A few years ago, I started using my birthday to reflect upon the past year and cross-check my progress in personal development objectives, and to take a moment to appreciate the people who have been supportive of me.
This year, many kind people have offered me their encouragement and guidance, and have so genuinely engaged in discussion with me. Their open-minded listening and honest feedback have undoubtedly facilitated my personal development into a stronger and less fearful person. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
This past year, I have quietly and steadily made progress on the personal development projects that I resolved to dedicate effort to on my last birthday.
Physical Maintenance
Firstly, on a light-hearted note, I have successfully kicked the habit of biting my fingernails. (Just for clarification, toenail-biting has never been a problem.) I have stopped biting my fingernails because I started clipping my fingernails once a week. In turn, I started clipping my fingernails weekly because I now play the piano almost every day, and I cannot tolerate the click-clicking that happens when I forget to clip them.
Secondly, I have managed to develop better sleeping and eating habits on average than I did last year. There is so much comfort and nourishment in routine. Especially with a job that sometimes starts early in the morning and sometimes ends late at night, finding a sleep schedule has been a challenging endeavor. It still is, but it has definitely improved this year. I haven’t gone to bed after 4am in a long time.
I have found a diet made up of a set of nutritious and satisfying foods which I eat almost every day. I decided upon these foods by consciously observing how my body feels when it is lacking certain nutrients, minerals, or fats, and after eating a certain food. Over time, I noticed that certain foods such as spinach and tofu make my body feel good, especially when eaten at certain meals during the day. Little by little, through casual experimentation, I have developed a happy diet that satisfies my body’s needs, is tasty, and is pleasing to the eye. I hope that by better understanding how my body feels when it needs something in particular and which foods satisfy each need, I can more cheaply and efficiently maintain my physical health.
Thirdly, I am slowly increasing my physical endurance and flexibility, and have slightly improved my posture. Because I do not have a car, I commute via public transportation and walking. I actually enjoy walking, and I also sometimes do it for fun. Additionally, I have tried my best to integrate more rigorous exercise into my routine, by opting to take the stairs and by doing some body-weight exercise.
Psychological Maintenance
I took a similar approach to developing a diet for my mental health also. During the past year, I developed a more accurate, nuanced understanding of my emotions and moods. By paying close attention to physical symptoms and behaviors, I became better at identifying my emotions while I was feeling them. As a result of becoming conscious of my feelings, I also grew more aware of what kinds of coping mechanisms I subconsciously gravitated towards for each emotion. In turn, I have identified coping mechanisms that are unhealthy or counterproductive, and started testing out new coping mechanisms and building habits to employ the mechanisms that worked. I still have a lot to learn here, but building these habits has positively impacted other facets of my life.
In better understanding these different emotions and moods, and making note of what kinds of situations elicited them, I noticed that some of these recur so predictably that this seems to indicate longer-standing and more deeply-rooted anxieties or insecurities. Very gradually, I have started to slowly pick them apart in hopes of understanding them better.
Increasing my understanding of my moods, beginning to probe at the patterns and trends, and learning what kinds of coping mechanisms are effective for me has in turn strengthened my sense of agency.
Social Skills
I have talked to people more. On purpose. And even enjoyed it. (Though not all the time.)
Next, in conjunction with my improved cognizance of my emotions, I also made a conscious effort to practice expressing my emotions and beliefs as directly and coherently as possible. As someone who habitually reads between the lines, and tends to be shy and somewhat emotionally reserved, I have until now experienced numerous occasions in which messages that I try to send implicitly or circuitously have either gone entirely unnoticed or been disregarded as unimportant. When this kind of incomplete communication occurs repeatedly, the feelings of being understood or cared for start to lessen, and consequently relationships often suffer. In an attempt to prevent this, I have been trying to find a method of communication that is direct and clear, but also polite and kind. I haven’t perfected this yet, but I have clearly taken a few steps forward from where I stood last year.
Thirdly, I know that I am well practiced at skills of genuine and respectful listening, analysis, and response in deep, more serious conversations. Emotional regulation in conversations that can be highly emotional and formulating organized, logical responses in discussion and debate are skills that I have been exercising consciously for a long time. This year I made a point of trying to model these skills in discussions or debates I had with others, both in person and online, in hopes that the people around me would notice the benefits of having these skills and develop them too.
Last of all, thanks to my Japanese friends and conversation partner and my family and relatives, I had many chances to use and improve my spoken Japanese.
Other Improvements
I modified my bathing habits to reduce my water usage.
I have reduced the amount of meats and dairies I consume.
Most objects in my apartment now have a "home" where they belong when not in use, which has resulted in a more organized space in which to live.
Objects that require periodic care have received that care more often than before. I have committed more time to applying oil and polish to my shoes, washing and ironing my clothes more carefully, and cleaning my apartment routinely.
I call to check up on my parents and relatives more often.
Areas that Still Need Work and New Objectives for the Next Year
Social Skills
I want to get used to casual group social situations.
I would also like to learn how to lead conversations. As someone who grew up as an only child who opted to read, play, or go fishing alone on the weekends, and someone who is more of a “listener”, I have a hard time in conversations in which the other party does not actively direct conversation or conjure topics to discuss. Consequently, I think I sometimes come off as boring or as cold and uninterested in the other party. Most times, none of these are accurate representations of me, so I will start practicing taking the reigns in conversations when it seems appropriate.
Participation in Civil Society
I noticed this problem when it reached its peak in November, around the time of the U.S. Presidential Election. I have been highly opinionated and fairly well-informed about domestic politics since early in high school, and engagement in civic discourse is an activity that I have always understood as important. In fact, I firmly believe that participation in civil society is one of my responsibilities as an of-age citizen with suffrage. However, after this past election, I found myself obsessively debating people I have never met online and reading as much as I could to stay on top of the latest issues—sometimes for five hours a day. Engagement to this extent was deleterious to my well-being.
It completely consumed my time and energy. The opportunity cost of spending an additional hour on these activities was immense. I could have been studying something more meaningful, discussing something important with someone who actually cares and listens, or just cooking, sleeping, or cleaning. Even when I wasn’t actively participating in online debate or reading, I was thinking about the issues and fuming with frustration about it. Too much time, energy, and concern was expended in that realm.
And then, completely fed up with it all, I withdrew from it almost entirely for over 6 months, even though I was aware that this is an abdication of my responsibilities as a voting citizen. This year, I would like to figure out some middle ground in which I can engage enough to be an informed and responsible voter, advocate, and participant in discourse, without devoting all of my waking hours to it.
Physical Maintenance
I will continue eating well, sleeping well, and continue integrating more rigorous exercise into my day-to-day.
As noted above, my ability to maintain my physical health has significantly improved. However, developing those habits required extra time and effort, which in turn caused me to decrease my work load. This year, I would like to continue exercising these new routines while gradually restoring my workload to it’s original size; eventually, I would like to add even more responsibilities to it so that I can work more, study more, and play more.
Psychological Maintenance
Some of my goals in this realm for this coming year are an extension of my endeavors this past year. These include: 1) to continue developing a more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of feelings and moods, and 2) to probe further into long-term anxieties and insecurities with the aim of understanding how they developed and how they impact my beliefs and behavior now.
Additionally, I would like to learn how to notice and acknowledge my hard work, and take the appropriate amount of credit for achievement or improvement. It seems that my failure to do this thus far has been perceived by others as an endearing sort of humility. While I do not disagree that humility is honorable to some extent, in my case, my inability to acknowledge hard work or achievement has negatively impacted my self concept and sense of agency.
This leads me to a more comprehensive objective. My hope is that, in continuing to progress towards the goals above, I will be able to establish a more accurate self concept. Theoretically, having a more accurate self concept would have significant implications for my professional and academic endeavors, and even for my social and private lives.
I think those implications would be particularly powerful if I could meet that objective in conjunction with the development of greater discipline, specifically the discipline to reasonably explore all options in a decision. Because I am impatient and a bit lazy, I have a habit of deeply analyzing one or two options out of many more because meticulous examination of all options is a lot of work. Unsurprisingly, this results in haphazard decision making.
Because I am capable of analyzing one or two options thoroughly, I know that I am cognitively capable. This leads me to believe that the issue must be dispositional. My hope is to consciously develop the discipline to critically survey many options in serious decisions. Having this discipline, in tandem with accurate self concept, should theoretically allow me to make more responsible decisions and undertake more responsibilities.
Other Goals
I would like to learn how to be a more ethical consumer. I have always been averse to shopping (aside from grocery shopping), so excessive consumption has never been a problem for me. In the past few years, I also consciously bought products of higher quality, especially clothing and shoes, so that I do not have to shop as frequently. Additionally, I have also never owned a car because the public transportation in my area is convenient, and because I am trying to reduce my carbon footprint. I also grew up separating the garbage and recycling and continue this practice today.
However, I would like to find more ways to reduce my environmental impact and also to support companies that are ethical, cruelty-free, and eco-friendly. This next year, when it is time comes to replace my possessions (particularly cosmetics and cleaning products), I will aim to replace them with items from these kinds of companies.
My apartment complex only separates recycling and garbage, but I hope to find a way to separate compost from my garbage.
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That sums up my personal development goals for this year. Of course certain objectives may be altered, added to, or removed completely, but as of now, I am excited to improve in these areas, and to grow up a little bit more.
Thank you again to the people who supported me this year. I may not always make it blatantly obvious, but I do take your feedback seriously, and I have learned a lot from you.
And, full stop, or whatever.
Love and Peace,
Rina
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