The art of living well: Evening segment

           I hope you enjoyed the morning segment of “the art of living well” series and are curious to know how to improvise your evening routines. Evening routines can be tricky. Depending on how tired you are, you might instantly call it a night. Or maybe you can sit and meditate. One more option, you can be on your computer studying or working before ending your day. As you probably know from my morning segment, it all depends on your situation. 

But regardless of what your current situation is, you still might believe that evening is the best time of the day. A time to rejuvenate, rest and relax. A time to reconnect with your family. Now I am not saying to go light some candles, take a blanket and cook a mindful meal to “rejuvenate.” Well, the choice is yours, you can crash on the couch and stare at the television screen for the rest of the evening if that is how you roll. Or maybe, you can just chat away the evening with your family. Every night is like a party where you get a chance to reconnect with yourself. How do you reconnect with yourself, especially as a part of your evening routine?

In this blog, I am going to tell you an important aspect of the evening routine that you should commit to regardless of your schedule, profession, or career stage. This component is crucial for your overall well-being and success, at least in my opinion. 

Evenings in my opinion are a way to wind down from the day that has passed and prepare for tomorrow. They say every day is a new opportunity to improve. To do so, your evening routine should support you in being a new individual by providing some clarity. What do you want to build upon tomorrow? How do you want to improve tomorrow? You did good today, but what can you do to do better tomorrow? These are some kinds of questions that you might want to answer as a part of your evening routine. I am not saying to write all these things in a journal. Even thinking about it is sufficient. But if you have time and passion to build a journal, that is awesome as well. 

As a human being, it is important to think about potential areas of improvement and work on them. In this fast-paced world, it has become more important to evolve. You cannot be stuck in the past and hope things will get better tomorrow. Instead, you have to learn to evolve and try something new every day to be the best version of yourself. The evening is the best time to evaluate how your day was and decide upon ways to improve. It is like creating a personalized plan to be a new you. And all it takes is 5-10 mins of your time. Try answering these questions:

1. How was my day today?

2. Did I do my best to solve all the problems I faced today?

3. How did I deal with difficulties today?

4. What can I do to be better tomorrow?

5. What new skill should I learn, starting tomorrow, to be better equipped?

I hope this segment of the “art of living well” series provided you with some motivation to evolve and try to be a new individual. In my opinion, it is an important aspect of living well where you are in control of your progress. A lot of problems can be traced to the frustration that comes with the inability to control the uncontrollable things around us. While this practice cannot solve all your problems instantaneously, things will definitely be out of control. Instead, this practice will better equip you to face those uncontrollable factors. Because in the end, there are numerous things that are inevitably out of control. This is where losing yourself is a big risk and hence this practice will ensure that you are strong enough to be tranquil when there is a storm brewing around you. And this is an important part of your evening routine because, through personal experience, anxiety comes from a place of unpreparedness. So what if we tackle unpreparedness to banish anxiety through our systems? Wouldn’t this give you a calmer, peaceful evening, and in the end wouldn’t you master the art of living well?