Prompt 1 of 100 for Self Discovery Challenge - Day 1 Set Five Goals To Help You Get Closer To Your Dream Life

I picked up a book called a Pocketful of  Self-Discovery - 100 prompts from a closing down sales of a popular stationary retailer. I don't know what to do with it so I thought I would blog the prompts and see how I do after a 100 days. Let's have a start date 9th July 2023 so looking at the 17th of October. Give us a bit of flex maybe the end of October. 

According to this book, 

self discovery is a life long journey of learning about yourself and unlocking your true potential. This book will use prompts to help you explore your inner thoughts and beliefs to kick-start your personal growth. 

I'm not convinced and for the purposes of this challenge, I'll work within the remit of the 100 days or so. So maybe we are looking at 150 days here. There is a cute little graph but due to copyright I'm just doing something else. Anyway it promises Amazing Things Will Happen.

DAY ONE:  Set Five Goals To Help You Get Closer To Your Dream Life Less stressful and better life balance

At this point, I'm going for a better life balance with health, work and other things. Something meaningful

Goal 1 To have completed most of my book for publication. 

Yes, the one I have been working for a minute or is that five years now. That one. It first started out as an erotic story but didn't quite work. This is the post and you can see the website with the picture of the hero is no longer. 

https://dabwrites.blogspot.com/2014/11/new-erotic-series-using-save-cat.html

Then in November 2018, yes, readers, I decided to rework it. Goodness knows why.

https://dabwrites.blogspot.com/2018/12/daily-writing-journal-editing-third.html

And I've been mentioning this book on and off until I got embarrassed it was taking so long so I stopped. So that one. I might even do a mini free booklet with the history of the novel. 

It is about 180,000ish words long. 

Goal 2 To get my sleep back in order. 

This is a tough one because it means changing some habits but I need to get back to some routine of sleeping. But it comes with many changes including eating times, exercise, phone time and all that stuff. I am listening The Expert to Sleeping Well by Chris Idzikowski but I'm thinking of buying a print copy so I can make a plan.

Goal 3 I need get to a querying/submission position for a relation's literary work. 

This is conceptually simple but due to work, home and other time pressures and commitment it is not. These are simple steps in a way but also expensive. First it is about finding all the work. Not as simple as you would think. 

Goal 4 Going to the gym? 

During and after lockdown and the pandemic I'm so out of habit but it's something I need to find time for. Right now most of my spare time is taken up writing but I need to find time. So let's say at least 3 times in the 100 days but looking at 6 times but not at the same time.

Goal 5  Languages... German and Spanish - continue on Duolingo.

I've been going on holiday to Spain for a while - I've spotted posting the vacation/holiday pictures - and every year I think I need to learn more Spanish. When I'm on holiday, I go with a relations and  mostly go walking on the beach. However the last time I went, it was a solo trip and one of the Spanish-Colombian staff thought I was from Colombia so engaged in a conversation with me. So I thought this year, I must start and hopefully pick up the basics. With German it's more watching TV on rainy holiday/vacation days.  There are so many German channels so I thought I might as well add that. 

I've been on Duolingo for about 30 days now and haven't learnt much.  

My long term goal is having a grasp of  basic and broken conversational Spanish and German and I'm so far away from that. It's one thing learning a language on an app but another in reality. Native speakers speak so quickly. I was and still am a quick speaker and when I was a kid I used to mumble a lot. We will see. 

So those are my 5 goals.

Stretch Goals

Goal - Catch up on Cal Newport Podcast up to episode 39

I find it tough listening and maybe because I'm not implementing some of his idea but I reckon in 100 days I can listen and report back on at least ten. I'm now on episode 29 so another ten will mean episode 39. 

The thing with Newport is after listening to some of his answers one has to reflect on his words. Note this doesn't mean I agree with everything he says  because I don't but I do reflect on his words. I disagree with some things but hey. This maybe because we are both in the same borderline generation. I also went the equivalent of the US R1 university in the UK but most of what he says so pure gold. Just have a bit of balance and find out what works for you. However so far in my journey of this stuff, he is one of the best.

When I started listening to his podcast from episode one because I thought since it was about time management  and productivity- yeah, he calls it the deep life and deep work but not do digress - I thought it would be a matter of listening once a day and I would catch up to his most recent. Er. No.

https://calnewport.com

His podcast https://www.thedeeplife.com

There are some questions which I play back, reflect and contemplate about, and I find his view valuable that so I'm in no hurry to play catchup. However it means at times, it can fall off my radar. 

I highly recommend his Q&A podcast and you can start from any point you want. This is the first time, I had a bear bug with Spotify because I couldn't book mark sections in the episode. So annoying. What really good is that periodically the same questions come up so it's like a positive re-enforcement. 

Goal - Publish two short stories in my short story project. 

I was suppose to publish these last year but the goal 1 book took precedence. 

That's me.