It has been a long long time since I write anything, but this is one of the habits I should get into, as writing really clear ones mind!

At the end of January of this year, I left Bristol and try to make a change, but looking back now, I haven’t done anything meaningful and felt like almost wasted time.

Now I just come back from two months European trip, I been to a lot of different places - now I have been to almost all European countries - as you can see later, the number doesn’t mean that much to me, I had some really fun time and fond memories, at the same time it was really mentally tough for me.

I learn a lot this year after mental hygiene, failed relationship and travelling alone etc, here are some of the things I learn or need to improve.

Who is better than where

After cycled around half the world and a lot of travellings especially the last two month in Europe, I found its more important to be with the right people than the place. Yes, you will enjoy nice scenery and it will make you happy, but it feels lonely/bad/depress sometimes, however, when you with someone, you can have fun anywhere, nice places will make the whole experience even better

People are sensitive

Everyone is sensitive to something, either their looks/characters/ideas, so need to very careful when saying something related to their sensitive issues, because it might offend them easily. I did it so many times, because I thought people should point out my mistakes or anything I not good at, that’s how I can improve myself, so I love other people say something bad about me, and naturally I thought I should point out others mistakes, then they can think of themselves, to improve themselves (if what I said was wrong which is ok, just ignore it), my intention is for others to improve themselves and make them happy, but most of the time this has opposite effect and I ended up offended people. Now I know it and I will try to adopt the strategy - if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything.

Keep calm

Don’t ever lose temper, especially in a hard/heated situations, because in those situations everyone is unhappy, so if you lose your temper isn’t going to help everyone, it will be way better to keep calm and have deep breathed and calm down or walk away for a bit. I read it somewhere in a book which state that whenever we in danger/threatened/attack, its our innate to be angry and have automatic counter-reaction without thinking, because back in the hunter and gathering time, if there is danger like a bear appear, we sort of in life and death situations, we don’t’ have time to process and think, so we evolved to have those automatic reactions that bypass the thinking and direct our body for a counter-reaction like running or defend ourself. However, in the modern society, we hardly in life and death situation, but our brain still have those automatic reactions, so it’s in our interest keep calm and let go of those automatic reactions and thinking through the problem.

Its about interpretation or point of views

Buildings/Places/Events etc don’t have feelings, but we as human assign feeling to them - e.g I love this city, because I had such good time when I was there, at the same time different person can have opposite view, he/she hate it because he/she had food poisoning. Hence it’s important to know everything is about interpretation, our brain is very complicated, can interpret things in many different ways, its also important to understand people are different and will be better to understand their point of view.

Passion matters and doesn’t ever lose it

Passion is the real driver for everything, but its not one of those things if you have it, its always there, as in everything in life, it will need maintenance/cultivation to keep it going, otherwise it can easily lose it (Maybe you can argue that’s not real passion if you lose it, but I think mental/physical energy is limited, so can’t keep all priorities at the same time, hence it need maintaince/cultivation/). Another thing I learnt is don’t every burnt out on passion because that will have the opposite effect of driving you away from it.

Always look at the bright side

This is related to the point of view - things don’t have feelings/judgement, it’s us interpret it and giving it meaning/feeling, so its very important to look at things from different angles, this will give you prospectives, especially in difficult situations which different prospectives can give you happiness or sadness. It’s always good to look at the bright side, but don’t forget to look at the other side and see if there are mistakes or any lesson can learn from it.

Do everything for a good sleep

A night of good sleep can make you happy, give you more energy… the benefits are enormous, so it’s worth to do anything for a good sleep. I’m very bad at it, but I do realise its one of the most important thing I need to improve because a bad sleep can write off the whole day, or long term bad sleep will have a tremendous effect on work and health, hence it makes sense to do anything for a good sleep

Importantance of clear the mind

Mental energy is limited, just like physical energy. The Brain weight is only 2% of the body weight, but it consumes 20% of body’s energy, holding thins in the brain and thinking about it will use energy (every time you think of something, energy is needed get the memory and neurons are fired), but not all tasks/memories are equal, so its very important not to waste brain energy on some mundane/unhelpful tasks, hence its important to clear the mind, so it can stop thinking about specific things and give more energy for other useful things. There are serval ways to clear the mind and it varies with a different person, but I found meditation daily and writing my thoughts down help me to clear my mind

Social is very important

Human is a social animal, we need interactive with others. I’m an introvert, I love to spend time alone and build things, I remember when I was very young I spent half days took apart a broken hairdryer and try to fix it (I didn’t know anything about electronics back then), the image still vivid, I was so curious to get it to fix and didn’t care about food or anything in the world, the time didn’t matter - people called it the flow (I’m lucky to discover I get into flow when building/tinkering things as others need drugs for it), however I found that if too much time spent alone, it can have opposite effect on mental health, so its very important to get human connection when in difficulty and appreciate the connection and little things around you.

People are hard to change, better to accept it

A habit takes a long time to develop and a long time to break! habit is sort like a shortcut, you just do it like natural reaction without thinking (because thinking takes energy and deliberate/conscious decisions to be made). Good habits give you edge over others because you saved time and thinking energy to do the same task/thing, but bad habits will drain you. When people get into the habit of doing certain things, its very hard for others tell them to change even you know it will be good for them, it usually has the opposite effect (it might come across as judgemental of them), if they want to change the change need come from them, otherwise its better to accept them as who they are and have your coping mechanism if they bother you.

Don’t care/think what you can’t control

Its very common to have millions of thoughts after you do something wrong (I should/could do it differently, what if I change this bit, should I do something now to make it up), or thoughts after you met someone (do they like me, I shouldn’t say what I said, should I text them now to say what I really meant). The actions in the past are already done, there is nothing we can do about it, so thinking it doesn’t help, however, what’s in the future can be changed but to what degree can your thinking/action affect change (I don’t know, because they’re many possibilities and we can’t think about all of them, its counterproductive and mental drain, then it could lead to bad sleep etc, so I guess the best strategy is to not to care/think what its out of our control, its easy to say and hard to do, but I believe meditation and writing the thoughts/thinking/things down can help.