Welcome to Glow-Up Friday’s #2.8

I’ve been completely off social media for over a year now so here are some things I wished I knew before deleting it.

For context, the only social media that was really left on my phone was Instagram. Sure, a lot of you would have all the other ones too but they all have the same addictive mechanism so it’ll totally work for whatever your case is.

Before Deleting

Before I’d deleted anything, I was constantly distracted. Anytime I faced some sort of struggle, I would immediately go doom scroll on my phone for hours.

Stuck on math? Doom scroll.

Relationship problems? Doom scroll.

Feeling bored, anxious, stressed, or scared? Doom scroll.

Clearly something needed to change but until I understood that it was a problem, it wasn’t stopping anytime soon.

Any time and energy that I had was instantly spent towards scrolling Instagram (or even YouTube shorts).

Because of the type of place Instagram is, I would always have negative thoughts and a pessimistic outlook towards life. I wasn't able to think of anything new and fresh to improve my life because the only thing that was occupying my time and mind was Instagram.

What I Wished I Knew Before

I decided that I’d had enough of wasting my life away on a stupid app; no more was I going to let it distract me.

So, I did it. I deleted the app from my phone (while keeping the account active).

As the days passed, I’d found other ways of distracting myself. Just because Instagram was gone, it didn’t mean that I would stop procrastinating or distracting myself.

Because I’d been neglecting my problems and avoided feeling my emotions, the habit of distracting myself from them was still there.

Until I figured out my problems, I would always find ways to procrastinate and distract myself.

Despite the fact that you will eventually end up distracting yourself, you will also slowly start to gain awareness on the problems you have in your life.

1 Week Later

When you don’t have anything to distract you from yourself, you start to get to know yourself once again.

It’s like clouds parting after long stormy weather; you start to get clear on the problems that you need to solve.

You also have a lot of time to just sit and think with your thoughts; things start to grow and change rather than staying stagnant in your rabbit hole.

1 Year Later

Now that it’s been well over a year of having Instagram (mostly) deleted off my phone (and having deleted the account in January), I’m finally able to realize and understand how much better my life has become.

• First off, I’m able to stay so much more focused on the tasks that are most important to me. I don’t have the urge of giving up as easily and going on Instagram because I got a question wrong; I’m able to feel the frustration, get over it, and do it again.

• You realize who your true friends are. The people that really want to talk/text you won’t try and stop you from deleting your account. Your friends will talk to you because they want to and not cause they don’t want you to unfollow them or something. Also no more FOMO cause you start to stop caring about what that one person you were ‘friends’ with is doing.

• I’m able to sleep 20x better. Because I stopped scrolling before bed, my mind was able to shut off, get relaxed, and go to sleep. When I started sleeping better, I was also able to do everything else that I wanted to do so much better.

• Productivity, focus, problem solving skills, creativity, literally everything just increased. Deleting Instagram helped me able to start taking care of myself; I gained self-respect. That self-respect was then transferred to everything I do down to how I carry myself.

• I’ve been able to live my life and not be stuck in some psuedo-reality.

I actually have time to focus on myself and creating a life that I actually want to live.

In the end…

deleting Instagram and social media is going to be one of the best things you do for yourself.

Obviously there are some exceptions such as having your work tied to social media, etc. But if you just have the app to see what people are up to and talk to random people and scroll around for hours, your best move is to just delete the app (especially if you genuinely think it’s a problem).

This is the first step to getting on track to be your best self and live the life that you desire.

That’s it from me this week, I’ll see y’all next week

-Crisha

Hey Bestie!

If you enjoyed this newsletter, consider sharing it with someone who might also enjoy it! If this was shared with you, consider subscribing to support my work. Thanks bestie!

Welcome to Glow-Up Friday’s #2.9

Hey Besties,

It’s totally been a while (like a solid 3 weeks oopsie🫢) but you know what, I’m going to pick this up again and continue to hold myself accountable to helping others live a better life.

But you know, keeping yourself accountable is not an easy thing; even I start falling off on habits I know I should be doing.

So the question is: how do we hold ourselves accountable to doing hard things?

Continue reading and you’ll find out the 3 tactics I used to start writing this newsletter (after procrastinating for literally 3 weeks).

Tactic 1: Just do one.

This is a pretty simple tactic I’ve learned from going to the gym.

By telling yourself that you’re only going to do one, you drop the mental barriers and open up the possibility of doing more than you intended.

When you do it once, you gain momentum.

After you do one, you’ll realize that it’s not even as bad as you thought it was and you’ll continue to do more (usually).

That’s exactly how I got about writing this current newsletter. I told myself: ‘Write 1 sentence’. So I wrote 1 sentence.

Then I wrote 2, 3, 4.

And now I’m enjoying this process once again and realized how much I missed writing.

Tactic 2: Make it your first task.

Another tactic that’s useful: start your day off with that task (another tactic from the gym).

Make it (the thing you’re procrastinating on) the first task of your day. This will most likely be in the morning (assuming you wake up early enough).

If you made it the last task of your day, then you wouldn’t have enough motivation or energy to get going. You would’ve already spent it on the 100 million other tasks that you needed to do that day.

Once again, the example with me writing this newsletter: I’d been sticking the task of me writing my newsletter towards the end of the day. We can now see how that turned out; 3 weeks of no writing, no nothing.

This would mean that I needed to start my day off by writing this newsletter or else I knew that it was never going to get done.

That’s exactly what I’m doing now; it’s 7:30 am.

Tactic 3: Write down each step.

If this is a task that you’ve never done before and it seems really big and scary (which is why you’re probably procrastinating on it), then write every single little step.

When I say little, I really mean little.

For example, if I had to write my first post ever and I’d been procrastinating on it because I never did it before, this is what I’d do:

1. 7:00 am: Sit at desk

2. 7:02 am: Turn on laptop and open chrome

3. 7:05 am: Login to beehiiv

4. 7:07 am: Click on ‘New Post’

5. 7:09 am: Write one sentence

If you’ve never done something before, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the idea that you have in your head. What you have in your head is too general, vague, and intangible for you to execute on. That’s why laying out these small steps makes it easier for you to do that hard scary task.

So if you’re reading this and procrastinating on something, try out these tactics and see what happens.

That’s all this week, I’ll see y’all next Friday 🤍 

-Crisha

Hey Bestie!

If you enjoyed this newsletter, consider sharing it with someone who might also enjoy it! If this was shared with you, consider subscribing to support my work. Thanks bestie!

Welcome to Glow-Up Friday’s #2.7

If you want to maximize productivity and minimize distractions on your iPhone, here’s what you do:

Use Focus Modes

Focus modes on iPhone is probably one of the best ways that you can limit how much your phone distracts you since they are so customizable. No joke, you can do anything.

Here’s how I use work focus to maximize concentration:

First off, I’ve customized it so that when work mode is on, my home screen is blank and color is off.

HomeScreen in Work Focus (color is off on my phone; screenshots have color obv)

Lockscreen in Work Focus

To do this, first create the focus mode. Customize who can contact you (for me it’s just my emergency contacts) and when it turns on and off.

If you have a set time where you sit down to do work everyday, I recommend that you use that time as your start time.

Then, create the home + lock screen that’ll minimize distractions and link it to your focus mode. This is pretty easy to do. When you hold down on your lockscreen, you can select what wallpaper you want and also link that wallpaper to an existing focus mode.

Now the last step is to create a shortcut that automatically turns off color in work focus. This is a great way to not get distracted. When you accidentally open a distracting app, there will be no color so your brain won’t be as rewarded and it’ll just be boring. It’ll serve as a reminder to stay on task and not get distracted.

To do this:

1. Open the shortcuts app and create a new automation

2. Choose: “When Work Focus Turns on”

3. In the search bar: “Set color filters” and click that option

4. Set the color filters to '“On”

5. Do the same process for when Work Focus turns off (set color filters off)

Yay! So now you have the perfect settings on your phone to prevent yourself from getting distracted by your phone.

That’s it from me this week, I’ll see y’all next week!

-Crisha ♥️ 

p.s. This will soon become a tutorial on YouTube so if this was slightly confusing, be on the lookout for that where we will create the automation together in REAL TIME

Hey Bestie!

If you enjoyed this newsletter, consider sharing it with someone who might also enjoy it! If this was shared with you, consider subscribing to support my work. Thanks bestie!

Welcome to Glow-Up Friday’s #2.6

This is how you can go from having 0 energy and motivation and energy to having limitless energy, stay focused and actually get things done.

It’s how I went from laying in my bed all day and watching anime, and constantly being distracted by my phone, to being disciplined and motivated create, work and do cool things.

Most productivity techniques such as the pomodoro don’t treat the root cause of why you have low energy and are undisciplined. The framework that I share today will allow you to treat the root cause so that you can have limitless motivation, focus and energy.

By the end of this video, you’ll be left with the exact framework that I used to get out of my “lazy girl era” and start doing something productive with my life.

There are 4 main things that I started doing that I noticed significantly improved my focus, productivity and energy throughout the day. With these 4 things, I stopped having the need to take afternoon naps and be distracted 24/7. Instead, I was able to discover and focus on the things that truly mattered to me. All of these things really help with sending your energy to one direction and not having it diffused to everything and everyone.

1: Tailor Environment

The quickest and easiest thing that you can do right now is to change your environment. The environment that you work, study, or create in has a huge impact on how much you’re able to focus, stay on task, and get things done. This is the step where you cut out ALL distractions in your life; social, digital, and physical.

You need to craft your environment in such a way that you have a low probability of getting distracted. So how do we do that? First we need to figure out what things cause the probability to increase and then limit our associations with those things. We do this by building awareness on what we’re usually getting distracted by. These are the top 5 things that I’ve found to increase my probability of getting distracted and yours are likely to be similar (with a few deviations of course).

1. People ➡️ Distracting people

2. Food ➡️ snackable foods

3. Music ➡️ anything that isn’t brown\white noise

4. Distracting apps and sites ➡️ YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Netflix

5. Thoughts ➡️ what happened\what’s going to happen

Next, we need to match the environment with the tasks that we’re going to do throughout the day. The more focus you need for a specific task or the more high priority the task is, the more you want to limit your interaction with things that’ll increase your probability of distraction. Obviously, there are things you can’t stop your interaction with such as food or people but 60% of the things on that list are activities that you can basically cut out ESPESCIALLY with apps and sites you don’t need.

Distracting apps and sites? Clear your digital environment. Rid your bookmarks bar with easily accessible high distraction sites. Keep only your essential sites\apps on your bookmarks bar\taskbar.

Distracted by your phone? If at home, put it in another room. If outside, put it in your bag. Turn on focus modes. This is the focus mode settings that I use so that my phone doesn’t buzz one bit.

Distracted by people or food? Go to study in places or rooms that don’t have a lot of people or you’re surrounded by people who are doing the same. That’s why the library is great place to work because everyone is working and you don’t want to distract them so you’ll end up doing the same: working and staying on task. If you’re in university, book yourself study rooms on campus. That way you’ll really limit your interactions with 80% of things on that list.

In a bit, I will also talk about how to not get distracted by your own thoughts

When you craft your environment so that it limits the probability of you getting distracted, your energy is conserved; it isn’t pulled in every direction. You’re able to laser focus on the task at hand and finish it quicker.

2: Following a schedule

When you allow yourself the whole day to do a task or don’t really set any time limits for you to finish, you’re 10x more likely to get distracted because you don’t have pressure to finish it. This is called Parkinson's law: “work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion”. The best way to counter Parkinson’s law is to create a schedule for every single task of your day. yes even showering.

This is what I like to do: set up my google calendar and time block fixed events, daily tasks, and things I know I need to work on within the next few days. I’ve recently really made it a habit to check my calendar often and make sure I have at least the next 2 days filled with what I need to do. I usually like to spend 15 minutes in the evening on a Sunday mapping out my week and what I need to do. Then during the day throughout the week, I tinker around with the specifics of each task. It’s really easy to do this in google calendar which is why it’s my calendar of choice.

Then when you start each task, set a timer for the allotted time. This really starts to lock in the time pressure so you stay on task. It’s already set that in the back of your mind that this is all the time that you have to work on it today so it really starts to be disciplined and focused on the task at hand instead of being distracted by everything and everyone.

3: Exercising

The next two things on this list are really going to help you focus, create discipline, and maximize your daily energy. They’re the things that’ll help you stay on task with distracting thoughts or even get rid of them quickly.

Exercising is a key activity to help you create focus and energy in your life. When you exercise with no music or social media, you get to really strengthen the mind-body connection. Then, you can apply those same skills that you strengthened to other areas of your life such as when you work or when you socialize. Its scientifically proven to give you energy (after you do it and esp after you do it for a while). Before I started working out consistently, my energy would always be low and because of that i wasn’t able to focus on just one thing and was constantly distracted. When I exercised consistently, I was able to maintain constant energy levels throughout the day and focus better on any task that i was doing.

Exercising helps lower how many distracting thoughts you have on average. Obviously if you have stuff going on and find yourself ruminating constantly, that’s an exception. But in day to day life, if you want to lower the amount of random distracting thoughts that pop into your mind then your go to is exercising.

Now when I say exercising, what do I mean by that? This depends where you’re at in your life with your health/personal relationship journey. It also depends on what you personally like and dislike. If you love(ed) playing sports but hate weightlifting, then go play sports for like an hour everyday. If you hate sports and weightlifting, go on morning walks or follow YouTube workouts at home. If you have ‘no time’ to exercise, then add mini exercises into your routine; when you take a break, go and move your body and do some body weight exercises. (Sidenote: you always have time; it’s just a matter of prioritization). Just incorporate movement into your day instead of sitting all day.

4: Journaling

If you find that these thoughts are important then get out a piece of paper and write it down. It’s pretty simple. you have a note taking app in your pocket so why not use it wisely? If you’re constantly thinking about random things or things you need to do\take care of while you work, you need a way to offload them. That’s why just write them down and forget about them until you have the time, energy, and focus to be able to deal with those other tasks\thoughts.

Besides that, I also recommend journaling at night as a way to filter and synthesize thoughts that you have throughout the day. It really is something (that i find at least) helps with processing ‘big’ events\emotional events that happen in your life. Also, it helps you sleep at night so that you can wake up refreshed and ready for tomorrow. If you had a wardrobe overflowing with clothes, how are you supposed to add new clothes, find the clothes you love, and keep it organized? Journaling allows a way for you to declutter your closet so that you can have fresh thoughts and act on the thoughts that you know are aligned with you.

When you have clear mind, you’re able to focus clearly on the tasks that truly matter to you. you’re able to stay disciplined and your energy is in one place rather that in 50 places at once. You may think (esp if you’ve never done it before) that it’s kind of a dumb activity to do or something. like why would you need to write down you feelings if you already know what you’re feeling lmao. It just goes back to processing your feelings, emotions, and thoughts. When you write them down on paper, you actually get to see them for what they are. When they’re stuck in our brains, then it just becomes messy - a lot of overthinking and overestimating and over-everything-ing

And so when your mind’s that messy, how’re you supposed to be able to focus and do things you know you should do? You can’t.

Ex: I skipped a journal session one time last week and I was just pissed and sad and annoyed that whole day.

• Conclusions

  So if you want limitless focus and energy and want to stay productive all day, then those are the things that I found help best to cultivate that energy, discipline, etc.

  Here’s a quick summary of what I’ve mentioned today:

  1. Change your environment and tailor it to the intensity of your task.

  2. Time-block tasks and set timers for each time you do a task

  3. Exercise to cultivate focus and discipline

  4. Journal to process distracting thoughts and emotions.

That’s all for this week. I hope this serves you, I’ll see you next week.

-Crisha

Hey Bestie!

If you enjoyed this newsletter, consider sharing it with someone who might also enjoy it! If this was shared with you, consider subscribing to support my work. Thanks bestie!

Welcome to Glow-Up Friday’s #2.6

“They’re gonna judge me”

“They’re gonna think I’m ugly”

“I’m stupid/dumb”

Etc.

If you constantly have thoughts such as these wandering around your brain, chances are that you might need to cultivate some more self-esteem and confidence.

Gaining self-esteem follows a pretty simple structure. But first, let’s define self-esteem. Self-esteem is how much worth and value that you think that you have as a person.

Your self-esteem is based on your self perception/talk and actions. In other words how much you value yourself and how much you trust yourself.

So if we want to boost our self esteem, then we need to start by changing self-perception.

The perception that you have of yourself dictates what, how, and why you do/feel certain things. 

The reason that we may think that the other person is thinking negatively about you is because you are constantly thinking and talking about yourself negatively.

You’re perceiving yourself pessimistically.

You’re constantly saying how you’re dumb or stupid and because of these self-perceptions, you naturally think that other people are going to think about you the same way you think about yourself.

To change our self-perception, we need to understand what influences it. First, it’s the way that we speak to ourselves, and second is the way that we treat ourselves.

Let’s first go over how we can change our self talk:

First, you need to build awareness on common things that you say to yourself that you believe could negatively impacting you.

“I’m so stupid, I’m not smart, I’ll never learn”.

You need to catch yourself talking to yourself like that, whether that be out loud or in your head.

If you know that you commonly say things like that out loud even with your friends, tell your friends to point out every time that you’re doing.

Through that that you can start building your awareness and realize when you actually say things like that to yourself. This is a very important step because if you’re not aware of when and what you’re saying to yourself then you can’t go about fixing it.

Once you've gotten a sense of the things that you’re saying to yourself, you need to change what you’re saying. Create a list of all the things that you’ve recently become aware of. Then find how you can change the specific words.

It’s all about tweaking the language a bit. For example, if you constantly catch yourself saying “I’m stupid”, replace that with “I’m learning.”

Slowly replace your vocabulary; you’ll find that you start to care less about what people are thinking about you. Through this, you’ll slowly start to build your self-worth.

Something I heard from Ali Abdaal’s Deep Dive Podcast was that “If i called you a burrito, you wouldn’t be a offended because you know that you’re not a burrito; you don’t identify as a burrito. But if I instead picked on one of your traits ex: you suck at speaking, you’ll start to get defensive and insecure about it because you’re tied up to that identity.” So that’s why if you yourself think negatively about yourself, you’re more likely to think that the other person is also thinking negatively about you too. (sidenote: that quote was not verbatim)

When we change our vocabulary, we change the way that we actually think about ourselves; we perceive ourselves optimistically rather than pessimistically. 

Think of yourself like a fire. If you have a strong fire then you’re not gonna let outside elements affect you. A little bit of wind or rain isn’t gonna put a damper on how you think about yourself. If instead you were a small little matchstick, then just a tiny drop of water will make you dark.

Let’s get this clear. This isn’t about avoiding a bit of constructive criticism from others. Nor is it about being narcissistic or avoiding your mistakes and not knowing when it’s time to learn something instead of automatically thinking you’re good at it from the get-go.

It's about you being so secure in yourself that you’re not gonna let some passive comment hurt you. Why should it hurt you? If you know that you’re actually good at something or whatever, then why would a comment like that hurt you in the first place.

Like imagine if you were a ping pong master and I said “man you suck at ping pong” and you’d be like what are you talking about and just dismiss the passive comment. 

When you start validating yourself, you don’t need other people to validate you. Sure it’s nice when you get it but it’s not a necessity; your whole life doesn’t depend on the validation of other people.

The next thing is your actions towards yourself.

You can’t just say one thing and do the complete opposite. Every time you try to say something positive, your mind will just assume you’re lying. You need to learn to show up for yourself. This is something that’ll build massive self-trust. So how do we do this? What actions are we supposed to show ourselves to build this self trust?

First, you need to gain awareness on your current actions. What are your habits? Are your thoughts matching up with what you’re doing? Do you show up for yourself and do what you say you’re going to do? What actions serve and don’t serve you? What are your positive and negative habits? Do you treat yourself with kindness and respect?

You need to find actions that you believe might be a bit detrimental to you. Then change them. It most likely only needs to be a small tweak, just as we tweaked our vocabulary.

You want your actions to show that you do what you say you’re going to do and not the opposite. You show up for yourself. You build trust with yourself. You respect your ideas and decisions.

You also want to start showing yourself love. What actions show love?

It can be many things from starting to take care of your health, start working on building your future (a.k.a taking actions on your dreams). Or it could be buy yourself gifts and spend time with yourself through solo-dates and journaling.

All these acts of love will raise how much you value yourself. You learn to take care of yourself. Start treating yourself the same way you treat your best friend.

When you combine the power of positive self-talk and actions, you build trust, worth, intrinsic value, self-love, and self-confidence. So if you want to be that person that radiates confidence and value, you start by treating yourself right.

Hey Bestie!

If you enjoyed this newsletter, consider sharing it with someone who might also enjoy it! If this was shared with you, consider subscribing to support my work. Thanks bestie!

Welcome to Glow-Up Friday’s #2.5

It’s easy to get caught up in all the little habits that you need to do to change your life.

Instead of being distracted by a hundred different things, there are three major things that you can focus on over the next three months to create change and live a life that you want to live. 

Each week of this framework builds off the other; we’re taking it step by step here.

Month 1: Health

The first month is dedicated to getting in the habit of taking care of yourself. It’s sets you up so that you’re able to think clearly and think logically to solve the problems that you might have in your life.

When you start to take care of your health, you allow your body and mind to be at its best performance.

Each week of the month, dedicate one habit to start working on.

This is the game plan that I’d recommend. Here we go: 

Week 1 & 2:

First, start sleeping and waking up at the same time everyday (plus/minus 1hr).

Sleep is one of the most important things that you need to do to function properly as a human. Many physiological and mental processes happen while you sleep and if you neglect your sleep, your body won’t really be able to get rid of junk that’s built up in your body throughout the day.

Sleep is the basis of starting to improve upon your health.

Make sleep your non-negotiable.

Week 3:

Stop eating junk and add movement throughout your day. You will be surprised by how you feel after implementing this.

I assure you that if you start eating foods that are better for you (vegetables, high fiber, cut refined carbs), then you’ll have increased mental clarity, mood, and energy.

When i say to add movement, i mean that you should avoid sitting constantly.

Take a break every 30 minutes.

During this, take a 5 minute walk or do some quick body weight exercises. It’ll also help to increase your productivity on whatever you may be working on while you stay seated the whole day.

Sure, you can totally start going to the gym every morning in addition to that; that would be amazing. But it might not be feasible instantly for everyone, which is why i suggest to incorporate movement throughout the day.

Week 4:

Start meditating and journaling.

Your health doesn’t just mean your physical health, it also means your mental.

At first, meditation might not have obvious effects. Even after meditating for the past couple years, the effects aren’t clear.

All I know is that when I do meditate, my day goes better, I feel better, and that without it something feels off.

I also recommend journaling because it’s a great way to have a conversation with yourself and get to know yourself. It’s a way of organizing and decluttering your thoughts and allows you to show up for yourself. Think of it like mental maintenance.

Month 2 - Relationships, Wealth:

The second month is dedicated to understanding where you’re stuck in life. What is the biggest source of your stress and how can you possibly solve that problem?

Last month, health was tackled so now your mind is clear enough to focus on these 2 categories: finances and relationships. Any problem at it’s core is either health, financial, or social related.

We’ve started working on health so now it’s time to work on the other two. 

Week 5-6:

The first 2 weeks of this month is dedicated to fixing your relationships.

A good place to start (a.k.a day 1) is to reflect/journal upon your current relationships.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself:

Are you happy with the relationships that you have with your friends and family? Do you current friends align with how you want to become? Which people are draining you or filling you with joy. Who is your ideal friend and how can you be that to someone else?

If you find that your relationship with others is perfect, then work on the relationship that you have with yourself. This can really be broken down into 2 main things.

1. Do you trust yourself?

2. Do you value yourself.

When these things are strong, you find that you will not tolerate bs from no one. 

Week 7-8:

The last 2 weeks are dedicated to understanding what problems you have with your finances and how you can start working on solving that problem.

I’m not yet the most suited person to tell you how to fix your finances but what you can do is to research and learn.

What opportunities are out there? What are some possible ways that you can solve your problem? Etc. The only thing that I can really tell you is that you don’t need to slave away at a job for 40 years if that’s not what you want to do anymore.

Really try to understand the problem that you have. What is causing you the most financial stress and how can you go about relieving it? What tools do you need? etc., etc.

For a comprehensive guide on solving problems, check out this video here and a guide that I’ve created to go along to this video:

Guide!

Month 3: Find your north star

The last month is to continue implementing all the things you were doing the past 2 months.

Build upon it. Use this month to discover what you truly want from life.

How do you want to live your life? What matters most to you in your life? Family? Friends? Health? Yourself? Wealth? Freedom? Design your ideal life. Use the skills that you learned in the previous 2 months to start realizing your true potential. The whole point of this is to find meaning in your life.

What is your north star? This is no free pass for you to laze around; everyday you need to question your whole existence. If you keep on questioning, you’ll eventually come up with an answer from yourself that you’re satisfied with. 

The answer that you come up with doesn’t need to satisfy anyone else. Not your friends, parents, teachers, etc. This is your life. You are the creator.

Closing off…

It may seem like all these things don’t really change your life; that they’re just things to change your personality a bit.

Yeah I’ll be honest; this is just to change your personality. But if you want to change your personal reality (a.k.a the life that you’re living) you need to change your personality.

You may wonder why I’m asking you to change yourself, after all, aren’t you not supposed to change yourself?

You’re not supposed to change yourself for others; change yourself for yourself.

The life that you live is determined by the choices that you make on a daily basis. What influences the choices you make on a daily basis? Your beliefs and your perception of yourself and the world.

So if you want to change the choices that you make towards a positive trend, you need to change your identity and beliefs.

If you want to change your life you need to change your identity and beliefs. 

There are 2 major videos that I recommend that you watch that’ll also help you on your journey: how to get over limiting beliefs and how to solve problems (this one was linked above)

That’s all for this week, I’ll see you soon.

-Crisha

Hey Bestie!

If you enjoyed this newsletter, consider sharing it with someone who might also enjoy it! If this was shared with you, consider subscribing to support my work. Thanks bestie!

Welcome to Glow-Up Friday’s #2.4

The new year means new goals.

We sit down near the beginning of the year and write a bunch of different goals that we want to achieve for the next year. Many many goals.

Before you know it, you’re 2 weeks into the year and you haven't done a single thing to progress towards those goals. You feel overwhelmed. You beat yourself up for not even starting.

Or you may be the opposite. You’ve started taking action on ALL of your goals (and you have like 30 of them) and feeling burnt out after a few weeks in. You think to yourself how you’ll ever be able to maintain this routine for yourself? At this rate, you feel that it’ll be impossible. So what now? It feels like you’ve set yourself up for failure here which is the opposite of what you wanted. 

This is where you have to understand that you’re trying to do too many things at once. You’ve fallen victim to the excitement of the new year.

Don’t get me wrong, the new year is a great way to reset your life and start anew. Despite that, there’s too much hype and excitement leading us to overestimate what we can do.

To be successful this year, you need to limit yourself to 1 big-ass goal. Not 1000 tiny little goals. 1 major focus of your life that you want to hone in on this year. If you try to hone in on everything, you’ll set yourself up for failure.

By focusing on 1 big goal, you ensure that your energy is directed effectively.

If you have 30 goals that require a minimum of 80% of your energy to be achieved, you’re not going to achieve your goals. This is because you only have 5-10% of your energy going towards each goal since you’re using the other energy towards your other goals. You don’t have infinite energy or time in the day.

Your mind can only on a maximum of 2 things at once. 2 is pushing it. Your mind is not a multi-tasking machine (at least the conscious mind isn’t).

Of course, you have goals in the 3 main areas of your life (health, wealth, relationships) but you have to focus on one. The rest need to be background goals. Either you need to have laid the groundwork the year prior or make that your next big focus for the next year. You’d have to have made it a habit already - it’d be more like a passive goal.

For example, if you had big goals of losing weight this year, getting straight A’s, starting a business, being more active, learning how to rock climb, being more social, and making 100 new friends, then my bestie, you’re setting yourself up for failure.

Let’s be brutally honest here, we ain't trying to cover anything up. Your energy is being spread out way too thin and you’re going to get way overwhelmed. Let’s take it 1 bit at a time. Focus on one thing at a time. 

If you do insist on achieving multiple goals in a year, segment each season to a specific goal. Again, just one goal per season. For example, the first 3 months could be dedicated to consistently going to the gym for x weeks straight (making sure to keep it a habit for the rest of the year). The next 3 months you try to make the goal of eliminating ultra-processed foods and eating healthier etc., etc..

With this method, by the end of the year, you would be doing everything at the same time as you desired at the beginning of the year. Now you’ll be able to stick with it into the next year since you’ve made a habit out of them.

So remember, if you want to change your life, it starts with one big ass goal a year and focusing all your energy on that. Focus is key. Motivation will follow action.

I’ll see y’all next week

-Your bestie, Crisha 🫶 

Hey Bestie!

If you enjoyed this newsletter, consider sharing it with someone who might also enjoy it! If this was shared with you, consider subscribing to support my work. Thanks bestie!

Welcome to Glow-Up Friday’s #2.3

“I’m not that type of person”.

“Yeah, I’ve just never been good at doing that”.

“I’m too shy for my own good; totally can’t change that”.

How do you get over something that’s been fossilized since you were a child? (ex I’ve been called “shy” ever since I was young. I’ve now gotten over this).

How do we get over our limiting beliefs?

Limiting beliefs are exactly what they sound like; they’re beliefs that you hold within yourself that block you from achieving the things that you want to do and the life that you want to live.

The bane of my existence.

Getting over limiting beliefs follows a pretty simple method; you have to prove yourself wrong.

That’s it. That’s exactly how you get over limiting beliefs.

Seems simple but easier said than done. When you try to take an action that goes against the identity that you’ve had for so long, your mind is going to start coming up with a billion excuses to prevent yourself from taking that action.

Ugh, internal resistance has come to the battle field 🙄 

The thing with internal resistance is that the more that you have, the harder it’s going to be to overcome it BUT when you do overcome it, the reward, satisfaction, and growth are 10X bigger.

When trying to overcome limiting beliefs, you’re changing your identity.

Sometimes it can take a week or sometimes it can take years. The more tied you are to this identity, the longer it’s going to be to overcome it. 

So how do we go about proving ourselves wrong to overcome these beliefs? How do we become limitless?

First off, we need to understand what the belief is and where it’s coming from. These are a list of questions I find useful to ask myself when I realize that I might be limiting myself:

• What is the belief and what is it preventing me from doing? ↔️ name it for what it is; don’t try to avoid what the belief truly is.

• How does keeping the belief block me from achieving my dream life/self?

• Where could this have stemmed from? (childhood, significant life experience, mistakes you made, etc.)

• What habits does a person without this belief have? How can I go about implementing those habits into my own life?

Once you’ve identified all these things, you need to figure out what new identity you’ll need to convince yourself of. What is the type of person you need to become when you overcome this belief?

Ex: I’m a lazy person → I’m an active person, I’m a shy person → I’m a sociable person

When you do this, your brain is not going to believe it at first instance. You need to reinforce your words with the actions.

You can't just tell yourself that you’re sociable while locking yourself up in your room! Your mind needs evidence; proof that you’re sociable or else it’s going to go back to the belief that you’re a shy person. 

Taking the actions that will replace this belief and identity is the hard part. This is the part that’ll take the longest time. You need to have that strong internal drive and motivation to push yourself outside your comfort zone.

You need to have the willingness to change and understand that deep down if you stay the way you are, you will hate the life that you will end up living. 

To at least even start taking action, try and make things easier for yourself by taking smaller steps. Set daily/weekly/monthly micro goals for yourself so it pushes you to take action.

For example, if you want to cultivate the belief that you’re a sociable person, start by making eye contact with people you pass by. Next, bump it up to smiling and eye contact. Then the week after, make conversations with strangers that you happen to interact with (i.e barista).

Build it up from there. Don’t expect yourself to start becoming social instantly; it doesn’t work like that. 

Once you’ve taken your small action, you need to vigorously reinforce the new belief and identity.

Ex. after you smile at someone/make conversation with the barista, tell yourself that you’re sociable. If your brain tries to deny it, refute it with the evidence that you just created for yourself. 

Do this process enough times and you will eventually start to overwrite your previous identity with your new one. The more frequently you take this action, the easier it’ll be for you to take it each time 

Remember, work at it slowly. When in doubt that you’ve started to overcome this belief, think back to all the times that you took action and proven yourself wrong.

That’s how you’ll get over your limiting beliefs.

Your plan of action: Identify beliefs that you might be carrying right now. Do this by cultivating self-awareness. Then follow the steps outlined in this letter.

I hope that helps!

-Your bestie Crisha 🫶 

Hey Bestie!

If you enjoyed this newsletter, consider sharing it with someone who might also enjoy it! If this was shared with you, consider subscribing to support my work. Thanks bestie!

Welcome to Glow-Up Friday’s #2.2

Slumps. We all get into these periods of low morale and low motivation.

We reminisce on how amazing and cool we were before our slump; out here achieving every single goal that we aimed at. Look at us now, we think. Our whole life is now going to get ruined with this little slump. So how do we get un-slumped. How do we get back to the version of ourselves (or an even better version) from where we are right now? 

1: Understand

First off, I want you to identify and understand why you’re in a slump. How do we do this? Through journaling and having a conversation with yourself. Ask yourself questions such as: what changed in my life that caused me to go into this slump? Is there a problem in my life that I’m trying to avoid? etc.

You know that you’re not like this but there’s a small little thing in your life that’s causing a ‘worse’ version of you to pop out of yourself. It’s like the small little thing is reviving your bad habits from the grave. Take note of all the bad habits and actions that you’re doing daily so that once you’ve gotten out of your slump, you know which habits to replace.

Understanding why you’re in a slump in the first place is crucial to getting un-slumped. For example, if you’ve found out that you’re avoiding some sort of problem, then you need to create a solution to that problem. This leads me to my second step: get the game plan to get out of your slump.

This can pretty much be the hardest step out of all this. It’ll be the step that determines if you get out of the slump or if you spiral deeper into this slump. This is really where you need to use your discernment and prior experience. It’s not something that can be learned from a YouTube video.

How the heck are you supposed to defeat a villain you’re too scared to defeat? I would also call this the “Just do it” step because you have to push yourself to take action on something that you really really really want to avoid; something that you don’t even want to take action on. Yes, that’s 4 “really’s”.

To make this easier, really try to understand why you’re avoiding this problem (assuming the reason you’re in a slump is because you’re avoiding a problem). This can be boiled down to one reason: you’re not present. The future is uncertain, the past doesn’t exist, so you only have the present. The problem here is that you’re living in a state that doesn’t exist.

To make it easier for you to take action, it’s instructive to understand the worst and best-case scenarios. Know that the probability that the worst-case scenario does happen is very low because your mind tends to overestimate the severity of a situation. 

2: Game-plan

Now that we’ve dealt with this internal struggle, let’s get on to the game plan

Think of this as a game. The villain is the true reason you’re in a slump - the thing you found out in part 1. What tools and ‘level-ups’ do you need to defeat this villain? 

Step by step, write down exactly what you need to do, when you’re going to do it, and how you’re going to do it. Try to visualize yourself solving this problem since it’ll stimulate the same muscles and brain pathways. Set the date, set the time, and get super specific because you’re going to solve this problem! No more dilly-dallying, no more avoiding, we’re tackling this slump head-on.

3: Revive

Now is the aftermath. You might be stuck with some of the bad habits from when you were in the slump. This shouldn’t be too hard to replace since you’ve taken away the core reason you were turning to those bad habits in the first place. Start slowly. You’ve already written down all the bad habits you need to replace. Replace them slowly; week by week.

See, once you understand the root cause of your slump, getting out of the slump is the easy part. You can’t solve a problem you don’t understand.

That’s it from me this week, see you next week bestie!

-Crisha ❤️ 

Hey Bestie!

If you enjoyed this newsletter, consider sharing it with someone who might also enjoy it! If this was shared with you, consider subscribing to support my work. Thanks bestie!

Welcome to Glow-Up Friday’s #2.1

Life can get pretty overwhelming. From dealing with relationship, financial, and internal problems. 

Sometimes it even feels as if every single decision is overwhelming. 

Should I quit my job to do what I love? Should I pick this major or that major? Should I go and talk to that really cute guy/girl? Or even existential questions like wondering what it means to live a good life and understanding what type of life you want.

Your life is filled with so many decisions and little conflicts; that you fall into a state of paralysis. Uncertainty will start to creep in and you’ll feel like your whole world is falling apart.

You feel stuck. You feel like this is how the rest of your life is going to play out. Self-doubt and hopelessness start to cloud your mind.

Is this life worth living? Am I even making the right decision? Thoughts like those bounce around your entire mind 24/7.

It feels like you’re sitting bathing in a swamp of thoughts. Chained down, nowhere to run. 

Completely trapped. You feel like you’re drowning in quicksand. 

So what do we do? What can we do?

Simply believe. Believe that everything will eventually get better. That your current problems will slowly untangle themselves. Believe that you have the strength to unravel that knot. Believe that these experiences are happening for a reason; it’s not pointless or futile to put yourself through this struggle. 

Believe that you’re meant to go through these experiences so that you can grow into the person you’re meant to be this whole time. Believe that once you overcome your current crisis, everything will end up being 10x better than it was before.

Believe that everything will work out even if it seems hopeless right now. Understand that if you hold yourself accountable to living right now, not in the past or future, then everything will feel lighter. It won’t be as if you have to carry the weight of the world. 

Understand that although you do have to think about the future a bit, don’t end up living there 24/7. You’ll be in a constant state of anxiety. 

Understand that your past shapes the person that you are right now but don’t live in that time or else you’ll keep reliving it for no reason. 

Bring your awareness to what you have right now. What can you do right now? How do you want to feel right now? Learn to control your biology to calm your psyche. Meditate.

Understand that you’ll be able to look back at your current struggles and take pride in overcoming them.

All the struggles you’re facing will eventually pass. You’ll overcome them. You’re strong and capable enough to do that. You didn’t just get to your current stage in life without having developed strength and resilience. You’re capable, you’re loved, you’re abundant in so many areas of your life. 

Don’t let a negligible problem consume your entire life. You will look back and realize that it wasn’t that big of a deal. If you had just focused on taking the next step and remained optimistic, everything would’ve worked itself out regardless.

Remember that a baby learns how to walk one step at a time.

Don’t overcomplicate it; just do the same. Take your life 1 step at a time. You will eventually overcome your current struggles.

You got this, everything will work out eventually and if it doesn’t then that means it hasn’t ended yet. It means that you still need to learn a few lessons for your struggles to end. It means that you might need to realize a few things before everything ends up working out for you. 

In the meantime, remember to give yourself time, energy, and space so that you’re able to better solve your situations. Let yourself feel your emotions rather than suppress them. Let them pass over you. Get good rest, get good movement, get good food, get good people, and get good sleep. Don’t let you bother yourself about thoughts from the future or the past. Keep yourself accountable to maintain awareness of this present moment.

Remember the fact that you can control every single breath that you take. In the same way, you’re in control of what actions you take. Get back in the driver’s seat bestie; you’re the boss of how you want to live your life.

Everything will work out in the end. If it’s not the end, it hasn’t worked out yet.

Hey besties, I’m back! I’ve decided to do this again and I hope y’all are once again on board with this ride with me. Thank you so much for reading for this long and I hope to once again fill your Fridays with motivational content so you can have an amazingly productive and mind-expanding weekend. If you no longer want to read my work, all good! No hard feelings 😉. With that being said, I will see you guys next week!

Hey Bestie!

If you enjoyed this newsletter, consider sharing it with someone who might also enjoy it! If this was shared with you, consider subscribing to support my work. Thanks bestie!