Transcriber: E H Reviewer: Naz Sarpyener
Hello, everyone.
Two years ago, with the COVID-19 pandemic,
all of us students were forced into online school.
At this time, I was a sophomore in high school,
and just like all the students here today,
there was a physical and emotional separation,
and I was left with only myself.
You see, at this time, my only real goal was to make it a graduation.
And this was seen in my daily habits.
I woke up five minutes before my first period started.
Some days I couldn't even wake up on time and I was late to class.
These days, I don't even think I did as much as an hour of homework
and studying every day. And when I was I was bouncing routine homework
and social media barely making any progress.
And so you can only imagine living this lifestyle full of monotony
and lacking purpose, that I would have reached a point where I’ve had enough.
And I remember it was a middle of my sophomore year. It was a weekday.
I was sitting on my couch watching a movie instead of doing
the homework that I never started. Let me ask you guys a question.
Raise your hand if you've ever watched a movie that was
so powerful that you felt inspired and motivated to change your life.
Well, you see, that night I had one of these moments.
I was watching Batman, The Dark Knight Rises.
And I remember sitting on my couch, slouched and expressionless.
But I remember I was inspired and motivated by the work that he was doing.
I remember feeling that third degree inspiration by seeing his work
and purpose of fighting for justice.
And I realized that was the same night that
I began my journey of self improvement.
I realized that going through
the motions to get to graduation just wasn't enough to satisfy me.
It was kind of handed to me. Wasn't really a challenge.
After watching this movie,
I began watching many YouTube videos on this idea of self improvement,
hoping that maybe I could find my sense of purpose.
I began picking up multiple 30 day challenges,
doing anything from over 100 pushups for 30 days,
to taking cold showers for 30 days because I had no prior experience in any of these.
It was like going from 0 to 100.
I remember the last day of my cold showers.
I was so happy that I was finally done walking to freezing water every single
day that I wrote. Finally, finally it came to an end. And it did.
And I went back to sitting on my couch.
However, some days it was a little different, you see.
Some days I would sit there and watch a movie or YouTube, but I felt pointless.
I couldn’t help but be reminded of the effort that I’d put in to do my push ups,
the hours I stay up to read books,
and how early I had to wake up to get my early morning runs in before school.
I wanted to make exercising a habit, but I didn't really know how.
At this time, I thought that creating habits was just about taking
the biggest bite. I didn't put much thought into a habit building strategy,
and I let my actions be determined by my emotions rather than
an active planning strategy.
So after many failed attempts at making exercising habit, I gave up.
I realized maybe I was just a skinny, lanky Brandon that wasn’t meant
for working out. Maybe exercising wasn’t for me.
And so I resumed living my monotonous lifestyle I had lacking meaningful habits.
However, a few months down the road,
I was now a junior in high school and one of the classes
I was taking was AP Psychology.
And in this class, one of the first things we learned were
the types of conditioning and learning.
I couldn't help but be reminded of its application to myself.
Maybe there still was a way that I could make meaningful habits.
Maybe there still was a way that I can make exercising a habit.
But before I tried anything,
I wanted to learn more on this idea of creating long lasting habits.
So I read a book by James Clear called Atomic Habits.
And in this book, he found that if you better yourself by just 1% every day
for a year, you would be 37.78 times better the way you started.
However, on the flip side, if you worsen yourself by 1% every day for a year,
you would be just merely 3% of what you started at.
After reading this book, these facts amaze me.
Maybe there still was a way that I can make exercising a habit.
So I tried this idea of starting small.
I first began doing 50 pushups every day after school instead of taking a nap
and running one and a half miles on the weekend.
I, even though it wasn't something that was very taxing on my body
and not something that took up lots of time, that's what was what was important.
By starting with something that was very small and
I was confident in my ability to do.
It gave me motivation to pursue further challenges.
After being able to do this for a few weeks, I decided I wanted to up things.
So I began doing 50 push ups,
100 push ups every day and running one and a half miles on the weekend.
After practicing this for a few weeks, I gained the confidence I had prior.
So I bumped this up again to following a 30 minute full body workout
and running four miles on the weekend.
And ultimately, this turned into my final goal of following my first ever workout
plan and running eight miles on the weekends.
You see, by starting with something small and not putting
so much thought into progressing so much over a short period of time,
I was able to be more satisfied with myself
as each little step was within my reach.
I was able to go from the skinny, scrawny,
lanky Brandon that wasn’t confident in his physical ability, to a Brandon with
a more fuller physique, more confident in myself,
and was able to consistently run eight miles on the weekend.
Now at this time, I wasn’t a sophomore anymore. I was a junior.
Meaning that now I had to think about what I wanted to do in my life
and my future. And of course, being the ambitious kid I was,
I wanted to go to the biggest college and I wanted to be a physician.
However, if you looked at my grades, it wouldn't have been so reflective of that.
You see in class, I couldn't focus.
I was that kid that was talking in class and watching YouTube videos.
And at home, I barely did homework and studied and it showed on my grades.
I remember one of the classes I really struggled with was AP Physics C.
I remember one of the tests I got a 60.
This was the first time I had failed a test,
but it was also the first time that a grade in school affected me.
I was so mad at myself. I was so mad that I let myself get to this point.
I needed to change myself.
I needed to study more and focus more at school to raise my grades.
I needed to remove my distractions while studying.
And the biggest one was social media.
So I attempted removing social media from my studying the same way
I met exercising habits. I first started by studying for 15 minutes at
a time before going to my phone.
Because this was something that I could already do comfortably.
I was able to gain confidence in myself after practicing this for a week,
after doing this for a week,
I bumped this up to starting 30 minutes at a time before going social media.
This turned into study for one hour at a time.
Which turned into two hours at a time, which turned into three hours at a time.
And of the many months I was practicing these habits,
there were many days that I wanted to reach
for my phone before that time was up.
However, the days that I wanted to do this,
I would turn on did not disturb and I put my phone
a little further away from me so I didn't have a reason to touch it.
And ultimately, this led to my final goal of deleting social media as a whole.
Even though it was just one click of a button,
it was one that I cried so much mental strength.
So I stayed disciplined, kept working, studying,
and what once went from a brain that was only able to study
without social media for 15 minutes, turn into one that was able
to go months on end without a need for it.
Now, at this time, I was so invested in myself.
I was invested in progressing academically, being involved,
extracurricularly and looking into college. Leading to an obsession.
At school, I hardly talked to anyone because I didn't want to be distracted.
In class, I always wore my AirPods because I didn't want my friends to think
I was intentionally ignoring them when they were talking to me.
You see, at this time, the only thing I knew was work, work, work,
leading to an unhealthy obsession.
I've been playing tennis for eight years now,
and of that eight years I've been playing these days were some of my most emotional
on court. When I'd miss a shot, I'd scream and hit myself,
or I throw my rackets. And through this I was able to unleash my emotions
I kept in all day, but I wasn't able to understand them.
And so after days like this,
it was when I turned to journaling as my emotional outlet.
Through journaling, I was able to understand my emotions.
I was able to share my thoughts and feelings without others opinions
and without breaking or damaging anything.
And after doing this a few times, I decided I wanted to journal every week.
And after journaling for a few weeks, I decided I wanted to journal every day.
In the beginning of my journaling journey. My entries are fairly random.
I was just spilling ideas, thoughts,
any challenging situations I was presented with that day.
However, as my experience grew,
I began picking up clear guidelines and strict rules that
I want to follow when I write.
These were all adopted by Jared Henderson’s YouTube video,
’How to Journal Like a Philosopher’.
My first paragraph, I write about describing
a situation that challenged me that day, factually and unbiasedly.
In my second paragraph, I read about what areas I felt I performed well in.
In the third, I write about what areas I felt like
I could still improve in to be a better version of myself.
And in the last paragraph,
the longest, I write about how
the overarching theme of that situation not only apply to that one circumstance,
but to life in general. Through journaling,
I was able to be more self reflective, conscious of my actions and thoughts,
and I was able to be more self reflective.
I realized that when I made exercising daily a long term habit,
when I made study without distractions a long term habit,
and when I made journaling every day for a long term habit,
all of these shared commonalities in their initial habits.
They offer started small. They offer started with things that
I was already confident in my ability to do.
And by doing these small little things,
I was gaining confidence in myself to pursue further challenges.
Leading into the idea that all of these habits are accessible.
There were clear numbers that I wanted to meet and all of these habits,
and when I was able to meet them,
that was when I knew that I was able to makeprogress.
All these habits were also progressive in nature.
Whether that was increasing the number of push ups or mileage or
the number of minutes I want to study or how frequently I wanted to journal,
there were always numbers that I could challenge myself with.
And in all of these efforts, they were consistent.
You see, the days that I wanted to take a nap.
I worked out. The days that I wanted to pick on my my phone,
I picked up my pencil. And the days that I didn’t know what to journal about,
I found something to write about.
And so as the days go on and I'm putting more work into the person
I want to be. I am more confident and I'm more comfortable with who I am.
I align all my habits to my personal mission statement to be
a more purpose driven individual I created while journaling.
I align myself academically, spiritually and physically.
And I know that there is always something more that
I could be doing to work toward this goal. However, none of this came overnight.
You see, Zeno, the founder of Stoicism,
said wellbeing is realized by small steps, but truly is no small thing.
Vincent Van Gogh, arguably one of the greatest painters of all time,
said great things are done by a series of small things brought together.
And Lao Tzu, the Chinese philosopher and father of Taoism, said,
Do the difficult things while they are easy and do
the great things while they are small.
A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
All of these great habits that
I was able to achieve all started with those first little steps that were small,
progressive, accessible and consistent.
If there's anything that you want to achieve,
whether it's to live a healthier lifestyle or
whether it's to follow your passions,
I want you to go home and just take that first small step. Thank you.