Messy Life, Honest Life

Echo from the other realm

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  • Health, Fitness, and Personal Care

    In the previous post, I explain my yearly reflection process. Now I would like to deep dive into each category. Each will be posted once this is done.

    The first one is “Health, Fitness, and Personal Care”

    Health is the foundation of all balance. It represents the harmonious function of the body and
    mind through rest, nutrition, movement, and awareness.

    I categorize health into several key areas. These include:

    • Medical and Professional Care – Support from healthcare providers, routine checkups, and medical treatments.
    • Self-Care and Hygiene – Daily habits and personal routines that contribute to overall well-being.
    • Physical Activity – Movement and exercise that support strength, flexibility, and cardiovascular health.
    • Nutrition and Hydration – Food and drink choices that fuel the body.
    • Mental Well-being – Practices and resources that support psychological health and resilience.

    Points of Thought when I think of my goals to help me brainstorm

    • What does “being healthy” truly mean to me?
    • What emotions do I suppress instead of releasing healthily?
    • How do I balance nutrition, sleep, and exercise consistently?
    • Which rituals help me wind down for quality rest?
    • What health goal have I postponed that deserves attention now?
    • What resources, tools, or professionals could support my progress?

    What does “being healthy” truly mean to me?

    For me, health isn’t defined by strict meal plans or intense fitness routines. It’s something
    quieter, more personal, something that lives in the rhythm of everyday life. It’s the ability to
    move with ease, to see and hear without limitation.

    When it comes to mental health, it’s about feeling grounded and motivated. It’s the ability to face life without being consumed by every “what if.” It’s also about making room for difficult emotions without letting them hold me back. It’s having the resilience to keep moving forward, even when the weight of life feels heavy.

    At its core, health means freedom. The freedom to move, to explore, to feel deeply, and to begin again. It’s living without the constant fear that my body or mind might give out. And when I do stumble, it’s knowing I have the strength to find my way back.

    I know goals are deeply personal. However, what I consistently find missing in posts about personal goals is people actually sharing theirs. Seeing real examples helps me brainstorm and break through moments when I feel stuck. With that in mind, I am sharing my own goals.

    Please do not feel obligated to have many goals or only a few. We are all at different stages of our journey, and this says nothing about your value or where you are supposed to be.

    Health, Fitness, and Personal CareDownload

  • My Year-End Reflection Ritual: Learning to Live Again

    “The only true death is to never live.”
    “Those who run from death, stood still in life.”
    – from The Lamb and the Wolf – Kindred Voices.

    A long time ago, I came across a “wheel of life” quiz that asked me to rate my satisfaction in different areas of my life. And because I was feeling low at the time, I gave myself low scores across the board. That did not help my overall mood, of course, because nothing lifts the spirit like giving yourself a solid two out of ten in every category, but a few days later I started wondering how I can score higher.

    That question led me to a yearly ritual. Between November and January, I look back on the year that has passed and then look ahead, thinking about what I want to explore, experience, or achieve in the upcoming year.

    I divide my reflections into two main areas: personal and career, each with its own categories.

    PersonalCareer
    • Health and Fitness
    • Intellectual
    • Emotional Intelligence
    • Character
    • Spiritual
    • Love
    • Family
    • Social
    • Financial    		• Improving professional skills
    • Problem solving and creative thinking
    • Coping with stress and burnout
    • Health at work and energy preservation
    • Improving task management and teamwork
    • Improving decision making
    • Communication at work

    It takes me a few months to go through all of this because it is a full process for me, and I would like to share the journey. My overall plan has 4 stages.

    Stage 1: Reflect and Write Everything Down

    I start by reviewing last year’s list, checking what has changed and what I want to add. At this stage, I pretend that things like finances or time do not exist. I simply write down everything I desire, almost like that familiar question from Lucifer: “What is it that you truly desire?”

    Stage 2: Group and Prioritize

    My list is always long and a bit overwhelming. In this stage, I group everything based on the resources I currently have. These include money, time, effort, and enjoyment. I then give each item a priority level based on how achievable it is.

    This is also the stage where I have a serious heart-to-heart with myself about whether I actually want something, or if I just think it sounds cool and impressive, which usually means I am letting other people’s opinions shape what I believe I should want.

    • Priority 1: achievable within the current year
    • Priority 2: achievable within three years
    • Priority 3: achievable within five or more years

    Stage 3: Planning

    To keep myself from feeling overwhelmed, I choose up to three items from each category and spread them across the year. Sometimes I dedicate a specific month to focus on one category, which helps me stay grounded instead of trying to do everything at once.

    I also remind myself that not everything on the list is a commitment. Some goals are there simply because I am curious to try them. The same goes for routines I hope to add, or the ones I have neglected but want to return to. This part of the process gives me room to explore without feeling pressured to turn every interest into a lifelong mission.

    For items in Priority 2 or 3, the purpose is simply to make slow progress so they can eventually move into Priority 1.

    Stage 4: Recording

    This is the stage where I keep track of what I am really doing. I record my progress, adjust goals that turned out to be too optimistic, and occasionally add a new one if life allows it. Later, during my next review, this stage becomes proof that I did more than I remembered.

    One of the ways I keep these records is through writing, but I also use photos. Pictures have the power to revive moments and help me cherish memories that might otherwise fade with time. They capture the small steps, the quiet victories, and the things I might overlook if I relied on memory alone.

  • Reflections on How Choice, Suffering, and Hope Shape Our Lives

    “This book is dedicated to those who lack the freedom to choose their own suffering and their own hope.” – Satan: His Psychotherapy and Cure by the Unfortunate Dr. Kassler, J.S.P.S

    This dedication resonates with me for a few reasons.

    People often say we have freedom of choice, yet the more I think about it, the less free it feels. In the end, there seem to be only two real choices: to live or to die. Everything else is simply a means of moving toward one of those ends.

    Maybe what makes us believe in freedom is the act of choosing itself. We fill our days with countless small choices, such as what to eat, what to wear, and how to spend our time. These choices give us a sense of control and freedom, a comfort that allows us to believe we can do whatever we want and still end up where we hope to be. Yet not everyone begins from the same place. Some people have to fight just to reach the starting line, while others are already halfway to the finish. As life grows heavier and the stakes rise, the circle of choice slowly tightens, and what once felt wide and full of possibility becomes narrow and defined by necessity.

    Some people make choices not because they are truly theirs, but because they drift with the current, following social pressure, expectations, and the image others expect from them. We all make choices shaped by others, whether through family, culture, or the quiet pull of belonging. The danger is that, over time, these borrowed choices begin to shape our lives in ways we never intended. Slowly, we trade parts of ourselves away to keep the peace.

    The consequences of choices made by others for me, or the ones I made because of others, are the hardest to process. When I make a choice for myself, I have already weighed the risks and accepted the possible impact. If that choice leads to suffering or hardship, I can process it, learn from it, and even grow through it. The weight feels smaller because I was prepared for it, even if it is never easy.

    If hope is not truly mine, it becomes meaningless and powerless. Real hope has strength only when it grows from something personal, something we have chosen to believe in, something into which we have poured our own meaning. Without that, I do not know what it is, but it is not hope.

    Some of us are lucky enough to make those choices freely. Some of us feel the pressure but learn to resist it. And some of us live under the constant weight of others’ expectations, making decisions that are not really ours. Over time, we might even lose sight of what we truly want. We forget who we are beneath all those borrowed choices.

    Personally, I do not mind the journey of limited choices. In a way, I am grateful for what I have and try to make the most of what life has given me. The limits I face are not only obstacles but challenges that invite me to think differently. I have learned to see them not as walls that stop me, but as paths that ask me to look for another way forward. A limit can feel like loss at first, yet within it, there is often the quiet possibility of something new.

    Maybe freedom is not about having endless choices, but about finding meaning, even within the limits we cannot escape.