The article which never got published!
The following 800 words article was written by me more than 12 months ago when India announced its first lockdown. For some reason, this article was not published on my medium wall. While clearing my drafts today, I came across this and decided to finally lay the soul of this article to rest by publishing it. By publishing it after more than a year when it was relevant!
Wondering what to do in India’s 21-day lock-down?
The Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi addressed the nation of 1.2+ billion people at prime time on 24th March 2020. The Prime Minister announced the lockdown of the whole country for a period of 21 days and the announcement has left many Indians shocked. This announcement could have troubled many households who have already spent the past few days owing to the state announced lockdowns. There might be many who might be running out of options to feed the family, provide basic necessities like water, medicines etc. And there are many who might have to extend their current plans for how to spend their time!
Here’s a quick resource about building new habits: https://jamesclear.com/new-habit
Spend or Invest?
The big question here to ask is whether you want to spend your time or invest it. That time, which did not exist 10 weeks back in your calendar. That time for which you had been asking from god for the last many months to bring order in your life; in which you had thought of being a new version of yourself, that “new” you, which has all the habits that you ever wanted in yourself.
Rewind back and think, was there ever a time when you wished if you had a few extra days in your life so that you can make everything great. If not in the near past, it must have occurred to you at some point in your life.
Voila! God has heard you. But it wasn’t free of cost. It came with the expense of the economic slowdown of the world’s markets and numerous deaths owing to the COVID-19 pandemic across the continents. For many, current times are challenging with them requiring every bit of the 24 hours available to them including the emergency services. But the rest, which consists of the majority have been forced to lock down inside their homes stopping the work that they used to do in the office, schools that used to educate and everything else!
This provides you with a golden opportunity to change yourself. Become a better version of yourself. If you have been asking for a break, this is it! This is your chance to break your old habits and form new ones, that you always wanted. 21 days is a lot of time and if invested in yourself, you can be a much better version of yourself at the end of the lockdown.
How to do it?
First, you need to identify what change you would like to see in yourself i.e. identifying the habits that you would like to change. And then identifying the new habits that you would like to form. You can start off with writing these old and new set of habits by writing on a piece of paper.
The Secret Sauce
The important thing to make habits a part of your identity is consistency. It won’t matter if you were not able to do it 2 or 3 days out of 21, or if you could only practice them for 20 minutes when you promised yourself for 30 minutes. But being consistent is the secret sauce to the whole theme.
Bringing someone you know into the loop can make the whole process more interesting. If you have a friend, you can bring them in on the action. Having a friend on a similar journey along with you can be motivating enough for both of you to follow through with the habits each day. Just telling your best friend about the habits that you want to develop and your progress every day can also motivate you to pull through.
The choice is yours
Getting a new OTT subscription like Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc. to account for the increased free time can certainly be one of the options to consider. And many of you would already have done it, i.e. getting your own subscription instead of using your friends. But, it’s not too late to rethink what this golden opportunity provides to you.
You can decide not to waste your time on Facebook, Instagram even when everyone else is screaming for social distancing.
You can finish multiple online courses, get a complete specialization or a nano degree.
You can plan to do meditation for just five minutes every day.
You can commit yourselves to do in-home exercises or yoga.
You can be a master of cooking starting from a novice cook.
You can learn a completely new language.
But it has to be continuous. Repetitive. Everyday.
What are you waiting for? Get a pen and paper and start jotting down the changes that you want in yourself.
The clock is ticking.
The choice is yours!
