Continuity over perfection

#282

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." -Aristotle

For three months after I started CrossFit, I kept waiting for the right conditions before I'd go: eight hours of quality sleep, good hydration, zero excuses lined up. That combination hardly ever lined up, so I rarely showed up either. It was irregular, sometimes twice a week, sometimes four times a week to catch up then burning out and skipping a week, then vowing to thrice a week but going at different times of day anyway. The days I went half-baked with less than 6-7 hours of sleep, I realized my cortisol ends up resetting after a while. So now I go regardless. Tired, dehydrated, running on four hours, whatever the day handed me. On Saturdays, when I actually get to sleep in and catch up in the afternoon, all of me thanks me for having gone and showed up at least.

Blogging taught me the same lesson. I'd sit on a post for weeks trying to get a sentence exactly right, and by the time I published it, I'd lost momentum on the next four ideas sitting in my drafts folder. With this year's commitment to myself to uphold weekly publishing on self-care, a slightly clunky post that goes out on Wednesday afternoon beats a polished one that never leaves the folder.

The two versions of me

There's the version who's still negotiating with the conditions: waiting for the right amount of sleep, the right mood, the right stretch of free time to do it properly. And there's the version who just does the smaller, messier thing on schedule. Same person, same goals, and only one of them actually keeps a streak going.

I used to think the gap between those two was discipline. Gritting my teeth through mornings and grinding through. Turns out it's mostly just the size of the bar I'd set for what counted as showing up. Lower the bar enough and willpower has no room left to matter.

Falling to systems

"You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems." -James Clear

One aspect of James Clear's research on habits is all about how motivation is unreliable, so what works is building a habit that survives a bad day. He calls this identity-based, rooted in who you are rather than what you want, which is why skipping it feels like betraying yourself instead of just missing a goal.

The compounding part that small and consistent beats big and rare, every time, given enough weeks, might sound boring. But boring is exactly why it works. The only thing that survives "every single day, no exceptions" for me is a lowered bar.

The new bar

Now a workout counts if I show up to the gym and work out for an hour instead of 90 minutes, at 60% of my capacity. A post counts if it says the true thing plainly, even when the sentence isn't singing or the words haven't fully scratched the itch in my brain. Some days I still catch myself waiting for eight hours of sleep and perfect hydration before I'll commit to anything. I just don't wait as long as I used to, and on the mornings I go anyway, tired and unprepared, some part of me is always relieved by the afternoon. I also realized I tend to regret not doing something more than doing it and having to pay the price for it later, like being tired the rest of the day and having to push through because of the workout, because deep down, I convince my brain that my body's better off for having done it.

Conflict and repair

#281

"The best fighter is never angry." — Lao Tzu

My partner and I had a disagreement a few weeks ago over something so small I'm almost embarrassed to write it down- it was about taking the trash out. But honestly, it doesn't matter what it was; what matters is that ten minutes in, we weren't actually arguing about the thing anymore. We were arguing about being right. Voices a notch sharper, and both of us digging into positions neither of us fully believed, just to avoid being the one who backed down first.

A day or two after the instance, during a moment of self-reflection, I pondered things like- what was I even defending during the argument? Was it the original thing or my ego stemming from my need to not be the one who folds first because of my belief to be in the right?

I used to think a good relationship meant fewer fights. Turns out one of its aspects is faster repair. The couples who never disagree aren't necessarily healthier. They often might be avoiding something, or one person has quietly stopped bringing things up at all. The actual skill isn't conflict-avoidance. It's knowing how to stay in the room, stay yourself, and still care about the person across from you while you're both a little annoyed.

There's a researcher named John Gottman who teaches at UW and has spent decades studying couples, watching them argue in a lab, tracking who stayed together and who split. His finding wasn't that stable couples fight less. It's that they're better at what he calls "repair attempts". These are small moves, sometimes just a joke or a hand on an arm, that de-escalate a fight before it turns into contempt.

Contempt looks like an eye-roll, a sarcastic jab, or mocking your partner's point mid-sentence. A repair attempt looks like the opposite: a joke, a hand on an arm, sometimes just admitting out loud that you're both being ridiculous. The couples who last aren't the ones without friction but rather the ones who know how to hit the brakes.

I'm glad to have become more aware about these things nowadays. The fix has almost become unglamorous- some days, it's a simple "can we start over." Other days it's even simpler: "I think we've shifted topics." My favorite ones are where one of us comes up with a clever joke or pun to diffuse the situation instantly.

What do you do in the ninety seconds after things get a bit fraught- Do you dig in, look for the exit ramp, or something else entirely?

Joy of movement

#280

Until about a year ago, movement was never really my thing. I wasn't into fitness or working out or even sports at a consistently competitive level. My parents did tai chi and yoga, but I was the kid with a book in her hand, not a jersey on her back.

Then I moved to the US and everyone kept talking about pilates. So I tried it. And it felt hard. Not in a good way but rather in a way that made me want to stop. One day my friend introduced me to CrossFit.  And then, thanks to the coaches, the community, and camaraderie, lifting heavy things became addictive. I felt strong. It felt empowering.

But CrossFit isn't the only movement that found its way into my life. Yoga has been good too. Especially the slow, controlled vinyasa flows. Though balancing poses still require way more focus from me than I'd like to admit. My body's still learning what stability feels like.

Dancing has always been fun. I move differently when music is involved. But I've had knee issues forever, so there's always this low-level fear. That same caution kept me away from sports as a kid. My knees have taught me to move carefully. CrossFit helped me build quad strength that stabilized muscles around my knees, keeping it in place.

And then there's running. I was never a cardio person. Never understood the appeal. But this year, I signed up for my very first run: a 5K. Trained for about 2 months for it. The overall final run felt a bit difficult, but since I had no time goal for myself, I was very happy when I finished the race well under an hour. The medal still hangs in the middle of my living room and I feel inspired by it every time I look at it. I've also started enjoying running way more than before and say yes to the opportunities that present themselves.

All this to say - this is what joyful movement feels like. Not punishment or obligation, and not because I'm trying to earn something or fix something. Just the simple pleasure of feeling your body move the way it's designed to move. Slow, controlled, intentional. Feeling your muscles engage. Feeling your breath. Feeling the ground under your feet.

It's different from what the fitness world sells you. There's no before-and-after. No metric to hit. No goal to achieve. Just the sensation of being in your body and actually enjoying it. The strength in your legs after a long walk. The calm that settles over you during a slow yoga flow. The lightness that comes after you've moved intentionally.

Your body is yours. You get to move it for pleasure. Not punishment. Not because you're supposed to. Because it feels good. Because you want to. Because your body is capable and alive and sometimes that's reason enough.

Memorabilia as self-care

#279

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Somewhere in a box in my closet, there's a card made of pistachio shells.

One of my older cousins had colored the top of each one, painstakingly, shell by shell, and glued them into place to spell out "All The Best". She had made this for my tenth grade board exams. The kind of exam where the whole extended family collectively holds its breath for the first time.

I don't remember much about studying for those exams. I remember the card.

In that same box: a letter from my younger cousin, back when she was still learning her letters — literally. She didn't know cursive yet, so in my reply, I wrote out the whole alphabet for her, looping and slanted, showing her how each letter connected to the next. She wrote back with a drawing tucked inside. Two stick figures holding hands. Big sister, little sister, her handwriting rather neat and coherent for a three-year-old. I can't exactly describe what I feel when I look at it. I've tried to find the word and I can't. Maybe it doesn't need one.

The box also contains gifts from my girl-cousin duo at my bachelorette, the notes from all the birthday gifts my Dad has given me over the years, and origami cranes a tour guide in Japan folded for us on our last day, making it one of the highlights of our trip. Small things creating big waves. 

Over time, an item became a folder. A folder became a box. And soon, it became several folders inside an ever-growing bigger box. I used to revisit the box once a year and wonder if I'd had anything that I wanted to get rid of as part of "Kon-mari"-ing the house. But every year, the answer would be a hard no, since all it would do is make me feel valued and loved and grateful for my family, friends, and experiences in life.

There's a concept in psychology called attachment theory. It's the idea that humans need a "secure base," something or someone that reminds the nervous system it's safe, it's held, it belongs. Usually that's a person. But objects can borrow that job too. The pistachio card isn't just paper, color, and shell. It's a younger version of me being told, in the most literal glued-together way possible, that someone rooted for her.

Marie Kondo asks if a thing sparks joy right now, hands on it, this exact moment. Most days, I'm on board. But some things don't need to spark anything today to matter. The cursive letter doesn't spark joy on a random Wednesday in my closet. It's a record of two sisters learning each other's handwriting, and that's enough of a reason to keep it.

I no longer assess this box on what item earns its keep. Rather, I feel a sense of pride when the box gets bigger because to me, that's what an accumulated life looks like: a slow collection of little things people didn't have to do, but did anyway.

I imagine this box a few years from now. Heavier. Fuller. More folders than it has any business having. Still full of pistachio shells and cursive letters and cranes from a woman in Japan I might never see again.

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." -Maya Angelou