Issue No. 32

Every Sunday, I do one thing: reorganize my life. It's a meditative process. First, I decide that the entire day will be just for myself. Monday marks the start of the work week, so I need to have a full rest day. I take my computer and type in five categories:

1. Digital

2. Social

3. Health

4. Financial

5. Mental

The goal is to identify all the "concerns” in each category and eliminate those that do not serve my main goals. For example, under Digital, I clean my computer and phone from clutter such as photos, videos, and files. I try to reorganize them and remove the apps and tools I no longer use. In Social, I evaluate my interactions with different types of people, be it intimate, friendship, or colleagues, and decide which relationships to nurture and which ones to cut off. For health, I assess my diet, workout volume, and vitamin intake to see the results in body composition for possible improvements. In Financial, I review all my expenses from the previous week and decide which ones to stop spending on. In Mental, I list down things I have no control over and consciously forget about them to focus on the ones I can control. I also cut off habits, hobbies, behaviors, and attitude issues that I recently became aware of.

What I do every Sunday is a practice I call a "life audit."

Do you remember when Socrates said, “the unexamined life is not worth living”? Well, this is the modern way to examine your life. We are full of clutter, both physically and mentally. Just look at your room right now. Which objects have been standing there with no purpose? How many of your clothes and shoes have you not worn for a long time but still hang idle in your closet waiting for infestation? How many papers, stationery, snacks, and books are there just occupying space? Why are they there? We don't ask these questions, and it shows how much we do not care about what we feed ourselves. Of course, we cannot think about it every single day, and that's why a once-a-week regime is what I recommend.

Go audit your life. See what has become of it every week so you can track your progress. There are only 52 weeks in a year. If, after 52 weeks, your progress in life hasn't changed that much, maybe you need to change your tactics.

For many years, we've been led to believe that taking in more things and thoughts builds us. More money, more objects, means more fulfillment. More knowledge of everything in the world means more awareness and an open mind. It couldn't be farther from the truth. The happiest, smartest, or most fulfilled people in the world do not necessarily have the best things. Happiness can be found anywhere you are in your life, but it cannot be apparent if your life is in disarray without direction.

In fact, you'd find that the path toward your goal is more fulfilling than reaching it because when we are pursuing our goals, our bodies give us all the hormones that help us pursue them. Once we reach that goal, the level of those hormones subsides, and we return to the equilibrium state where we need to get stimulated once more to reach another goal. This is why nobody can be happy with a stagnant life. A simple life is not a stagnant life. If it's stagnant, it's not simple; it's chaotic.

So go ahead, set up every Sunday as your weekly life audit. If it's too short, you can make it the first day of the month. This habit will give you immense power to control your life and change its direction for the better. If you aspire to change, it requires discipline of the body and mind. It doesn't have to be perfect. You can fail many times along the way, but remember, you can also begin again and again.