Day 45 / 108 Challenge

#45

"I bow to try to obtain deep wisdom."

Today marks my first day back since my temporary move-out. I will have to get used to preparing the house to look presentable every morning I leave, but that should be worth saving me from having to pay extra rent.

Not an exciting day, as I continued on completing the daily tasks throughout the day. I decided to go for an outdoor walk for today's exercise portion, despite the unpleasant weather. I cannot say that the walk was entirely great, but I definitely felt the creative juice flowing in my brain while putting some oxygen up there as well.

I swear that exercising (or moving around, at least) is by far the most important aspect in improving our lives.

It is an instant mood up-er once you get used to it.

The end result of yesterday's crafting project

I now actively attempt to analyze my thoughts and behaviours every day, and try to write about what I discovered or learned. Today's reflection is on my abrupt mood swings.

From what I could remember, my day was going smoothly. Like I mentioned earlier, I was simply getting things done that I needed to do today. However, all of a sudden, I started to feel a little down and felt that my mood was spiralling downwards even further. I caught myself wanting to eat and drink more when I did not really need to.

I then began to track down why I started to feel this way.

It took me awhile, but I 1) figured out why, 2) dealt with the emotion, and 3) brought myself back to a "neutral" state.

I came to a conclusion that it was the quick dopamine spike from getting the instant reply from my girlfriend, followed by not getting the follow up responses that put me in that spot. Eating and drinking something is a common way to release dopamine, and I was just looking for another source of dopamine release.

It seems like a common way for someone to unnecessarily feel sad too, because in reality, nothing is really going wrong. It just seems relatively bad compared to that high dopamine state. This is why I regularly practice dopamine detoxing, just so that I do not need to do extreme activity (usually comes with bigger downfall/consequences) to "feel happy" all the time.

An example of my dopamine detoxing is, not binge watching videos when I am bored. I just painfully stay bored until I find something productive like studying or reading, or healthier options like exercise or reaching out to a family member or a friend to chat.

(My girlfriend likes to call this "raw dogging life" and I find it so funny, I don't know why.)

Going back to the story: Once I realized all that, I was able to stop the spiral, and focus on the present, where nothing was going bad. So why must I feel sad? And there, I was no longer in a down mood.

The practice of self-analyzing is so much fun and inspiring as we get to discover ourselves further and control our own emotions. Having the extra sense of control in life makes life much more peaceful, thus making it easier for us to stay happy. 😊

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Challenge Log

Requirements
No Snacks No drinks or desserts exceeding weekly limit	No Snacks
Water intake (max 2L)	2L
2x Pomodoro flows (read min. 10 pages)	Read Ch 12
Productive activity (write a journal or a blog; create a product)	Journalling
Physical activity (min. 45 minutes)	REST DAY - outdoor walk
Wildcard (any 1 of read/produce/exercise above)	(EXERCISE) More walks

Should've/Would've/Could've

-- Proud of you for what you did today. You could have written a journal as soon as you got back to the hotel after date night.

Drink/Dessert tickets remaining: 3