My 2019 Distillation

Since 2015, I’ve started to pick up this little practice of reflecting on the past year and envision the possibility in the future. Five years have passed and what a journey have I come through!

2019 feels like one of the most important years of my life. Graduated, joined Facebook, started to live on my own, and luckily met someone that I really, really love. I used to just list out everything and some goals for the next, but it could easily get pretty personal and doesn’t necessarily shows that I’m actively reflecting or thinking.

That led me to write this post. This time, instead of just simply reminiscing, I want to ask myself a question:

What’re the three things that you learned last year?

And here’s my answer.

Getting Comfortable at Being Uncomfortable

After almost twenty years in school, I finally graduated and joined workforce. The concept of being a full-time employee intimated me, and still does sometimes, because I’m dreadful of certainty - Working five days a week towards the end of my life makes me feel my life is done.

But obviously I didn’t realize how much challenge I could be faced with before I had the opportunity to feel bored. The barrier of speaking a foreign language, adjusting to the workplace culture of Facebook, navigating through the complicated codebase and various technologies, and constantly getting thrown off by imposter syndrome, none of which makes my life any easier.

But I was also fortunate to see how people around me thrived and that eventually became my inspiration. I went to village to observe and imitate what they do, but that means I had to go beyond my comfort zone and it’s never been easy. ThankfullyI had a tolerant team where I feel safe to try and fail, without having to be too self-aware. And every time I want to step up, I don’t have to hesitate just because I’m afraid of embarrassing myself. All in all, I started “faking” it. I faked, to do more public speaking, to own more than I was expected to, and to speak up during meeting…Eventually, things that I used to reckon as what makes me uncomfortable became part of my comfortableness. Even more, so did getting out of the comfort-zone itself.

It reminded me of the ending of S1 of Bojack Horseman, when Bojack was jogging uphill and finally got tired out and passed out on the ground, an old Monkey guy came by and said:

Every day it gets a little easier…But you gotta do it. That’s the hardest part.

The Only Constant Is Change

I started to lift weights since 2015 and the first year has been great. But ever since then I’ve been stagnating. I still kept going to gym but my size isn’t growing anymore and my physique not going anywhere better either. Looking back, the reason was mostly being I was mentally too lazy, to change my training routine, to adjust my diet, etc. And every time I went to gym, my body already had the exact expectation of what I was gonna do.

My body knew me too well.

And it wasn’t until earlier this year when I started to re-design my training program, re-learn fitness training and modern body building, started to study nutrition, supplements and all that. Changing made my body struggle, and brought pains, but also growth. Ever since then, I’ve been trying to bring at lease a bit change to my workout routine, that is as little as the gripping position, or tweaking postures, combinations, reps, sets, or adding other kinds of variations.

And I’ve astonishedly found out that with more stuggle I’ve come through, I enjoyed it a lot harder and I’ve felt much more pleasure. At the end of the day, this resulted in a better physique that I can hardly believe looking into the mirror.

No one expects change. Ross said “No one likes change!”. But change and pain bring us growth and that’s damn true.

Love Is the Most Wonderful Thing

I put this at the very end, not because it’s the least important but actually quite the opposite, as in I’m emotionally so deeply touched because of the latest relationship. I didn’t realize how being in a relationship with the right one makes you grow so much and become a better person yourself. Isn’t it the best?

Looking back, I’m always amazed about how love can be such unique feeling and plays out so wonderfully between two human beings. This feels exactly like the chemistry between us two. I’ve been constantly questioning myself “What on earth great things have I done to deserve her?” ever since we’ve been together. We care about each others’ feelings, share our deepest thoughts, unconditionally support each other and have built such trust to make me want to do everything good for her.

I love you, my sweetest girl. I’m so so thankful for having you and I really mean it. ❤️

What Will You do If You Weren’t Afraid?

2020 feels like a new start and I can’t wait for more amazing things to happen. I still want to share some of my goals in a succinct form, to keep myself motivated and hopefully inspire you.

As I’m thinking about it, I want to quote a pretty popular saying in Facebook:

What will you do if you weren’t afraid?

Still, I don’t want it to sound too ambitious, but hopefully each of them will look like something that needs a proper amount of effort to be realized. This will only be a very simplified bullet list of ideas as I’ll carve out the details later.

• Learn how to manage money more wisely. 💰
• Learn more about design and try some hands-on experiments. 🎨
• Moving in together with Lu. 🏠
• Attempt #2 to get the personal trainer certificate. 💪
• Start a podcast or another form of variation. 💻

I hope you have a wonderful new year with the people you care and love! See you in 2020!