2020 was not the prettiest year of humanity, we can all agree on that.
The changes we had to adapt to were sharp and sudden, and the impact on our travel plans, career goals or social life was often heavier than we would’ve expected.

If this period caused you to lose momentum, feel stuck, uninspired or unable to figure out what to do next, allow me to share a solution that can turn your Life around.

Over the past couple of months – maybe even a year – I had an unusually hard time finding myself and the things that I’m genuinely interested in.

My favorite activities became dull or annoying. What was once an easy way to put a smile on my face, make me feel relaxed, curious or fulfilled; turned into a chore, and it felt like there was nothing I could do against it. No matter how hard I tried to fight it, they just kept draining more and more energy.

It was an attempt to fill a sieve, trying to sustain habits that no longer sparked joy in me. Sticking to them was in vain, and it didn’t help that I beat myself up for not being able to appreciate what I was doing. Let it be a proper workout, reading a brilliant book or experiencing that blissful state meditation puts you in.

Letting go of these fundamental habits felt like giving away my firstborn child, after my wife spent 9 months of heavy laboring on blessing us by giving Life to this wonderful kid.
It just didn’t feel right to give up these “anchors” that made my life stable and progress further, even if I didn’t (always) enjoy them, because it took way too much time and energy to nurture and develop them into a habit.

But, as the author of my favorite psychology book concluded it:

“Doing more of what doesn’t work doesn’t work.”

– Nathanial Branden, The Six Pillars of Self-esteem

So as 2021 came, it was time for a change.

If you’ve ever encountered monotony, you probably know that it is a silent thief.
It sneaks into your days unnoticed, seeking to steal moments of joy from your most treasured activities.
The lockdowns, curfews and social distancing made it significantly more challenging for many of us to do some of the things we love doing.

With our options limited so severely, the job of our thief has never been so easy.

For this reason, I would like to show you the discovery that caught him off-guard and scared him away, so he can no longer snatch a single mindful minute from any of your precious days.

Though each and every one of us is remarkably unique, I’d like to emphasize that this is a powerful tool that you can come back to anytime throughout your Life, regardless of your age, cultural background or current possibilities.

To summarize it in one sentence, the intention is this:
Explore 1 new idea/activity for 30 days

The fundamental idea behind this is as old and timeless as the universe we’re living in.
We are meant to explore, learn and experience new things. Let it be the beauty of a country, the magic of music or the taste of a chef’s masterpiece. By bringing in color and variety, we infuse our memories with vivid moments and feelings, preventing them from turning dull, grey and unrecallably blurry.

This makes us feel like time is expanding instead of flying, it makes the days feel like weeks, and the months like years, because the things you do stand out from the usual, everyday routines.

Even if you live in great health for a 100 years, it could still be a tragedy, if you couldn’t distinguish a single day, because after all, they all looked the same.

“And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”

– Abraham Lincoln

It may sound like a lot of work and responsibility, but it really isn’t, trust me.

We only assume that it would take too much time and effort, but that’s not the case.
In reality, you are the one setting the bar, and you can set it as low as you see fit.
Make it simple and easy to accomplish.

By fully committing yourself to the discovery of a brand new idea, process or hobby, you get to experience it in depth, with that incomparable feeling of liveliness and excitement that takes over you after you encounter a place, a person or a situation you’ve never experienced previously.

You’ll be surprised, but if you only ask yourself “5 minutes of playing the guitar every day”, or “reading 3 pages of an outstanding book every day”, you’ll quickly notice that it’ll be significantly easier to go longer than that, without any extra effort or forced commitment to begin with.

To give you a tangible example of the process, this is what happened after I decided to commit to this discovery:

Being lucky as always, I recently had the fortune to meet a Lady who sparked the flame of inspiration in me to such a degree, that I simply couldn’t resist picking up the guitar and seriously diving into Spanish.

I really love the idea of immersing myself into one project, activity or topic that could be my new favorite hobby, so I decided to pick 3 areas and commit to them for 30 days.

1) Writing (Expression & Creativity)
2) Spanish (Internal/Mental Learning)
3) Guitar (External/Physical Learning)

Looking back on January, I don’t think I’ve ever had such an amount of excitement that made me fly out of bed every morning consistently. Growth-wise, this was definitely one of my best months ever since I exist.

Without further ado, here are the results of this action-packed self-discovery:

Writing

I committed to start every single day with writing. Swallowing the frog, as they say. This is undeniably the most challenging and energy consuming of all three. It requires creativity, attention and (in the best case) the flow state.

Miss any of the 3 ingredients, and your secret sauce will not be complete.
Have all 3, and every single paragraph is going to live up to the greatest potential of your capabilities.

To be honest, I didn’t think the results would show up so quickly.
After the very first week, it already became much, much easier to enter the flow state, almost at will.
By the end of the fourth week, I was able to write for 3 hours straight without any difficulty.

Now it only takes me 5 minutes to get out of bed and start writing.
I simply wake up, drink a glass of water, and the next things I see is that my fingers are dancing on the keyboard, effortlessly.

There is a contrast to this.
In the past, the urge to write about something was rare and brief. It usually came in the evening when I couldn’t sleep, or when I was doing something with somebody that inspired me.
Now it’s literally the first thing I think about in the morning and it’s amazing!

It’s a long lost, wonderful feeling that every writer wants to feel, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
And it only took a month of commitment and consistency.

The bar was, by the way, just to write something. A journal entry, a funny piece, an idea I’ve been entertaining lately. With no time or word limit on any of these. Then guess what, 80% of the time I wrote way more than I ever would’ve expected it.

20 minutes turned into 40, 1 hour turned into 3.
The quality was solid, and during the process I really felt like an artist.

Now, If you’ve been thinking about trying something out lately, here is your chance.
Today is always the best time to begin, at least by planning it in for the upcoming days.

However, if you still need a little convincing, I’m gonna blow your mind with my progress in Spanish.

Spanish

Spanish is passionate, expressive and empowering.

It’s been a long-sought dream of mine, but I’ve always delayed it. I delayed it because I wanted to leave my favorite language as last, so I would have something to look forward to as I study the ones that come before it.

I gave a shot to French last year, but I lacked both the interest to learn and the friends to practice with.
Spanish, on the other hand, was always close to me.

Almost every person I meet assumes that I’m either from Spain or Italy, and whenever I blurt out a few words in Spanish, people around me are astonished how well it fits me.
[Though I still need to speak in front of natives to have that compliment verified officially.]

While I had a small vocab of the most basic words, it’s not significant enough to worth mentioning. In the beginning of January I knew about a 100 or 150 words that were very simple and easy, but when it came to the grasp of the language itself, nor the rules of conjugation neither the structure and grammar was anywhere near clear.

So, I began with expanding my vocabulary, honing my pronunciation and reading in small quantities.
The results were insane.

Before, I couldn’t read, speak or understand basically anything.
By the end of the month, however, I understood about 30% through listening, 50% of the things I read, and my tongue got significantly more fluent when I’m talking.

All this under 30 days, and this is already my 4th language.
Just like with writing, I brought this habit over from January, but now with more variety.
Podcasts, articles, sometimes messaging with my native buddies.

The joy of recognizing words, figuring out meanings, and listening to music without it sounding like complete gibberish is extremely satisfying. I wonder where we’ll be in half a year.

With such speed, I’m confident that fluency in 12 months is well within reach.

And now, allow me to give you the last little nudge that gets you started on this journey.
Let this example be the nugget of inspiration that tips your scale in the favor of deciding to conquer the world of unexplored territories:

Guitar

Let’s be honest, everybody thought about learning to play the guitar at some point over the years.
However cliché, it makes beautiful sounds and it’s undeniably attractive.

It’s a very available hobby. It doesn’t cost a fortune, and there is a lot of material on YouTube to learn from if you don’t feel like paying for teaching. Besides, the house looks way better with a guitar than without it.

From the three projects of January, this was the only one where I had absolutely no previous knowledge or practice. Nada. Niks.
Music – and instruments in general – are such an undiscovered territory for me, that I didn’t even know where to begin.

Plus, I didn’t want to overload myself with new things next to the daily challenges and responsibilities, so I only started really getting into it from the second half of January. By then, writing and learning Spanish were already a solid part of my daily routines.

At first, it was awfully challenging. I wanted to kick it off with some cool melodies that are recognizable for everybody – and are seemingly slow and easy – like Passenger’s ‘let her go’, or the SpongeBob theme song.

After a week of daily practice, I have to admit, it seemed impossible to me that a human being would ever be able to play these. Switching from chord to chord in itself was already utterly demanding. There was simply no way anyone could do these transitions smoothly.

Regardless of these thoughts, however, I had no intention of quitting.
I just decided to lower the bar and pick something easier to begin with.

That’s when finger picking found me.
Through focusing on a specific stroking pattern on the strings, I was able to make sounds that were soothing enough to be called music. It was my first ever experience doing such a thing, and I have to say, it was mind-blowing.

Soon after I could introduce changes in the tunes by adding some chords to it, and practice switching with undisrupted fluency when my patience allowed it.

By the end of January, I was able to play a short melody with barely any mistakes, and to be honest, I’m very very proud of it.

The best part is, now I constantly find myself picking up the guitar multiple times throughout the day, just to mess around with the strings a bit. The main practices where I actually learned something didn’t take longer than 10 to 15 minutes a day, and that was more than enough to progress with it.

Although my fingers had to get used to it in the beginning, we’re still only talking about 2 weeks of practice instead of the 30 days.

Overall, I couldn’t be more satisfied with how quickly it turned from impossible to doable with less than half an hour of commitment a day.

Conclusion

This entire January was, simply put, extremely fulfilling.

After the first 30 days I realized that I have to keep doing this. Exploring new ideas on a monthly basis, chasing experiences and hobbies, so I can find the ones that are making Life more colorful, interesting and satisfying.

Because the habit of writing and learning Spanish is something I certainly want to keep – next to a touch of guitaring when I feel like it – this time I wanted to find something that involves using my whole body.

Can you guess what it is?

Doing Yoga every single day for the next 30 days.

In no more than 6 days, the effects were already astonishing.
I feel a lot more connected to myself and my body, I move more consciously, and the quality of my sleep skyrocketed since I started it. The extra flexibility is just a side-effect that builds up gradually.

I’m very curious where it’ll lead in a couple of weeks, but until then, I’d like to share a few more ideas with you, some alternatives to the ones we’ve already discussed previously.

If any of these sound interesting, give it a shot and see how much you can grow and progress under just 30 days:

• Juggle for 30 days
• Talk to a stranger every day for 30 days (and make them smile!)
• Cook 1 new meal for 30 days
• Practice writing with your non-dominant hand for 30 days
• Make an origami every day for 30 days (Handmade origamis make a perfect gift, since they bring luck to the person you gift it to)

The list could go on endlessly, just allow your creativity to soar and let it surprise you with something that’ll make each and every one of your months feel more colorful and exciting.

Most of these require little to no investment in money, and I’m sure you can carve out as little as 10 to 15 minutes a day to stay consistent and allow yourself to immerse in the discovery of a potential new and thrilling hobby.

You don’t even have to wait for a new month to begin, the calendar has nothing to do with it.
30 days is just a nice even number that gives you enough time to explore your taste.
Whether it’s February 18th or March 6th, it doesn’t change a thing.

If you have your own brilliant idea that you’d like to add to the list, let me know in the comments, so other people can see it, and they might just become inspired by it.

Otherwise, if you found this idea useful, share it with a friend who you think would greatly benefit from it.

I’ll see you very soon with another great article about language learning.
Until that, I wish you a wonderful day and a lot of excitement for the adventure(s) you’re about to take!

Take care,
Erik

“Monotony collapses time, novelty unfolds it”

– Joshua Foer