Two months challenge post 3 — Short term, Nintendo seems to help me release stress more than meditation

Hey medium. I hope you are waking up alright in this fine morning. I have decided not to blog about my two months challenge everyday because I would generate multiple posts of little value or quality. That being said, I have indeed discovered some tips that are working for me that may also work for you:

1) Video games relax me more than meditation:

Yes. That’s a bold statement. However I did spend a week doing mediation in order to improve my concentration and release stress, and I didn’t see results right away. I’m not claiming that mindfulness is less effective. I’m saying that, at least short term, it does not seem to be doing the trick for me. However, I am lately finding, somewhat unexpectedly, that playing Nintendo for half an hour per day released my stress considerably more because it creates a safe space for me to escape my everyday reality for a couple of minutes. I will continue to experimenting with these two alternatives and let you know how my opinion progresses about them, but this is what I have so far.

2) 5:00 is the best time to work out when you have an unreliable schedule:

The truth is that its impossible for me to know in advance at what time will I finish working. Sometimes I finish working at 5:00 pm, sometimes at 6:30 pm, sometimes at 8:00 pm, etc. As a result, the time I dedicate to working out is subject to alteration, and this makes it harder to keep the habit.

As said int he previous post, I am starting to wake up at 5:00 am to exercise so I can keep a constant schedule, and this seems to be working wonders for me. I do have to admit that waking up is the hard part. However, when I’m lying in bed weighting my options and wondering how much do I really need to be healthy, I ask myself “is it better for you in the long run if you get up and exercise this morning?”. If the answer is “yes”, which it always is, then I have no reason not to get up, and that’s all the resolve I needed to get up.

3) News news new:

I am still not at the point in this challenge where I can report you that I have polished my news reading habit, and I’m indeed keeping up with current events around the globe. However, at the bare minimum, I can at least tell you that my news reading habits have improved somewhat. While I don’t have a routine defined yet, I do find bits and pieces of time to read some headlines in the morning and before bedtime. Nevertheless I do believe this part of my life to be of upmost priority, so I have decided to include its little progress here in this post.

I hope anything I wrote helps you improve your daily habits. Yes, it is a struggle but self improvement is about being constant. We are all in this together.