Blast from the past

I have an interest in minimalism. I say I have an interest instead of I am a minimalist is pretty obvious. I want to follow minimalism and intentionality in everything I own and do but let’s be honest, this is pretty difficult. Marie Kondo asks you to hold the object in your hand and ask yourselves a question “Does this spark joy?”. I almost always get a yes for this question.

With the onset of the new year and the usual hype around the resolutions, I thought probably it is a good idea to discard a few unwanted things. The first thing I got hold of a pocket journal that I had bought like 7 years back.  Only 10 pages were filled with some notes from the books I read and some exercise routine that I wanted to track. I do not know if I stopped exercising because I stopped tracking or I stopped tracking because I stopped working out. What I know is that both stopped.

And what was interesting was the notes from the two books that I read.  I believe this was the time that I really started getting into reading and it was a pre-kindle era for me. So I seemed to have been diligent in making notes and all hoping that I or my grandkids would read it someday in the future.  One of the books was “Like a Virgin” by Richard Branson. It was a fun read and I like his casual approach. Below are the pics of my notes from 2013 (6+ years ago), if you can read

Sparing you the pain of squinting your eyes trying to read my notes, below are the points that I had written.  They are still good advice. Everybody loves a piece of advice.

1. Never look back in regret. Move on to the next thing
2. Don’t openly criticize people
3. Impossible to run a business without taking risks.
4. The brave may not live forever but the cautious never live at all
5. If you are not prepared to fall a lot, you will never learn to be a good skier
6. Screw it, let’s do it
7. Come to term with the fact that the perfect 10 doesn’t exist and when you hit the nine mark don’t stand back and admire your handiwork. Start work on next-gen(??) to make it still better
8. If you don’t like the second opinion, get a third
9. Ninety percent of life is just showing up

Now I did not take his advice (7) seriously looks like. I stopped when I hit 9 and now I am admiring my handiwork. But it is fun to read the content that had created a long time back and have no idea that it exists.

Have you found something like this from the past unexpectedly that made you smile?

Cheers