Thread by @law_ninja

It was November, 2017. Just about 2 years back.

I was at the peak of my obesity. I weighed a solid 107 Kgs. It is not like I didn’t know what was happening to me.

#approaches #successful #hardworkpaysoff #Lawyers #lawsikho

I had body pain almost every day. I drank too much and smoked a lot. I was on the verge of a depression. I didn’t feel the greatest.

This was while I was fighting hard to keep LawSikho afloat during a few very troublesome period.

I decided to give that all my energy and life force. LawSikho must not only survive, but thrive. I am glad to say we have come much further than what I could foresee back then.

But the result was that I totally ignored my health and paid the price.

In November 2017, when the situation had become unbearable, I turned to my coach for advice. What was going on? She asked.

I wanted to work out every day, and despite wanting to do so, in reality, I was not doing it. I would plan to do it, but in the end, when the time came, I found some excuse or the other to not do it. How was I going to change that?

She asked me “when was a time in your life when you were very regular with working out?”

That was when I was preparing for a national level karate championship. I pushed myself hard, working 2-3 hours per day, because I wanted to win.

So you like martial arts. Why don’t you find a martial arts teacher again and join the class? Sign up for another tournament?

If you try to do things that you do not enjoy doing, there is little chance of you succeeding.

You are trying to do push-ups and squats at home, but what sparks joy in you is martial arts. Figure out a way to pursue martial arts again, and find a cause that will inspire you!

I got the theory, but I had a small problem. I was living in a small village in Goa.

The closest martial arts teacher was 1-hour drive away, and I was not going to drive 2 hours given my schedule and priority.

Also, I did not like the idea that I could not do what I had to do and that I had to work around my moods and feelings.

Is it possible to always accommodate our feelings? Is there no way to rise above my moods and feelings, which change every now and then anyway?

Surely, one way to be successful is to understand what sparks joy in us, and follow that.

But that’s not the only thing. What sparks joy in me the most is working for LawSikho, and I am not ready to sacrifice that for anything else.

Brushing my teeth in the morning does not spark joy in me. I still do it. Charging my phone does not spark joy in me, I still do it.

Growing my social media presence does not spark joy in me, but I still do it, because it is important and necessary.

Taking care of health has to fall in the same category.

So I found another way.

I brush my teeth in the morning because it is a habit. My parents ran after me when I was a kid and ensured I did it every day before I ate anything. I ended up developing the habit of brushing every day, which I continue till date.

I am guessing most of you have developed the same habit.

What if I could develop a habit of working out every day after waking up?

I never manage to go to a gym regularly, because of time issues.

Mastering the energy to go to a gym is a huge deal for me, I want to save all that willpower and mental energy for my work.

What if I didn’t have to go anywhere? What if I could work out in my bedroom itself? Will that increase the chance of me working out?

I got a 16 kg kettlebell that I placed right next to my bed.

I also got a pull up bar that I got fixed right in my bedroom.

Then I got Manish, my assistant to help me with my workouts every day. When I lived in Goa,

I found myself a yoga teacher who came home every morning to make me work out.

It is hard to avoid morning workouts now.

The result is that now I weigh around 87 kg, which is lower than what I weighed at the time of my graduation at the age of 22, a good 10 years back!

And I have a better physique and fitness than I ever had before, within a few months building this habit.

It is not perfect, and I look forward to improving my fitness. But I have built a habit.

Now if I do not work out, I do not like it. I can feel the difference in my body. If I do not work out even for a day, I feel the urge to do it on the next.

In fact, if I did not work out on a particular day for some reason, I have a remedy for that. Before going to sleep,

I must do 75 kettlebell swings non-stop, or 50 pushups non-stop. That gets my heart pounding, muscles aching and tired. It’s not the best I can do, but it’s a habit.

And even if I don’t feel like it, the situation is such, that I may end up doing it anyway. My work out rarely depends on my moods and feelings of the day. Exactly what I wanted to achieve.

There are things that spark joy in you. There are things you love doing. There are things out there that feel so natural that you do not have to push yourself to do them. For me, writing is one of those things.

For me, going out there and doing the work I have to do for LawSikho is like that. I need no push for that. I cannot sleep well or focus on anything else if I do not do these things.

What are such things for you? You must pursue those and spend a lot of time doing those things.

And then there are things that do not spark joy, but you must do them anyway if you want to be successful.

If you are a lawyer or a law student, for you studying law, or learning practical skills maybe something like that. You do not do it, because it does not spark joy.

No problem, but if you are clear that doing these things is essential to your success, you need to find a way to do these things regularly. How is that going to happen?

You must build new habits.

There are two parts to building a new habit. One is that it must become very easy to do that action repeatedly. For example, if you had to go to a shop every day to get toothbrushes and toothpaste before you could brush, it would be damn hard to keep up that habit.

The fact that a toothbrush and toothpaste tube is conveniently available in the bathroom near your hand is a major factor in you being able to maintain that habit.

If you want to build a habit of regular learning and development, which would make you a superior lawyer compared to your peers, or develop a better network than most other lawyers, then you need to identify a repeatable action that you can take very easily every day.

For instance, whenever I travel in public transport, it is reading time for me. I open my kindle and begin reading the business books I have already bought and downloaded into my phone.

This helps me to keep up with my reading habits which are essential for my learning and development as an entrepreneur.

Whenever I am going to sleep, I play sleep meditation tracks from youtube, that reprogram my mind for positivity and will power, even as I am soundly asleep.

Such habits go a long way when it comes to doing things that I otherwise do not find time for. But one reason it becomes possible is that I have made it super easy to do so. I have a headphone that is always kept on my bed, in a specific place, and never moved from there.

If I had to look for a headphone every time I was going to sleep, it may become difficult to build a habit of listening to sleep meditation and affirmation tracks.

If I did not have my kindle books on my phone and relied on hard copy books alone, I may not be able to build a habit of reading while traveling!

If you want to build a habit of learning practical skills regularly, despite a busy schedule, I recommend a similar practice.

This is why we make all our material, videos and exercises available on your smartphone, through native iOS and Android apps. So you can turn your unproductive time of the day into something very productive, effortlessly.

This is why we provide you access to your course on the computer, apart from smartphone apps, despite providing you with hard copy material for study material as well.

This is why it works so well that you can attend our classes from a smartphone or computer from wherever you are, instead of having to travel to a specific location to attend a class.

When you do not have to go anywhere to learn new skills, no need to travel or wait for a teacher to come, but you can access everything online from wherever you are, you have a much higher chance of succeeding at building a habit for learning or attending a class.

And that is why we try to make LawSikho a habit-forming product.

I will tell you a secret. The name of the private limited company that owns LawSikho is Addictive Learning Technology Private Limited. You can look it up on the MCA21 portal. Guess why?

Our vision is to make learning legal skills addictive.

Let’s admit it, for many of us, reading law is a very boring thing to do.

And that prevents a whole lot of lawyers from learning what they need to learn to succeed in the profession. What if we could make it not so boring? What if we could make learning the law addictive?