After Check-In, You Check-Out

When I was a university student, I was vibrant, energetic, motivated and inspiring. Thanks to a leadership organization that I've devoted 100% of my time to improve myself as a person. I was surrounded by real friends who respect me, listen to me and constantly giving me feedback to improve.

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For sure, I have grown 5000% throughout my university days, compared to me in high school.

Just as how my growth spiked up, it sinked down tremendously as soon as I've entered my 3rd month in the working force.

I was swept by the waves of reality and been riding through it for 2.5 years, unknowingly drifting further and further away from my health and joy.

Work took over my life, including personal life. I've been practicing toxic methods to relieve myself. Gaming, animation, chasing for a guy who doesn't love me, working out like crazy and sleep the whole day. I eat overnight meals every day because I don't have the time to cook on weekdays, so I will cook on Sundays and prep meals for Mon - Fri.

Whenever I have free time, I will either sleep, play games, watch animation or exercise. I am constantly doing something, constantly busy being busy.

At some point in my life, I would just sleep the whole day.

At some point in my life, I would just stop eating and play games the entire time.

At some point in my life I just don't feel like working at all. Sometimes, I don't feel like living.

I am almost like a rotting stick. One that doesn't do anything but just waiting to be kicked away. Nothing describes me best but miserable, pathetic and boring.

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This kind of lifestyle has screwed up my menstrual cycle as well. For once, my menstruation stopped for 3 months! My mom couldn't take it anymore and called me "Girl, I'm gonna take you to a gynaecologist this Saturday." I don't care about my menstruation delay at all but my mom was just so persistent. No room for negotiations at all.

I dragged my feet back home on the next Saturday. I drove my mom to the hospital as directed by her. In my mind was "This is such a waste of time. I wanna go home and play games." I've reached the hospital and waited for around 30 minutes before seeing the doctor. He's a man, and a gynaecologist. Can be quite embarrassing, if you know what I mean.

My mom told him that my menstruation has delayed for 3 months and for a few years my cycle was never regular. Dr. Lee told me to do an ultrasound scan (the same kind of scan a pregnant lady does) test. I followed without much thinking and lied down on the bed. Dr.Lee asked me to pull down my pants a little so that he can see my entire belly. I was a little embarassed so I convinced myself "This is just for medical purposes. Look from the scientific point of view!" I pulled down my pants slowly and Dr.Lee rubbed a kind of chilling gel on my belly. "Ah!", I shrieked slightly.

For the very first time in my life, I can see my own ovary, uterus and some random organs in my belly! "I feel like I'm pregnant now, LOL." I chuckled in my mind. Like the movies, everything is black and white and I can barely differentiate anything at all. Dr. Lee patiently pointed certain parts and explained to me what was the problem.

It was the cysts!!! They're like air or water sacs occupying my ovary, kinda making my belly bloated.

These despicable cysts are the culprits that my menstruation cycle went haywire.

Dr. Lee said "You gotta change your lifestyle NOW!" His statement were a slap on my cheeks, left and right.

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"If you don't, it'll be harder for you to get pregnant, give birth, higher chances in diabetes." I'm not sure about the diabetest part, but I'm prone to other diseases if this continues.

That was the wake-up distress call that Universe has arranged for me. I knew I gotta change my life.

I quit my job.

Travelled alone to Vietnam and taught English for 2 months voluntarily.

I quit chasing a man who doesn't love me.

I give up giving up.

I've decided to be who I was back in University. Filled with motivation, inspiration and passion.

Along the way, I learned that connecting with myself is a whole new level of learning and self-motivation. A time blocked solely for silence, solitude and stillness is my newly found way of learning about my experiences, my life, and myself. It is something I call "Check-out".

Check-out = Deconstruct Your Day

In short, it's a recap to anchor your learnings, your discoveries and your emotions so that you're ready to thrive on the next day.

You've learned something new, you've discovered new facts about your friends/colleagues, you've noticed you're behaving unusually, you wondered why you made such decision, you began asking yourself "Why am I here?". These sort of events are what you need to anchor so that you can make every experience count and learn from them.

You are your own teacher, coach, and master.

Check-Out is so powerful because the motivation to learn comes from within yourself. Only you can tell yourself what you want to do. Only you can make the change you want. And when you really mean it, you'll do it. Whatever it takes.

Check-Out is so powerful because you actually discovered hidden values and beliefs that you've witheld for such a long time but you've never taken time to realize it. Those values and beliefs directly and indirectly affect your actions and behaviors. If you noticed a limiting value that is holding you back, imagine what could happen if you replace it with another value that will boost you up.

Check-out allows you to gain clarity of yourself and your life. Have you not heard "Clarity is power?"

Check-out Questions to Get You Started

There is no one set of questions when checking-out. What I share here are questions that works for me, and also other powerful questions to get you started with something. Along the way, you will find out some questions are not what you want so feel free to drop them out. In fact, you might have a lot of follow-up questions :)

1. What little wins have I achieved today?
2. What have I learned today? What are my 3-5 key takeaways?
3. What are the good things that happened today?
4. Whose lives have I touched and in what way have I touched them?
5. What are the things I've done today that I can do better and how?
6. Am I happy today? Why?
7. Have I lived today following or against my values? Why?
8. Have I achieved what I wanted to achieve today? Why?

These are some of the questions that I asked myself whenever I check-out.

Your action today is to pick 3 questions and ask yourself before you sleep.

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Small Daily Practices is Tifa's mission to invite you to live an extraordinary life. She is not an expert, not a coach, not certified but learning is constant for her. She shares what she has learned in hope that you live your version of extraordinary life.

You will find her past works on Simple Daily Practices below,
Why did she started this?

Relationship	Personal Mastery
"I am grateful for I ..."	Check-in With Yourself