<div class="bbWrapper">Thanks for opening the thread.<br />
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Well, let's see...<br />
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<ul>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul"><b>What are your major milestones? What makes you proud?</b></li>
</ul>Despite knowing the importance of networking and finding like minded-folks like you Fastlaners, I still stuck with doing it all on my own. Which meant I rarely went out of my way for others, to truly connect with them, learn about their lives...or even volunteer to do good works.<br />
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In my church's Men of Valor fellowship, they were starting up their first-ever camp in a long time.<br />
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They asked me to help out plan camp games. I had NEVER planned games for 40-60 year old men before, and it was YEARS since I helped out at any camp at all. But I took the role since they took the time to follow-up with me.<br />
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The entire process of working with the Men to invite campers and put the pieces together is an ENTIRE odyssey, probably could be a thread by itself.<br />
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But in short, I grew quite close with the Men. Found that they were mostly good-hearted folks who genuinely wanted to serve with all their hearts. <br />
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In our meetings and the casual sessions after, I find I could talk more on life and business...which very few online conversations can get out. I listened to how businessmen battled numerous fires during the COVID-- handled divorces--whole lot of problems. And yet they stayed upright.<br />
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I didn't feel very alone anymore. And the Camp went stunningly well.<br />
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For my stock trading group, I attended more meetups with the group's boss and others.<br />
The boss was a serial entrepreneur in supplement and software...so he traded stocks for fun (although he claimed he won his retirement with Tesla and Bitcoin gains).<br />
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So every meetup at some nice restaurant (we all paid, but he found good discounts for us all)...was a lesson by itself. He and the other folks talked lots on life, stocks and business.<br />
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He also got folks to collect donations for orphanages and old folks' homes every month, so that got me into a regular habit of giving to charity. He shared pics of the visits, so we knew our cash was going to good use.<br />
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I'm just glad I could open up more to folks-- and start helping out in some way.<br />
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<ul>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul"><b><b>Major setbacks? What could have gone better but didn’t?</b></b></li>
</ul>Lost some rather significant copywriting jobs because I didn't follow up frequently enough.<br />
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A grandparent passed away...and some other issues came up that set me in the dumps. But they shouldn't be excuses for not following-up. Even if the sky is falling...check up with your clients or whoever you work with-- and make sure they are taken care of.<br />
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I still hadn't started learning Mandarin seriously-- which was one of the goals I set out at this year's start.<br />
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I feel that deep down, I detest the language because the environment for learning it was hostile when I was a kid.<br />
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I mean...would I be able to learn the language from quarrelsome Chinese dramas on TV watched by relatives? Whereas I learnt English from the more cheerful Sunday School classes? Environment and context do play huge roles.<br />
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One of the older folks in my stock group recommend me the app HanBook, which gives you daily practices for reading, writing and speaking in bite-chunks. Just started on it...let's see where it takes me.<br />
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Also, I feel I could do better in healthy eating and cooking.<br />
When times get busy (a lot), you just have no time and energy to cook. So it's GrabFood or eating at a restaurant, which means more carbs and fat while ravaging the wallet...and I got a belly.<br />
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Which is rather bad because I used to track my meal prep here on the TFLF habits tracker...and to find my meal prep habit collapsing is rather worrying.<br />
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These few months...I've been working on at least cooking a few days...or meals in the week using very familiar ingredients like chicken, noodles, carrots, potatoes, etc. Sometimes I just skipped cooking rice or noodles like typical Asians...and just make soup or an omelette. I think that might be easier on the tummy that way-- especially when some folks say skipping dinner could help with weight. Key is to burn more than you eat.<br />
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While I don't have time to go to gym, I do have to walk very often when I commute.<br />
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But that might mean I'm overloaded on cardio?<br />
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<ul>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul"><b><b><b><b>Major “completes”? Anything worthy of a solid check mark and “I did it!”</b></b></b></b></li>
</ul>I think that even with formal goals that can be measured, the road to mastery will never be complete.<br />
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There will always be things to work on. That's the beauty of it though-- it keeps us working and living.</div>
