Fatty has recently been reading quite a few self help books and he’s been telling me what he learns as he goes along.  Which is great for me because self-help books sounds like torture to me hahaahaha but I don’t mind if someone whose name starts with F and ends with ATTY summarizes it and tells it to me wtf.

So one of the things he was telling me about is this thing called a “personal constitution”.  Have you ever been so caught up with the day to day, meeting deadlines, doing school runs, non stop wiping poo off your couch (don’t lie we’ve all been there) that when you finally get a breather, you realize that you didn’t effectively get anything significant done?

*raises hands and does Mexican wave*

That’s so me. I may not fully remember the details of what Fatty told me so I may be making things up here and there but this is what I understand.

A personal constitution is like a real country’s constitution – it’s a set of principles that should guide your behavior and actions, for you to live your life by.  It basically covers the values that you hold strong and want to abide by as your life passes, as well as the things you want to achieve in this lifetime.  Things that at the end of your long and hopefully fruitful life, you are satisfied with the way you lived your life.

Your personal constitution functions to remind you of what’s important to you.  It cuts through the nonsense and crap life throws at you every day and helps you focus on the important things and strive towards them.

I could get on with that! Cos I find that happens to me all the time.  With school runs, managing kids, errands and household stuff, plus blogging and everything, I feel like a year could pass by and I swear I’d be busy every single day, but would have achieved nothing.  And I’d stay essentially the same person, or a different person, shaped by circumstances, not who I actually want to be.

So I actually had a brainstorming session with Fatty ok! And together we crafted out my Personal Constitution.  Putting it here for posterity’s sake so I can come back and reread and remind myself. ^^

Aud’s Personal Constitution

*ahem*

1. I will be more organized. I’m tired of forgetting everything and relying on the kindness of my friends and family to remember things I gotta do.  Maybe it’s part of my uhhh charm but I’ve battled this flaw for like my whole life ever since I forgot my first homework in Standard 1 wtf.

2. I will procrastinate less.  Actually this along with being disorganized and lazy are my most major character flaws la. I want to be more efficient and not lazy and fight my inner Instant Gratification Monkey so I can get more done, quicker.

3. I will continue to be more compassionate. To be honest, I tend to be quite soft hearted already I think. But sometimes I get too caught up in life or my own problems and I find myself brushing off opportunities to listen more to people, or to help.  I want to remind myself to open my eyes more and do more besides just feeling sympathy and then forgetting about it.

4. I want to always be able to find joy in life! I think I’m there already la actually hahahaha. My baseline emotion is happy and I’m perfectly happy (geddit geddit) with that.  I’m putting this here so I can make it a point to keep finding humor even in crappy situations, and to be as easy going as I am now even as I’m trying to be more… you know. Type A and efficient lolol.
5) I will be a good homemaker.  For my Fatty and my critters!  I don’t think it’s unfeminist of me to want to make a better home for my family… and to be better in this particular field.  I will be tidier, design fancier meals, fix broken things faster.  The problem is, when I focus on one thing I end up letting down the others wtf whoever said women are better at multi tasking lied hahaha. Like if I get into baking, I forget to tidy the cupboards. If I clear the cupboards, I end up not caring what we’re eating. O_O  The truth is, I’m only really good when it comes to the kids.  Hopefully if I’m more organized and efficient, my bad housekeeping will die a natural death wtf.
6) I want to always be open to learning.  When you were a kid, it was always why this why that.  As we grow older though, we lose some of that curiosity and the thirst for knowledge.  But now when I’m older I feel like sometimes I think I know already lazy to listen wtf.  But that shouldn’t be!  What arrogance to think that someone younger or less experienced cannot teach us anything new.  The day we think we have nothing left to learn is the day we stop growing.  And that is a dangerous roadblock to success, wisdom and empathy.

So those are more of the values I want to embody.

These next are the things I want to do.

7) I’d like to be financially comfortable.  Money is not super important to me; if you notice, I rarely talk about money because I don’t think about it much. :X In contrast, when Fatty and I were discussing our goals, I noticed that his focused  strongly on career and financial success compared to mine. But I put this in because I think I should still give myself something to work towards.  So I would like to be financially comfortable on my own – enough for me to not feel the pinch when I shop hahahaha, enough to take care of my parents and my parents in law in their old age (if they need me to), and to give our kids quality education.

8) Since we’re on the topic of money, I want to be more charitable. This is different from just being compassionate cos it involves actual giving.  Like I said, I tend to sympathize for 5 minutes then move on without doing much.  Or I may in a fit of proactivity, give a bunch of money or volunteer but after that one time I slip into slothhood again wtf.  I will try to commit to doing something on a regular basis for the underprivileged.  Which I feel like is one of the harder resolutions here hahahaha cos I’m just.so.damn.lazy.

9) I will create something that will leave a long lasting impact on the community. Wah so noble like this wtf.  But like how money may be the key motivation for Fatty, I realized leaving a sort of legacy is mine.  I’m not talking about building a huge company or anything but I would love to be able to start a movement, an organization that creates lasting positive change on my community or country. (And I have an idea already but not how to go about achieving it FML.) Yea I’m aware it sounds very pompous and geli. But it may not be purely altruistic, mind you. I just want to after I die, go into the afterlife and hao lian.

10) I will continue to be the pillar of the family!! *possessive* *cue thunderclaps wtf* One reason why I’m perfectly content to work from home via a super flexible and unstable job is that it is really important to me to be there for my family.  I want to be the one doing the kid-raising because I am a jealous ass mom *stares at helpers* :X. No seriously, our helpers are great but I like being hands on with the kids now especially when they’re so young, and being their go-to person for everything.  Likewise, it’s even more important that I am Fatty’s pillar as well – for him to talk things through, to lean on, and to hold his burdens.  So while I may in the very near future be busy with #audsecretproject, I will strive to remain this pillar for my family.

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I thought this would be an interesting thing to write about cos readers my age (or younger?) would be able to identify. I’m already 30 leh! I have the most another 30 years to do something really substantial with my life. So this personal constitution would be like a roadmap to see where I get.

Give it a try, guys! And share your Personal Constitutions with me. 🙂