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Something as Simple as Walking can Bring Great Change

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My walking journey started on the 2nd of February 2023. Why I remember it so well? Because I made sure I went back and marked it in my calendar, after just a few days. I knew it’s going to become an important date for me.

It was a cold morning in South West London and I decided to break the daily routine and go for a walk first thing in the morning.

I am morning person, my best productive hours are probably between 7am and 4pm, so I was up as per usual around 06:30 – 07:00 and was getting ready to start working from home. While the coffee was brewing I looked outside and thought – “what a miserable day”. It’s rainy and windy. I realised I haven’t been properly out in days because I always start work very early, eat lunch quickly and finish work when it’s already dark. I remembered reading somewhere that is good to challenge yourself sometimes and do the exact opposite of what you think is comfortable. I didn’t stick around to think too much about this. I grabbed a travel mug, poured my coffee in. Rain jacket and boots on, straight out from the flat. I walked without thinking about anything in particular for about 45 minutes, just pressing on, drinking my coffee.

But one thought did pop into my head. How about I start taking my own free time a bit more seriously? Whenever I feel like I can cram in yet more work, I should just go for a walk instead. And I did just that for the rest of the day. I actually took a proper lunch break and after work I went for a walk instead of “the commute”. Before I went to bed I looked at my watch and realised I have walked in total a bit more than 10km, about 15,000 steps. It was done. I had a challenge for myself, to keep the 10km per day for a week.

Next day I pushed a 20 min run as well, loads of steps already. Every day I just continued to respect my free time and ultimately myself, by walking instead of doing more, working more, fixing more things at home.

After 2-3 days I started listening to books on my walks. I took every opportunity to accumulate the steps. Walked to shops, after dinner, run, walked to the next bus stop. Everything that was needed to be done, incorporated some steps as well.

I did not stop walking after a week, not two, not a year. I am still going today, after almost 1 years and 5 months. Today, because it’s Sunday and I have been out a lot, I actually run and walked 13km.

After few months of constant walking I am starting to write more, to read more and to be more productive at work. I process everything on my walks. If I need to make a difficult decision at work or at home, the walks are my best thinking aid. If I need to get some distance from a problem, I walk away from it.

Walking at least 10km per day changed a lot of things in my life:

– I am exercising more frequently and my overall fitness has improved

– I now dance (yes, that adds a lot of steps to my daily count!)

– I am having a way better balance between work and my personal life

– I met new people through walking

– I am writing blog posts because I generate more ideas on my walks

– I listened to about 50 books in a year, that is almost one book per week

– I spend way less time in front of the screens

– I walk with friends and family sometimes so I get to spend uninterrupted quality time with them

Walking has been also giving me well needed time to think about what I want to do and what makes me really happy. And for that alone, the simple act of walking has brought a great deal of positive change in my life!

Fail At Something Every Day

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It took me a while to write this blog post because until now I actually didn’t understand how important it is to fail at doing something. I have always been really bad at dealing with things that I am bad at. I always felt embarrassed or awkward if I didn’t know or I couldn’t do something. And that is the worst way to tackle a challenge. If you are not comfortable with being bad at something you are going to avoid learning and you are not going to progress.

For example I used to get frustrated when I played golf that I am inconsistent and I stopped playing for a while. I realised that I just wasn’t putting the time and wasn’t eager to continue the lessons because I simply didn’t like not being good at it. Which is really silly. How else should I become better? After I got over myself I went back into playing golf and I am still not great but I am much more consistent.

Failing used to have a very negative connotation for me because it translated directly to “I am not good enough”. A lot of things like: not getting the best possible mark in school, not getting someone to like me or not being able to swim were failures in my book. It took me a while to understand that being an adult that cannot swim it doesn’t mean I failed at something. It doesn’t even mean that my parents failed at something just because they didn’t have the means to pay for swimming lessons. It just means that I need to learn when I have the chance. At the moment I am learning how to swim and I have been lucky enough to live by the Baltic Sea this summer, so today, even if the water was 19 degrees and it was raining outside, I went in the water and tried just a bit more! I transformed the old failure into a success because I am progressing and I feel more comfortable every time I do go in the water.

I named this article “Fail At Something Every Day” because I wanted to stress that failure is something that should occur as often as possible. And is tightly associated with challenging yourself. The wonderful thing is that when you associate the failure, which always used to be negative, with challenge and progress, it will become very soon a positive thing. Yes, sometimes it might be embarrassing to admit that you don’t know something and it might feel difficult when you break something in your daily job or you disrupt something, but ultimately this is the only way to push yourself. And in the end you are going to see that pushing yourself to improve things is what is giving you an edge. An edge in your job or in your personal life. Lately I have been pushing myself in all kind of situations, to try and overcome some of my fear of failure.

I have been speaking up at work and tried new things and sometimes my ideas worked out really well. Sometimes not so great. And that is ok. The ideas that were taken forward were really useful for the project and the more ideas I put on the table, the better chances are some will bring success.

I have been speaking Swedish almost the whole time while in Sweden even though my Swedish is far from perfect. I have been studying very hard for the last few years and the thought of speaking with someone from the shops for example used to terrify me last year, now I am not defaulting to English, I try and I try in Swedish, and it starts to become easier and easier. I managed to break out of the bad pattern of feeling bad because I am not speaking correctly. I choose to feel great instead, because I leave in London and I can speak Swedish fluently – not easily achieved.

I also stopped feeling bad for myself because x or y friend doesn’t put enough efforts to organise things, and is mostly me doing the organising. I stopped seeing this as a failure in my social life. Instead, I looked for more people and formed more meaningful relationships with friends that actually want to do a lot of things. I now have a fantastic circle of friends with common interests. And the friends that are not always so responsive are still there sometimes and that is great, no pressure, no failure on either part. I managed my expectations and I stopped seeing some relationships as failures just because the other people were not ready to invest the time. Is their time and they should prioritise it as they like, what does that even have to do with me? Why should I be so entitled to their own time? I took what I perceived as a “failure” and transformed it into a positive experience, I found new friends!

It was a long journey for me to realise that failing is actually a good thing. I changed some patterns and started to think differently about things. I became less overly cautious and more confident since I am not worried about not being good at something . I don’t need to be good at everything, I just need to be a bit better than yesterday. Improving yourself is a success regardless of where you are in your life and you can only improve if you stumble, fall and get back again!

How To Increase Your Ability To Focus

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Everybody seems to be writing lately about how the online world have shortened our attention span. The amount of information that we process daily is forcing us to switch context rapidly. You have probably experienced plenty of that yourself.

I have recently read in an article that one of the new expressions in the Swedish language (I am studying Swedish) is “popcorn brain”. You would say that someone has a popcorn brain if they switch focus way too often. The type of person that watches tv with the phone in their hand, switching their attention between the two and keeping track of various pop up notifications as well. I found that hilarious that Swedish felt the need to describe a person in this way but I actually agree with this. This expression is super useful. Sometimes I have popcorn brain myself.

A few years back I really struggled to focus for long periods of time. Focusing even for 30 minutes at a time seemed like a challenge. At the time I worked as a technical lead in software engineering and I had to deal with a lot of context switching, so that made things far worse.

But more recently, the last 3 years, I work as a software engineer consultant so my job requires me to focus on code for 1-2 hours at a time.

It wasn’t easy to re-develop that ability which I seemed to have lost somewhere along the way so I thought of sharing my journey with you.

Those are the few things that really helped me regain my focus ability:

Walking

I started to do walks almost every day. Not walking to the shops or the market and rushing. Slow walks in the park. Walking helps me process things slowly and steadily. It helps me digest information so that I can focus on the next thing. I cannot emphasise how helpful walking is for me. It slows everything down.

When you find yourself jumping in between half finished tasks is time to have a break and walk for a bit. You will quickly find a healthy rhythm to continue your tasks.

Yoga

For the past 6 months yoga has been a great support for me. I wrote a post a couple of days ago about how I got into a good yoga routine, so if you are curious check it out here: Give Yourself Time With Yoga .

Even when I go through stressful times, yoga helps me pause, helps me reset. I focus on my body for 20 minutes and the turning wheels, the rush, they are forced to stop. I can then put things into perspective and ask myself what is the best way for me to continue my day and get done all the things I need to do. Many times, just by stopping and doing yoga for a few minutes, I give myself a chance to re-prioritise and I discover that I don’t actually need to do everything at once. Yoga releases the immense pressure that I sometimes put on myself without realising and it helps me re-balance not only physically but also mentally.

Golf

Playing golf requires a lot of concentration, a lot of focus on technique. Practicing golf is like practicing how to focus. It determines you to be patient with yourself and think about what your doing. Walking, focusing, walking, focusing. It’s an amazing way to train your mind into focus.

Before I have an important decision to make or an interview, even if I don’t have time for playing golf, I at least go to the driving range. This helps me put my thoughts in order.

The more I play golf, the more I feel like my focus extends and my patience grows. It challenges my mind as well as my body.

Reading

When you read a book with no distractions and no pop up notifications you brain is fully engaged on the story or the content. The longer stretches you manage to read, the more you are training your brain to focus. Books also pushes you to use your voice and your imagination when you process the information. You are not just passively absorbing some information.

I have been reading a lot lately and I noticed that I am able to focus more and more on the tasks at hand. Quite often I listen to books, that also pushes me into a good focus mode, I get very absorbed into audio books or podcasts.

I hope those tips are going to help you extend your ability to focus in case you are struggling with that and if you have other techniques you are using for this please share them with me in the comments section!

Give Yourself Time With Yoga

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Everyone is struggling to find time these days, too many things are keeping us busy. Besides the job and home responsibilities we also have an entire online world to explore.

Sometimes maybe we have the time but we don’t have any energy left to use it on things that we love doing because we are exhausted after a day of work. You take and you take until you feel like you are actually not in control of your own time anymore.

I felt like this for quite a while. I live in London where things are always taking a long time because of the distance between things. Especially when I used to commute, at the end of each day I was looking back at how I spent my time and very little of it was for myself. And even having couple of hours for myself didn’t leave me with enough energy to go to the gym for example or go for a run.

So for a long while I was in this state of blaming myself that I don’t exercise enough. I tried different things, I even “paid” myself let’s say £10 every time when I exercised and gathered that money for buying myself something. That worked for a while because I had a goal, I worked towards it. But then I would get into a period of stress at work or I would buy what I wanted to buy and I would stopp exercising for a while.

Something changed when I watched a yoga YouTube video, I don’t even remember which one because I tried to follow quite a few. The person doing the video said something that stayed with me. They said that doing yoga is about giving yourself time, is not about putting time and effort. Then they asked: “How much time do you want to give yourself today? Do you have 3 minutes? Maybe 5? Even one minute is good”. This went straight to my head and my heart. How many minutes do I actually give myself for my own mental and physical health? How did I ended up in a state where I give everyone and everything else the time but I fail myself? I stopped and really thought about it.

From that moment I started to do yoga at home every single day. I started with 5 minutes. I watched enough tutorials t understand how to do some postures and I started to practice offline, without any screen in front of me. I put some music in the background and a timer that went off every minute. After every minute I changed the posture. I didn’t push myself at all in the beginning, I just did whatever posture felt good, 5 postures every day. Sometimes I would attempt a plank and even if I couldn’t hold it for a minute, I continued it with a stretch. My body absolutely loved those 5 minutes per day. After less than a week I increased the time and started to look forward to every session.

I started this routine at the end of January this year and haven’t missed a day! Some days were more difficult than others, I had trouble focusing but I still pushed, because it has become my routine. For a few months now I am doing 20 minutes of yoga every day. I have a few routines that I follow, mostly beginners postures, but I am very proud of it. Some days I am holding postures that are more challenging for me, like side plank and dolphin plank. Some days I do maybe one of them and combine it with other exercises. When I feel exhausted after a posture I combine it with a stretch, I basically do whatever feels good for my body. But I give myself 20 minutes every day and I am looking forward to this like it’s a treat! I found a sustainable form of constant exercise.

And since I am doing yoga daily for 6 months now I noticed a few changes.

  • My golf swing has improved a lot because I have more stability and core strength.
  • I even pushed myself to run more often and I get less tired because the core is helping. I run 3km, sometimes 4/5 km without being absolutely exhausted.
  • My posture is improving. I am much more conscious about how to hold my posture when I am working at my desk or when I am walking for example.
  • A sea of calm is washing over me after every session and I am sustaining most of that calm through the day. I also feel like I am kinder towards myself, maybe is because I am proud that I can keep a good routine.

So if you are struggling with finding an exercise routine that is sustainable, think about what you would really like doing and start very small. Give yourself 5 minutes per day for that. Doing something constantly, even is not the most intense form of exercise, is very good for your body.

Since I proved myself that I can do yoga every day, I completely changed the attitude towards myself. Instead of blaming or even punishing myself that I haven’t run for a while for example, I do a walk instead. I am not competing with anyone, I am only competing with myself, I want to be a bit better than yesterday. A walk can make that difference, 5 minutes of yoga can make that difference. And that is enough.

How many minutes can you give yourself today?

Creativity Means Hard Work

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I am in holiday at the moment and I woke up this morning thinking that I should work on writing a short story. It’s been years since I said I want to start and do some writing.

What did I do towards this? Well, I enrolled myself in an online class about how to write short stories but then in the middle of it I slowed down, I didn’t allocate enough time for myself to do the exercises in the class and I eventually abandoned it. So clearly I wasn’t ready to put in the work. I found all kind of excuses and questions like this:

– I have no good ideas about short stories, it seems like staring at beautiful sunsets doesn’t do anything for me. Ideas just don’t come to me, I am broken!

– I have only written texts for myself before, there seems to be a lot of rules and tips for writing shorting stories, I feel overwhelmed now. Too many video tutorials, too many classes online, I am completely lost.

– If I manage to write a story, how am I actually going to publish it? What if I get negative feedback? Would that prevent me from continuing to write? (Really….you are so far from this, why are you even thinking about this?)

– English is not my first language, should I go back to a grammar course and study the language again?

Even when I re-read the points I just wrote, I start to feel exhausted. Imagine how is like to have all these thoughts in your head at once, spinning and turning. Of course I gave up.

What was I thinking? That I have to figure out everything from the first ever short story I am writing? That writers that produce short stories for a job just come up with stuff out of thin air and everything is just easy for them?

Let’s be serious, every creative work comes with a cost. Usually the cost is a lot of time and a lot of hard work. Every creative person that I know has been and is constantly keeping up the hard work. Yes, things might pop into their heads sometimes, you could say easily, but that is because they trained their minds to come up with new ideas. They even developed patterns on how to come up with ideas based on events that happen around them. Actually, when they have no ideas about how to write something new, or continue their existing project, they do exactly the same thing as when their heads are full of ideas. They sit at their desk and do the work. They write, or try to write, they stick with it. The work is not always good, sometimes is edited out completely but everything that is good or bad is progress, is something that will be edited later. Even exceptional work needs editing and re-working.

So no, creativity is not something that is cast upon you when you watch a beautiful sunset. You cannot sit there watching the horizon and being sorry for yourself that you are not creative. Wake up the next morning and sit at your desk, ready to put in all the time you have into becoming creative and producing content. Some days will not be rewarding but some days will be productive. Productivity is actually defined by the days with non-significant outcome. If we were productive every day this word would not even exist, it would be an implicit way of living. Creativity is a process that involves a lot of hard work and in the end produces new and exciting outcomes. Is not by any means instant. Is also something that requires trial and failure.

I am going to write short stories when I am ready to put in the work. And when the fear of failure is overpowered by the desire to do something new. Not when my grammar is flawless, not when I come into a lot of money and I am able to quit my day job, not when I watch the most beautiful of the sunsets. More time will not help. More time that I am ready to spend on writing will actually help.

I am writing this blog post today because I have been struggling lately to admit that there are no external reasons that stop me to write short stories, to write blog posts like this or anything that I want to pursue really. All the reasons are internal and the more I take them out of my head and put them into print the more real they will become, the more visible. So hopefully once they are in plain sight I can work through them.

I also hope that this post is useful for anyone out there that is struggling to get started with new projects, whatever they might be. Maybe it resonates with you. Maybe it will make you stop and be honest with yourself about what it is that is actually stopping you. Whatever it is, work through it, use your creativity to overcome it.

Mediterranean and Middle Eastern Meze Platter

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Week 10 – 2021

This is another post from the series “I tried something new this week”.

Not every meal needs to be complicated to be delicious. Sometimes you just need to remember about flavours that make you happy. Maybe food that reminds you of home or holidays, maybe something that you ate in a restaurant and always wanted to try to make.

That’s exactly what I did this weekend. I went to the market to get bread, olives and some tapenade and then did some dips to go with that. It turned out to be a delicious platter of food.

This is what I made to go with the delicious market food:

  • Smoked aubergine mix
  • Hummus
  • My version of tabbouleh

Ingredients

For the aubergine dip:

  • aubergine
  • brown onion
  • salt
  • oil

For the hummus:

  • 1 x 400g can chickpeas
  • 60 ml lemon juice
  • 60 ml tahini
  • 2 tbs olive oil
  • 1 garlic clove
  • 1/2 tsp ground cumin
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 45ml water
  • paprika for serving

For the tabbouleh:

  • cucumber
  • tomatoes
  • fresh parsley leafs
  • olive oil
  • lemon juice
  • salt
  • pepper

Method

Aubergine dip

This is something that my mum and aunt did quite a lot for us in the past. Is a popular starter in Romania and pretty similar to the Middle Eastern recipes actually.

The dip is very simple to make. The more complicated part is to actually get the smoke flavour in the aubergine. If you have a bbq that works perfectly, if you have a pan that you can use for char grilling that also works very well. Alternatively just bake the aubergine in the oven with the grill setting on. Then peel and let the aubergine to rest in a sieve, is watery and it needs to dry for a bit. You can use kitchen roll to speed up the process.

The smoked aubergine needs to be processed in a blender.

Add a drizzle of oil and the finely diced onion in a pan, fry for a few minutes and then lower the temperature and add the aubergine and salt to taste. Done!

Hummus

Add the lemon juice and the tahini sauce to a food processor and mix for about a minute. Make sure that the tahini jar is well shaken before you use it. I used a pre-made lemon juice as I had quite a bit in the fridge but it tastes better with freshly squeezed lemon juice.

Then add the salt, cumin, oil and minced garlic into the mix. Process them for about a minute. Add the drained and rinsed chickpeas into the mix and process again. Add the water. If the hummus is too thick, add a bit more water and process until the mixture is smooth and slightly fluffy. Sprinkle some paprika for serving. Done!

Tabbouleh

This is my take on tabbouleh and is probably more of a refreshing salad but I felt like my platter needed some acidity.

Cut the tomatoes, cucumber and parsley as fine as you can so that they mix well together. Season well with salt and pepper and squeeze some lemon juice. Balance it with some olive oil. Done!

Serve the dips and tabbouleh with bread, olives, tapenade and some feta cheese. This platter is a good mix of freshness and creaminess. A very indulgent meal! Enjoy!

Gochujang Chicken 65

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Week 9 – 2021

This is another post from the series “I tried something new this week”.

For this recipe I used a lot of chicken so it will yield about 4 big portions but I guess that is what happens when you defrost an entire pack of chicken breast and get really excited about a recipe that you wanted to try for a long time!

Ingredients (4 portions)

For the chicken batter:

  • 600g chicken breast
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 2 tsp chilli powder
  • 2 tsp coriander powder
  • 1 tsp Garam Masala
  • 3 tsp grated ginger
  • 3 tsp grated garlic
  • 6 tbsp plain wheat flour
  • 4 tbsp lemon juice
  • 3 eggs
  • oil for deep frying

For frying and coating the chicken at the end:

  • 3 tbsp oil
  • 2 tsp cumin seeds
  • 2 tbs chopped garlic
  • 3 tbsp Gochujang paste
  • 5-6 dried chillies
  • 15-20 curry leafs

Method

Step 1 – prepare the batter and marinate the chicken

Dice the chicken breast into 2 cm cubes and add to a large bowl. The add all the ingredients for the batter: salt, chilli powder, coriander powder, garam masala spice, grated ginger and garlic, flour and lemon juice.

Mix everything together, then beat the eggs and add them to the chicken and mix again until the chicken is coated in the batter mix. Let it marinate for about 15 minutes.

Step 2 – deep fry the chicken

Heat up oil in a deep pan so that the chicken pieces would be covered in oil when fried. I used medium high temperature and when the oil was hot I added the chicken covered in batter in small batches and fried each batch for about 4 minutes .

Step 3 – coat the chicken in the Gochujang mix

After you have deep fried the chicken get another pan and add the 3 tbsp of oil with the cumin seeds and chopped garlic. Fry together for about 1-2 minutes and then add the dried chillies, the Gochujang paste and the curry leaves. Add a splash of water and mix well together.

Add the deep fried chicken to the pan and stir until the chicken is coated well.

The chicken is now ready to serve!

Tips

  • The chicken can be served with rice or a salad, it’s fairly spicy so it goes well with a side that can absorb some of that spice
  • The Gochujang paste is delicious but it’s a chilli paste that has a slightly darker colour so if you want your chicken 65 to have that amazing red vibrant colour you can use a different red chilly paste.
  • Instead of a regular chilli powder you can use Kashmiri chilli powder which is delicious as well, a lot of restaurants use that for chicken 65

Chicken & Egg Salad

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Week 8 – 2021

This is another post from the series “I tried something new this week”.

I like doing simple recipes for lunches and this week I did a salad that I wanted to share because it’s so simple but it’s delicious. Especially now when I am working from home all the time, is important to have go to lunch recipes that I can make quickly and which can offer enough variety in my diet. This one is definitely on my go to list.

Ingredients

  • chicken breast
  • egg
  • radishes
  • plum tomatoes
  • broccoli
  • balsamic vinegar
  • olive oil
  • salt & pepper
  • butter

Method

Grill the chicken breast using your favourite method. I picked some chicken breast wit skin for this recipe and grilled it in the oven with a bit of melted butter on top, salt and pepper.

Steam the broccoli and boil the eggs. I tried with hard boiled and soft boiled eggs, they both work very well. If you like leek you could also steam some of that, in my opinion broccoli and leak go very well with eggs.

Then cut the radishes and tomatoes and add everything to the salad.

Make a dressing with the balsamic vinegar and olive oil and season with salt and pepper by taste.

Lunch is ready!

Slow cooked Pork Ribs

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Week 7 – 2021

This is another post from the series “I tried something new this week”.

This recipe takes about 7 hours on low temperature in the slow cooker but it’s very easy to prepare, it took me maximum 10 minutes. I have a slow cooker from Russell Hobs with 2 settings and I used setting 1 but I am sure that other slow cookers have similar settings, just use the lowest one for best results.

Ingredients (2 portions)

  • 2 packs of pork ribs of approx 600g each (about 4-5 ribs per person)
  • 300g bbq sauce
  • 1 tbs Worcester sauce
  • 2 cloves crushed garlic
  • cayenne spice

Method

Add the ribs in the slow cooker. Prepare the sauce by mixing the bbq sauce, the Worcester sauce, the garlic and a bit of cayenne spice.

Add the sauce on the ribs and coat them by using a brush.

Set the slow cooker on low temperature and leave the ribs to cook for about 7 hours.

I really enjoy the ribs with just a salad and I discovered that pomegranate seeds with rocket, spinach and cucumber make a really good side for this dish!

Tips

  • Next time I will add some chilly powder and a bit of sriracha in the sauce. The bbq sauce is delicious but can be a bit sweet
  • Putting the ribs in the oven after you take them out from the slow cooker, for just 5 minutes, will give them a nice glaze and a bit of enjoyable crispness