Welcome to our one hundredth podcast. Yes. It’s true. One hundredth podcast. You know, I don’t think 100 podcasts is actually a big deal.
I’ll tell you why. Firstly, I would like to thank all of our listeners who have sent me encouraging emails and lines and have spoken to me at our classes and our seminars. Thank you so much. Your encouragement has meant the world to me. And I’d also would like to thank Bo-Yu Chen for proposing this project at the very beginning.
Truly, I don’t think I would have begun without his encouragement for sure. Now that said, I do not think this is such a big deal and I’ll tell you why. Because I think it is based on a routine. And I think like most people, I am an enormous procrastinator. I put things off.
I don’t do them. And I delay and I delay. So how can I overcome this curse of procrastination? That was the question that was with me when I was 18 years old. And I realized if anything was going to happen in this piece of life, there was going to have to be some sense of mental order.
I was going to have to go to school because I truly knew nothing at 18. I was going to have to travel. I was going to have to experience other individuals. And the routine was going to have to somehow be established. So that’s what I did.
Whatever project I undertook, I developed a routine, and I always tried to follow Aristotle’s dictum, always excellence, why not? And I understand that I’m a frail human being, and I understand that there are better looking people than me, for sure, sadly. And there are smarter people than me for sure, sadly. But there are no people like me with my piece of life. Get on with it, as I like to say.
So how do you build this daily routine is the question. So what what I do is when I awake in the morning, I immediately go and make a cup of coffee. Then I come back into my bedroom and I make my bed. And as I make my bed, I always try to listen to positive affirmations. The first one being gratitude.
I’m so lucky to be alive and to be me. My bed is warm. My home is clean. However grand or humble it may be, then I say my prayers. I think it’s necessary to have some appreciation of some essence, some power bigger than you, bigger than me.
And then I get on with the day. Try to get to a gym as much as possible, then get ready for work. Because I think we are naturally busy. I think we have a natural busyness, so we need a routine. And what I do in my week is on Monday, I usually research or try to build a video or things along this nature.
Tuesday through Friday, I work. Saturday, I have class once again. And then Saturday evening, I do a podcast or two podcasts, and I do my blog. I don’t finish. I go to sleep, get up early, go to a church, say my prayers, acknowledge my mortality, have lunch, go home, exercise, go for a walk.
Monday morning, do it all over again. It’s a boring routine, but it works for me. So I think we all should establish our own. Now there are people, of course, that talk about procrastination and daily challenges. I don’t believe this is possible.
I think we need a week or a month for a regular schedule. Establish your own and then get on with it. And it’s all possible. And what amazes me about my life is that I’ve never thought that I could accomplish anything, but I have because of a routine. Now there’s a really interesting man.
I recommend you look him up. His name is Maine de Biran, and he talks about habit. He was a Frenchman. He had a book, obviously in French, but it’s been translated into English. It’s entitled The Influence of Habit on the Faculty of Thinking.
And he essentially says that everything is accomplished through habit. In other words, a routine. Everything that you can imagine can be done if you make a plan and then execute that plan because he fundamentally believes that habit is this foundational concept. And in habit, you actually pull in all your thoughts. All the thought processes that you possess are inside your habit.
And through habit, you gain a sense of freedom, a sense of personal power because you know you can do it. And some of the things that have happened in my life with the routine, I’ve written several books. We’ve done a hundred podcasts. We’ve done a blog now for around twelve years. We’ve done a TED Talk.
Now these sound like boastful accomplishments, but I don’t mean them in this way at all. I’m simply stating the facts that if I can do these things, anyone, absolutely anyone can do them, but they must all be accomplished through a sense of routine, I believe. Because, you know, 10% of the population is probably foolish, not very clever. 5%, absolutely brilliant. That leaves 85% of the population are just like you and me.
And we have to work at life. Spiritually, intellectually, philosophically, we’ve got to work at it. And the routine is our secret weapon. And we can develop this. We can develop our own.
Similar to the personal brand, we can develop our own. Just push on. So celebrate life. Get on with your routine. You can do it, and so can I?
You know what they say. You know what they say. Critical thinking is everything. Critical thinking helps us develop a routine, and critical thinking is great. Absolutely great. You take care. God bless. Bye bye.