrush

Toothpaste

Shower supplies

Laptop

Office bag

One pair of slacks

One office top

Office shoes

Undergarments

ID

Charger

Book

Plate

Fork

Knife

Harddrive

So out of the probably 100+ things (including clothes, books, random trinkets) lying around in my room, I only used 16 in a day. That’s actually pretty cool. I could live without so many things...hopefully for the next days I’ll have the time to figure out which of my not-actually-useful things I can let go of.

For Day 4, I cleared out my shelf full of documents. 

It’s not going to be fun sorting through all of that over the weekend...

Yas, start of minimalism!

[alexacancio-blog]

Minimalism Day 3: Packing

To read more about the project my best friend and I are trying out, you can check The Minimalists’ website on their 21-Day Journey Into Minimalism.

The Packing Party concept is simple: pretend you’re moving to a new home and you have only one day to pack all your stuff.

Why a Packing Party? We wanted to transform this difficult undertaking into a “party.” Everything’s more exciting when it’s a party, right? Invite some friends over to share the fun!

This is definitely did not end up as a packing party because:

It’s a work night.

I started at 10:15PM.

I forgot to make an event out of it.

Also, I don’t live alone in this condo so I couldn’t pack up everything in this place. 

Doing this portion of the 21-day challenge during work nights was definitely not thought out at all. So given this and the aforementioned reasons regarding the packing party, I’ve decided to modify this to what would work for my single-room situation instead of what was on the page:

Again, pack everything, including the things you use daily (your soap, deodorant, kitchen utensils, etc.), and then unpack only the things you need during the next week. Need your toothbrush and toothpaste? Unpack them. Need your shampoo, conditioner, and body wash? Unpack them. Need your clothes for work? Unpack them.

After a week, you’ll notice the majority of your stuff still packed in boxes. Time to make some decisions: trash, donate, sell.

Oops.

Well, I’ll try my best to pack up the different parts of my room.

Between days 3 to 6, I’ve assigned certain areas of my room that I will (do my best) to completely clean out. 

For day 3, I have cleaned out my desk free of all items except my photographs (because as a photographer, those are things that are meaningful to me) and some gifts my mom gave me (she would kill me if she found out I got rid of these haha). Also, keeping my plant. (Check my post below for a side note on the awesomeness of plants!)

As proof of my commitment to Day 3, here are a few photos:

My desk before!

And after! But now more on the inside...

(This will be quite tough for me to get rid of things because this desk has SO MANY DRAWERS).

Voila! Let’s see how this goes!

On plants...

Plants Boost Productivity And Well-Being By 50% because of the carbon dioxide it absorbs and the oxygen it releases.

Keep a plant at your desk!

[alexacancio-blog]

Minimalism Day 2: Planning

It’s 1AM and I do not have much time for planning. Unfortunately. But I’ll do what I can now.

What is standing in the way of my musts?

My busy schedule, my tendency for laziness, some relationships, and definitely a long list of priorities.

When did I give so much meaning to my possessions?

I’m generally not the type of person who hoards things or buys too much. Being an environmentalist, I try to make educated choices about the items I need or absolutely must have so the environmental and social impact of the item I buy is as low as possible. However, I am a very sentimental person, and I have the tendency to keep letters, gifts, random things from the people in my life or from important events in my life. This is when I have difficulty parting with my possessions. Heck, I have at least 15 event-/high school-/college-related shirts that I use for exercising or sleeping. That’s far too many than I actually need, but I have a difficult time letting go of them.

What is truly important in my life?

My career dreams, my family, my friends, my well-being and health, my growth (intellectually, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally), and my belief in He whose greatness exceeds all.

Why am I discontented?

I am discontented because I often overwhelm myself with thoughts, problems, projects, ideas, priorities, etc. that are far too many than I can handle.

Who is the person I want to become?

I want to become a person who is disciplined, resilient, and hardworking. I want to exude passion and humility in everything I do.

I want to become a person who is selfless, generous, kind, and appreciative.

I want to become a person who is strong with follow through and excels in a few amazing things. I no longer want to be a jack of all trades, master of none.

How will I define my success?

Essentially it would be: Less anxiety, greater happiness.

Through this project, I define success under the following circumstances:

My focus is narrower but my dedication deeper.

I rid myself of unnecessary possessions and essentially declutter my life.

I discover more value in my being, my growth, and my relationships.

I pray more often.

I overthink less and trust in my decisions.

I spend less time on useless activities.

How will my life improve if I own less stuff?

I believe my life will improve through owning less things because I don’t base the relevance or value of my life on my possessions, and will therefore be able to open myself up to the smaller and grander things in life. It will give me more time, space, and effort to focus on the important aspects of my life. At the same time, I believe owning less things will make me less anxious.

[alexacancio-blog]

Minimalism Day 1: Decisions

My best friend so kindly agreed to do this 21-day journey into minimalism with me, which I discovered on The Minimalists. 

To summarize:

Minimalism is the tool that helped us simplify our lives by stripping away the excess so we could focus on what’s truly important.

That’s some pretty cool stuff to get into, I figured. Though I ironically did not give much thought into this, minimalism isn’t something to get into lightly. But here I am, and quite excited to try it. I’d really like to just live for the important stuff.

So Day 1 is about decisions, and I’m just going to post my output here...

Your only exercise today is simple: make your Must List. What are yourmusts? What must change? What has brought pain into your life? What will bring great pleasure? Take as much time as you need and write down all yourmusts.

MY MUST LIST

I must learn to make decisions (without overthinking).

I must choose my health over a mere moment’s desire of junk or laziness. Whatever I put in my body, I invest in my health.

I must do this now.

I must be more responsible and disciplined.

I must manage my sentimentality and live more for today.

I must love more bravely every day.

I must practice kindness with words and thoughts every day. (Especially to my mama)

I must invest more of my time on things that help me grow (research, reading, photography, practicing Italian, etc) instead of things that make me stagnant (watching tv, using social media) every day.

I must stop being vain for the purpose of feeding my ego. If I do things, it should be for me.

I must practice my religion every day.

I must be grateful every day.

So this is a rough draft...I realize doing this at half past midnight isn’t the best idea because I want to make this list good and accurate but I’m also sleepy. Haha so I will sleep and probably update this tomorrow.