Today’s 4 most important coronavirus announcements — and how they affect you

6 min readNov 23, 2020

I wanted reality to be different than it was when I was 50 pounds overweight about 18 months ago. I thought about all the times I could’ve just stopped eating junk and started hitting the gym. What the hell was I thinking?

You know that logically, but embrace it emotionally. You can’t change the past and erase deep-seated habit patterns just like that. Accept where you are right now so you can finally start over.

More advantages to this system like the not-so-giant sensor focus quickly without even needing laser autofocus but while you have 8K video it also only goes to 30x max unlike the 50x zoom on the Ultra. Though if most people just take a shot with 30x, it’s enough for the “Average-Joe.”

Why? Because part of you identifies with the ‘old you’, the ‘you’ with the bad habits. It feels so good to fall right back into that groove. Sure, you’re not closer to your goals, but you get to be ‘you’ again. You get to be comfortable.

You have a difficult time getting back on track after falling into bad habits because you ruminate. You stew. Instead of accepting the present moment, you bet yourself up for allowing so much time to pass. You want reality to be different than it is right now.

You’re not going to stick to your routine and you’re going to spiral. That’s ok. Just don’t do it two days in a row. I forget where it came from, but I learned this two-day rule for staying on track and it’s worked quite well in my own life.

Most people don’t understand how much they haven’t let go of. You get stuck in these habit spirals and can’t break them because you can’t accept what you’ve done. Since you can’t accept what you’ve done, you can’t let go. Since you can’t let go, you can’t move forward.Habits have been covered from top to bottom, right-left, and sideways. But, since they’re so difficult to master, another article on the subject won’t hurt. As always, I’ll try to provide an angle that’ll reach you.Try not to think too far into the future when you’re trying to get back on track. Just, go to the gym once. Write one article. You’re putting too much pressure on yourself to build habitual patterns when habitual patterns take time to build.
Someone’s been slacking on their writing and wants to get back on the horse. What do they do? Instead of, you know, writing, they have this big elaborate plan. They’re going to spruce up their website, re-write their about page, research a bunch of social media tools to share their article. They make it out to be this big production instead of just writing one article.
Every January you see people creating the most elaborate routine after having spent months without proper diet and exercise. They meal-prep dry baked chicken and vegetables for 7 days, buy brand new workout gear, and an apple watch. They download my fitness pal to track every last calorie.Accepting your situation doesn’t mean you resign yourself to the situation. It means the opposite. Resignation, giving up, happens after you continue to look back without doing anything in the present that you get totally stuck. The sunk costs have to go.Depending on what your bad habit is, you might have to ween yourself off of it, e.g., drinking one or two sodas per day instead of five or six, then eventually getting to zero.
A corollary to the point above where I talked about avoiding putting too much investment into overhauling your habits right away. Don’t try to break or make more than one habit at a time.
Do you make a big deal out of eating fast food? Do you have this huge elaborate scheme for skipping your writing session? Nope. Then why all the extra gusto for forming new habits?

The worst part about this phone launch price they picked. $1,000! There is no way this phone should ever justifiably be a thousand dollars out of your pocket. Sure, if you’d remove the branding and the price from this, you’ve got nice specs for something unique. You do get the S-Pen, wireless DeX, and Samsung’s set of features. Then, there isn’t anything out there that quite matches it in terms of features. But for everything you’re getting, it should’ve had a launch price of $700. They even could’ve lowered the chip to a Snapdragon 765g to make it more reasonable. Then the other complaints such as having a plastic body and only having 60 hertz. display would slide. A thousand bucks just don’t feel right. It genuinely feels like Samsung was confused about whether this was to be a premium phone or not. That’s why this messed up.
Again, there’s no magic guarantee that any of these techniques will work since habits are so deep-seated, but your best shot is to focus on a habit that you have a shot to break and would have a major impact on your well-being. Take the soda example. Maybe you don’t start eating healthy altogether, but cutting out liquid calories is a huge improvement.
The rule of two gives you a strategy to help you beat your subconscious mind by using your conscious mind. I can’t give you some magic trick here, you just have to get back on the horse the next day and call a mulligan for the previous day.

You think because you’ve spent so much time falling into bad habits that you need a monumental effort to break them and form new ones. But think of how you formed those bad habits.

Fortunately, I’ve developed the ability to forgive myself for the past and accept the present moment. I got naked, looked in the mirror, and told myself “Ok, this is where you’re at. Time to get started.” I’ve been working out 3–5 days a week since that day.

Once you build good habits, you can develop the ability to get back on the horse after long stretches. I had to stop working out for a few months because of an injury. I went right back to the gym and maintained my new routine without a hiccup. I’d spent enough time developing the new identity based on the new pattern.

I was the poster boy for bad habits. I drank nightly, smoked cigarettes and weed, did drugs, wasted tons of time — a living habit death spiral. Then, one day, I looked up at my life and thought “Oh crap.” I realized what I’d done and knew how much time I wasted. But I also knew I couldn’t change the past.

Today’s 4 most important coronavirus announcements — and how they affect you

Written by 5SimpleThings