The Bravohood

Hey everyone, with the start of the New Year there are always new goals that everyone wants to fulfill and I will be using this post as a tracker for my own personal goals for this year. 2015 was a very up-and-down year for me, with the ups being VERY awesome and the downs being just outright horrible. I won’t say I was happy with how 2015 went, I was just content with it, but I’m looking for more out of life. I know how I am when I make goals for myself or when I get motivated to do something: Typically I’ll do what I set out to do for the first month and then fall off and stop for whatever reason. I am not going to do that again this year, because I’m tired of having these spurts of motivations only to start all over in “X” amount of months.

What am I going to do to ensure it doesn’t happen? For me, keeping a daily journal is what keeps me motivated, so I will keep a daily journal just to write what I want to do for the day in the AM and then check again before I sleep to see if I did it or not. This is something that worked for me during what I consider my best year so far in my life (back in 2012-2013) when I consistently went out and approached, went to the gym almost daily, got in the best shape in my life and really enjoyed my life at that point. When I stopped using a journal, I really slacked off and didn’t do much and it almost created a snowball effect (stopped going to the gym, then my approaches started lagging behind,etc).

Without further ado, here are my goals for 2016 as of today and may be updated throughout the year:

Learn how to manage my time better
This is without a doubt my biggest hindrance. Some of you may know that I spent A LOT of time commuting to and from work/school each day, transferring from buses to trains would take up almost 4 hours of my life per day. Now that I officially graduated from college (FINALLY!), I am just commuting to and from work which cut my commuting time to about 2 hours per day instead of 4. I haven’t really figured out a way to truly be able to manage my time, the journal idea is more for whether or not I accomplished what I wanted to do for the day, not to manage time. This is something I haven’t really learned yet, but am hoping to this year.

Start TaeKwonDo in January (starting tomorrow Jan 4th)
I checked out maybe 8 or 9 TKD locations by in the last two months and finally decided on which facility I want to attend and my first day is tomorrow. I’ve always wanted to learn some form of self-defense, but never had the money to do so before.

Start up a Youtube channel
This is something I’ve wanted to do now for a few years, but again never had the money to invest in cameras and the proper equipment and necessities. Also, I used to be very camera-shy, but much less now. I do have a lot of ideas for content that encompasses a lot of my own hobbies and interests. A brief outline of my content ideas is below:
Magic Mondays (performance videos of close-up magic I’ll be doing, once a month)
First try Fridays (Upload DJ mix that I made on my first try (biweekly), whether or not I messed up or not, haven’t DJ’d in almost a year, but time to get back into it)
Dance Cover Wednesdays (pretty self-explanatory – once a month)
Twitch Saturdays (My buddy is a relatively popular twitch streamer and him and I used to be a competitive gamers and I was able to make some $ that helped pay for college back in the day. Maybe upload some type of competitive match once a month, in collaboration with him [we spoke and signed an agreement for content-related purposes]).
Q&A, Talk-Show esque segment, once a month

Get back down to 165 lbs, maybe 160 lbs.
I stopped going to the gym in December 2013 and just recently started going in November 2015. I used to be a good 163 lbs, now I’m 184 (was 193 in November). My graduation commencement is in May, giving myself a deadline of April to get to 165.

Date, at least, 1 girl a month.
I put a lot of thought into this and whether or not I wanted a relationship now. Currently I definitely don’t feel like I’m ready to be in a relationship as I’m still trying to really improve my life overall. I’m being 100% honest with myself on this and don’t foresee myself in a monogamous relationship this year.

Study and practice Korean every day, for at least 20 minutes.
I started learning Korean last year, but slacked off in the second half of the year. I’m looking to learn five languages in five years and this is one of the languages I want to learn (as well as Japanese and maybe French/German, but not this year, 1 step at a time).

Go to a new place (restaurant, bar, store, etc.) every 2 weeks.

Start Judo/BJJ/Muay Thai
Looking to start Judo in April
BJJ in July
Muay Thai in October
At year’s end my schedule should be:
Monday – TKD
Tuesday – Judo
Thursday – BJJ
Saturday – Muay Thai

Take additional hip hop classes
Currently taking two hip hop classes at one location, will look to do hip hop classes at 2+locations to get exposure to different styles and dance levels (Wednesdays and Fridays). Aiming to participate in a dance showcase in May/June this year.

Travel to either Hawaii or a new country
I love traveling and want to visit a new place to sit back and relax and enjoy.

Go to Vegas for my birthday.
Birthday is in June, will be turning 24 and I’ve never been to Vegas.

Refine skills in close-up magic and DJing.
I slacked off in both aspects last year, with my completely stopping my DJ podcast in February of last year until very recently.

Go skydiving

Go snowboarding
I skated when I was younger, but never have gone snowboarding, but have wanted to go for awhile now.

Bungee Jump.

This is all in addition to improving pickup and social skills as well. Here's to the start of an improved and better self!

Great job! Really like how you also set time deadlines for many of them, as well as having a well-rounded plan that hits many different areas and aspects of your life.

Start thinking of micro-goals that will lead into your main goals and keep you on track. For example, "Date 1 girl per month"...so how often do you need to go out to meet a bunch of girls, and then be able to convince a few of them to meet up with you (assuming that a few of them will flake)

Or "Get down to 160 lbs by April", how often will you have to go to the gym to achieve your desired results? What days would you go? What would you change with your diet plan?

Thanks for the feedback DJ! Essentially having smaller goals that attribute to the success to the bigger goal, correct? That's how I'm understanding it.

With the exception of when I go to the gym, I almost always think of the big picture, but not the exact way on how to get there (makes me wonder if that's why I always start something, but end up stopping 1 month down the line). I'm going to put more thought in how I can do "x" to get to "y" which will lead me to "z."

Helpful as always DJ!

Nice Noa, looking forward to seeing your progress!

I'm interested as to why you want to start four martial arts in one year?
I wonder if you'll be spreading yourself a little thin.

Thanks Moiser!

Four different styles of martial arts does seem like a lot, but truthfully I'm really using this year to test run a few different styles and see which ones I like doing and want to continue next year. That's the reason I'm starting up a new one every 3 months instead of starting four different styles at the same time.

Started looking into other Martial Arts classes for when I decide to add more to my plate. Completely overhauled my diet plan. Started a bit slow to get accustomed to eating the good healthy food, but now I'm committing to keeping my macros in check. I'm spending significantly less $ on food since I cook everything vs buying. I used to spend almost $15/day on food during work days. Now I just spend about $60/wk for breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner. I haven't approached much this month, need to kick it into high gear. Going to do some approaches tomorrow before the big blizzard hits my area.

I joined a bunch of meetup groups with similar interests as mine and look forward to meeting new people! I will continue to update this thread as consistent as possible to keep myself accountable.

Lots of great stuff here.

Brief update Noa?

That's a lot to take on. How are you finding it?

It is a lot to take on at once. Had to make a minor adjustment to my schedule to make sure I can complete all of my goals. The biggest time consumer is the Youtube channel goal, I've spent more time than I expected on video editing. Overall, most of these goals have been able to fit into my lifestyle pretty easily, so the transition isn't too much of a drastic change in my life.

I'm trying to stay on top of the thread to ensure I can update it, maybe once a week.

Last weekend was bit of a wash, but I am going to be going out a lot more this week. Had a good amount of success last two weekends prior with approaches and stuff. Still looking for another hip hop dance class near me, nothing has stood out yet. I was asked to participate in a hip hop showcase in June, but they have rehearsal dates on days I can't attend and the dates aren't flexible. Such a shame, would have loved to be in it.

So far everything has been progressing a bit slower than I had wanted it to, but I have to manage my time better to best effectively get to where I want to go.