Stay Connected with Yourself and What You Experience/Live Your Life Meaningfully
Most people ask the hacks on how to stay productive during Ramadan.
For me, I would rather alter the question and ask myself, “how I can stay connected with myself and whatever I’m doing every single day?”
Why? Let me tell you a bit about how one among many of my days looks like,
Apart from the Ramadan routines, so far, I can complete as many as 7 to 8 different jobs, “take a proper bath”, do “my morning skincare routine ritual”, have a “quick nap” by the noon (sometimes while applying sheet mask), do laundry, clean the house, all within the same day.
Some people might be thinking, “what a quite productive day that you have, you must be feeling satisfied”, too bad, the answer is no.
I don’t feel “fulfilled” when I accomplished so many tasks within a day. It is quite often for me to be instantly disconnected when I do the kind of “too technical” jobs, I still find it hard to have a power nap because it seems that my mind constantly terrorizing me with all the dues, the challenges, and discomfort arising from work and my own life.
Then, what is it, if it’s not a productive day? So, here is the kind of “my day”
I take time to completely wake myself up by “taking a proper bath”, and tell myself, for example, “I clean my hair and massage my head well, so my brain will function well today. I soap my body good with my fav products, so I will feel good with my body.”
I “do my morning skincare ritual” and in front of the mirror, I have this kind of conversation with myself, “There you are, pimples, wrinkles, and my tired face, I try hard to support you to be healthy outside, I cleanse, toner you with good products and I protect you with a good sunscreen. So, my dear body and face, we are ready to own the day!”
I open the laptop and review the task list of the day or if not simply take time to think about what task I shall work on today. Then continue to check-in routine that my division team has every day, we mostly have a question of the day about anything, we take turns to answer each other, and we have fun and quality conversation. We sometimes talk about work, but I can still connect and engaged because of my teammates and the positive environment we built within our division.
Most of the time when I’m working, I can feel fulfilled and have fun. But there are also parts of the work that demotivate, discourage, and stress me. Every time it happens, I always think about why and what causes it? So, I understand what I can do to prevent, reduce or overcome the bad impacts on myself, my work, and my team.
I feel grateful because my current job let me actualize my personal values, exercise my strengths, and explore my passion and it is on track with my career milestone and plan.
When I’m working from the office, during lunch break, my team takes the time to talk, get to know, joking, sharing stories, we are constantly trying to connect with each other. In my division, we will constantly check on each other conditions and ensure all of us are engaged with the team. Don’t get it wrong, my team is still a team with all the “dynamics”, but once again, I’m grateful because most people in my team are driving the conversation for every issue happening, so we understand the context and are able to think and put the necessary effort to sustain the team.
I usually use the train to go to the office and to get back home, it takes 90 minutes on average and a lot of people think that it is tiring and makes your way to the office and way back home is like a long, boring and exhausting journey. I do, 50% agree with that opinion. But thanks to hybrid working and my excitement to meet and connect with my team, those train trips, I can whoosh it. Besides, I’m still in my honeymoon phase of working from the office.
When I reach home, I take a bath and do my night skincare ritual, and I tell myself even though I spent the whole day outside and feel tired, I am still gorgeous. Mostly, I will spend my time before sleep doing my hobbies e.g., watching videos from my subscribed channels and Netflix.
It is different for everybody, you can just wake up brush your teeth, go to the office, get things done, go back home and sleep again and you feel satisfied with it. Some people feel happy or fulfilled doing all kinds of work and activities in a day, but some others might also not. For me, what matters is I keep striving to ensure that I can consciously stay connected with my daily experience and interact with every thinking and feeling arising from those experiences. I put effort to think and imbue the why/reason of everything that I do, whatever happens in my day, and not taking those for granted. Ensure that I understand it and if possible, learn something and make myself feels good about it.
That’s how I put conscious effort to stay connected with myself and what I experience and make my days meaningful.
