Achieving greater things

I did a headstand!!! The last time I managed to do a headstand was in sec 1, back when I was 13. Wow I felt this rush of adrenaline and sense of achievement, especially since I tried it two years ago and gave up. I'm so glad I persevered this time and really did it hehehe.

This gives me hope that I should try other things that I may have been too uncomfortable with, or things I gave up on before. I'm currently doing meditation everyday for 5 min, and keeping up with my meditation streak using the Simple Habit app (for those of you interested, add me as a friend!). I'm trying to keep up doing blogilates again everyday (I stuck to it for a few months and then gave up...), and eating healthier / less carbs. I'm also trying to get back into dancing (west coast swing, salsa, zumba, kpop, hip hop, etc) at least once a week.

This is actually not easy, but given that I know my tendency as an Obliger (see The Four Tendencies here), I have been trying to create more external accountability for myself. Any friends want to join me in living healthier lifestyles / doing these things with me? :D

As for my reading challenge of 30 books a year (2.5 books/month), I've been more than on track - I finished 11 books as of yesterday! I also noticed that I've been reading a lot more books on relationships and understanding dating styles, such as "Attached" and "Mating in Captivity", and now I'm reading Aziz Ansari's "Modern Romance". These are all great books, and I've learned so much more about my own personality, people's preferences/desires, and how people communicate. Definitely looking forward to applying it with my future dating and relationships.

A lot of exciting news too, my brother is visiting next weekend, and I have a few other friends visiting Mother's Day weekend. It would be a lot of fun hanging out with all these people and eating yummy food. I'll also be going to NYC in June for a weekend so I'm excited!! Definite looking forward to catching up with my east coast friends and watching some broadway musicals ^^

My strengths

I've been doing an online Coursera class on Positive Psychology and Resilience, and we had to do a Values in Action (VIA) survey to figure out what our character strengths are. If you're interested, feel free to do the survey here, it took me around 10 minutes.
https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/testcenter

Make sure to look for VIA Survey of Character Strengths, and you'll need to create an account in order to do the survey. There are other surveys in there around optimism, authentic happiness, meaning in life, etc. All quite interesting!

Turns out my strengths are:

Your Top Strength

Forgiveness and mercy -

You forgive those who have done you wrong. You always give people a second chance. Your guiding principle is mercy and not revenge.

Your Second Strength

Leadership -

You excel at the tasks of leadership: encouraging a group to get things done and preserving harmony within the group by making everyone feel included. You do a good job organizing activities and seeing that they happen.

Strength #3

Love of learning -

You love learning new things, whether in a class or on your own. You have always loved school, reading, and museums-anywhere and everywhere there is an opportunity to learn.

Strength #4

Social intelligence -

You are aware of the motives and feelings of other people. You know what to do to fit in to different social situations, and you know what to do to put others at ease.

Strength #5

Judgment, critical thinking, and open-mindedness -

Thinking things through and examining them from all sides are important aspects of who you are. You do not jump to conclusions, and you rely only on solid evidence to make your decisions. You are able to change your mind.

I'm pretty amazed to find out my #1 strength is forgiveness and mercy! Learning, social intelligence and critical thinking I agree with, but #2 leadership is surprising for me. I see myself more as a good follower, or perhaps a key enabler in getting things done. I guess the description here sounds more like a compassionate/encouraging leader rather than the traditional macho/confident type of leader. Guess that's a strength of mine I should use more often and leverage at work!