Hi old friends and new ones,
To think out of everything this Dunya could toss at us, it’d take a global viral pandemic to summon me back to posting. For those unaware of myself, 6 years ago I came across this forum on Twitter during its early infancy, and created an account for the sole purpose to share insightful self betterment ideas around. It was in complete contrast to the Google Scholar apropos based threads on Qabiliyaad/Siiaaso and the timeless WE wUZ GeElJiRReS posts.
I wrote a handful of threads that dived into the ideas of practicing Non-Zero Days, Mindfulness, introducing Mental Health and Gratitude. I was happy to find a lot of people who were like-minded and supported the movement of betterment (who to all, I am still to this day very thankful for their support) and a very small minority of trolls who apparently were “2 K0oL” to improve themselves.
Ultimately I had made a choice - talk was cheap but action was invaluable. I decided to double down and implement everything I mentioned above in a practical sense within my own life. Preachers have to practise what they actually preach right?
“Carré dude who gives a rat’s behind, did it work or not??”
If you’re currently thinking this I don’t blame you, please don’t mind me being a tease. A lot had materialized over these past 6 years and the young Carré from 2015 could never conceive the place in life the current Carré is in now. So in the end, YES, it absolutely worked for me and I will be forever thankful to my past younger self for taking all the steps he did at improving himself and practising what he preached. It paid off way more than he could ever imagine.
{ To those that truly in their hearts don’t give a rat’s behind, please stop reading here at this point and close the tab. I’m not here to change minds, only to share. Thanks
}
It would take me threads on threads to summarize 6 years of work into text, and I’d like to keep this short. I think it’d be more wise to reference the exact practises I mentioned and how they’ve helped me over the years:
Non-Zero Days
This was an early idea at the time I had come across online and in other books that taught the importance of learning how to view our time objectively and what we do with it.
The basic premise was that no matter how bad your day was, how busy things were or how slow things could get in a day - if you managed to do at least 1 action in the day that could progress any of your goals, no matter how minuscule the action may seem to you, you’d be way better off than someone who did nothing at all. You’d have yourself an official Non Zero Day.
E.g if your goal was to get into better shape, and all you could muster was 5 push ups that day, then you’ve succeeded as you did something to progress your one of your goals. I went further and made sure I had done at least 1 action across the different goals I had every single day. If you asked me when my last Zero Day was, I’d find it a struggle to remember. And day by day, I would build upon the previous and so on, snowballing it into a habit then into a lifestyle to where I am now.
Mindfulness
Interestingly I came to realize we were exposed to aspects of the idea of mindfulness already without acknowledging it at all. When speaking to many of my Somali elders, I realized in their speech they always spoke in the present moment. It was never about tomorrow or yesterday but today. The Somali Language is already filled with proverbs and idioms on nature and the physical world around us in such detail that almost the language alone introduced you to this idea already.
Being present in the moment was absolutely imperative to my own cognitive thinking, and played a crucial role in my relationships with partners, families, friends e.t.c. Another benefit to mindfulness was during the tough times, staying present kept everything in the bigger picture and never sabotaged me from going ahead. It also contributed to my relationship with failure and risks, of which we know will be important in any/all big major moves we make in our careers.
Gratitude
It’s always said to leave the best for last. I can’t begin to describe just how much the idea of gratitude pulled in life for me, even at times when I had very little. This practise comes in many forms, with the popular one I’ve seen people describe now a days as “living in a abundance not in scarcity” and ties into the Deen when we think of Rizq.
I could literally pinpoint in my memory opportunities over the years I received that I would have never come across, had I not been grateful to begin with. It lead me to meet people I would never thought I’d meet and opened doors I never thought I’d see open. It helped me recognized the privileges I had in life as well as the blessings I was born with, that a lot of people around the world would only wish for. With any loss I took, I was grateful for learning from it. When in times of weakness and injury, I was grateful for my strength to stand tall regardless.
Gratitude took me the longest out of the rest of the practises to truly understand to its hilt. I’ve come to appreciate the little things in life (especially in these trying times) and it pushed me further to provide similar opportunities and doors to those around me who are younger and upcoming.
To those that have reached this far in this post, thank you for taking your time today to read it. I can’t emphasize enough just how far these practises placed me in life more than I could ever anticipate back then. I hope that you can take away any aspects of these ideas and implement them in any way in your personal lives, as you work on improving you. You can check my old posts, they should still be up for a trip back to memory lane. The best investment you could make isn’t the next hot property lot or that new car or Black Friday deals on the Aisle 5 - IT’S YOU. I can only imagine how far all of you could be in the future knowing I got this far by practising.
To think out of everything this Dunya could toss at us, it’d take a global viral pandemic to summon me back to posting. For those unaware of myself, 6 years ago I came across this forum on Twitter during its early infancy, and created an account for the sole purpose to share insightful self betterment ideas around. It was in complete contrast to the Google Scholar apropos based threads on Qabiliyaad/Siiaaso and the timeless WE wUZ GeElJiRReS posts.
I wrote a handful of threads that dived into the ideas of practicing Non-Zero Days, Mindfulness, introducing Mental Health and Gratitude. I was happy to find a lot of people who were like-minded and supported the movement of betterment (who to all, I am still to this day very thankful for their support) and a very small minority of trolls who apparently were “2 K0oL” to improve themselves.
Ultimately I had made a choice - talk was cheap but action was invaluable. I decided to double down and implement everything I mentioned above in a practical sense within my own life. Preachers have to practise what they actually preach right?
“Carré dude who gives a rat’s behind, did it work or not??”
If you’re currently thinking this I don’t blame you, please don’t mind me being a tease. A lot had materialized over these past 6 years and the young Carré from 2015 could never conceive the place in life the current Carré is in now. So in the end, YES, it absolutely worked for me and I will be forever thankful to my past younger self for taking all the steps he did at improving himself and practising what he preached. It paid off way more than he could ever imagine.
{ To those that truly in their hearts don’t give a rat’s behind, please stop reading here at this point and close the tab. I’m not here to change minds, only to share. Thanks
}It would take me threads on threads to summarize 6 years of work into text, and I’d like to keep this short. I think it’d be more wise to reference the exact practises I mentioned and how they’ve helped me over the years:
Non-Zero Days
This was an early idea at the time I had come across online and in other books that taught the importance of learning how to view our time objectively and what we do with it.
The basic premise was that no matter how bad your day was, how busy things were or how slow things could get in a day - if you managed to do at least 1 action in the day that could progress any of your goals, no matter how minuscule the action may seem to you, you’d be way better off than someone who did nothing at all. You’d have yourself an official Non Zero Day.
E.g if your goal was to get into better shape, and all you could muster was 5 push ups that day, then you’ve succeeded as you did something to progress your one of your goals. I went further and made sure I had done at least 1 action across the different goals I had every single day. If you asked me when my last Zero Day was, I’d find it a struggle to remember. And day by day, I would build upon the previous and so on, snowballing it into a habit then into a lifestyle to where I am now.
Mindfulness
Interestingly I came to realize we were exposed to aspects of the idea of mindfulness already without acknowledging it at all. When speaking to many of my Somali elders, I realized in their speech they always spoke in the present moment. It was never about tomorrow or yesterday but today. The Somali Language is already filled with proverbs and idioms on nature and the physical world around us in such detail that almost the language alone introduced you to this idea already.
Being present in the moment was absolutely imperative to my own cognitive thinking, and played a crucial role in my relationships with partners, families, friends e.t.c. Another benefit to mindfulness was during the tough times, staying present kept everything in the bigger picture and never sabotaged me from going ahead. It also contributed to my relationship with failure and risks, of which we know will be important in any/all big major moves we make in our careers.
Gratitude
It’s always said to leave the best for last. I can’t begin to describe just how much the idea of gratitude pulled in life for me, even at times when I had very little. This practise comes in many forms, with the popular one I’ve seen people describe now a days as “living in a abundance not in scarcity” and ties into the Deen when we think of Rizq.
I could literally pinpoint in my memory opportunities over the years I received that I would have never come across, had I not been grateful to begin with. It lead me to meet people I would never thought I’d meet and opened doors I never thought I’d see open. It helped me recognized the privileges I had in life as well as the blessings I was born with, that a lot of people around the world would only wish for. With any loss I took, I was grateful for learning from it. When in times of weakness and injury, I was grateful for my strength to stand tall regardless.
Gratitude took me the longest out of the rest of the practises to truly understand to its hilt. I’ve come to appreciate the little things in life (especially in these trying times) and it pushed me further to provide similar opportunities and doors to those around me who are younger and upcoming.
To those that have reached this far in this post, thank you for taking your time today to read it. I can’t emphasize enough just how far these practises placed me in life more than I could ever anticipate back then. I hope that you can take away any aspects of these ideas and implement them in any way in your personal lives, as you work on improving you. You can check my old posts, they should still be up for a trip back to memory lane. The best investment you could make isn’t the next hot property lot or that new car or Black Friday deals on the Aisle 5 - IT’S YOU. I can only imagine how far all of you could be in the future knowing I got this far by practising.
