And… hot on the heels of the introduction video is a new video for The Celes Show, announcing the Ask Celes segment. If you’ve had a question for me in the past or you have a question for me now, I want to hear them from you. Details here:

Once again, comments section for this post is closed – post all your comments / questions in the comments section at The Celes Show! See you guys there!

PS: Thanks to all of you who have subscribed so far! New video coming up next – This one will be on my favorite mobile phone applications. Stay tuned!

Related Posts

• Introducing… The Celes Show!
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Hello and welcome to Day 21 (Feb 23) of the 21-Day Fitness Challenge! Today is the last day of the challenge. (But not the last task, as there is still the round-up post tomorrow. Stay tuned!)

Closure of All Comments for 21DFC

Every challenge has to come to an end, and this is the same for 21DFC.

All comments for 21DFC will be closed by Wed, 26 Feb, 10am, EST.

So if you haven’t, post your replies to Week 2′s self-reflection questions and Week 3′s tasks ASAP. All tasks can be easily accessed via the 21DFC Overview. Check out others’ comments in the previous days’ threads. Drop them replies. Check back for responses to your previous posts. Let’s make the best out of the last few days we have together as a 21DFC group.

21DFC Day 21 - Create Your Fitness Plan Ahead

Congratulations for making it this far. On 3rd Feb, we started challenge to embark on 21 days of fitness. 21 days later, you stand here, victorious in your quest to make fitness a part of your life.

You should know by now that fitness is not a short-term goal where you go all out to achieve, then stop after you have mete your objectives. It’s an ongoing habit for life. In the past 3 weeks, I have dispensed my best knowledge and advice on how you can make fitness part and parcel of everyday living. I hope you have found the tips useful and duly applied them. I sure have.

Even though 21DFC has been a small challenge (about 300 official participants) relative to other past challenges at PE with easily double to over triple the participant count, it has actually been the most life changing challenge for me. In these 21 days, I have changed from someone who had a reticence toward fitness to someone who truly relishes it. The change has been unbelievable that even I have a hard time digesting it.

It goes to show that when you’re truly committed toward a goal, and you go all out to pursue it, you will get the results you desire. No excuses, no buts, no ‘next time’s. It is all happening now.

21DFC is only 21 days long, meant to be a platform to springboard your fitness habit. It’s not meant to be a crutch that you rely on forever. Now that the challenge is drawing to a close, it’s now up to *you* to make fitness happen on a daily (or near daily basis).

How are you going to ensure you will adhere to your fitness activities without the daily 21DFC tasks? How are you going to ensure that same enthusiasm and rigor towards fitness when there is no longer the 21DFC mini-forums for you to gather with other participants on a daily basis? (Note that we still have the Personal Excellence Forums, where you are free to create your journal in the Health & Fitness forum (or any other forum, for that matter) and journal your progress in pursuit of your goal(s).)

These are questions you will be answering today. Today your task is to review your progress in the past 3 weeks and create your fitness plan ahead.

Part-1: Review

Refer to the goals you stated for Day 0′s pre-work.

1. How have you fared against these goals? Have you achieved them? Give as objective an assessment as possible.
2. For your answer in #1, why?
3. What are the key things you have learned during 21DFC?

Part-2: Your Fitness Plan Ahead

1. What are your fitness goals moving forward?
2. What are your key steps to achieve them?
3. How are you going to ensure you stay true to your daily fitness habit moving forward?

Note that today’s task is about reviewing *YOUR* progress in the past 3 weeks and creating *YOUR* fitness plans. Do *NOT* post your review or feedback for the challenge itself yet – we will be doing that in tomorrow’s round-up post. Stay tuned!

Share Your Plans/Progress for Today!

What is your intended fitness plan for today? What physical activities are you going to do, and how long do you want to do them for? Share with us!

Update your progress as you go along. At the end of the day, review your progress and share your learnings.

Check out other participants’ responses and join in the discussions!

Image: Marathon

Today, I’m very excited to launch my new video channel, The Celes Show, on how to be your best self and live your best life!

Those who have been following my updates for a while would know I’ve been alluding to this for ages. The reason why I’d held off working on TCS for all this while was because I wanted to focus on developing PE first.

And now that PE has grown into such an incredible platform today (over 1 million pageviews/month; #1 community for people passionate about achieving excellence in life), I thought this is the perfect time to finally start work on this project. And now it’s finally up!!

Watch the introduction video below! (If you’re viewing this in an email, you may not be able to see the video embedded below. View here: Introducing… The Celes Show!)

Please check out The Celes Show official site, subscribe to the Youtube channel and subscribe to The Celes Show RSS feed to get first hand updates of new videos. And trust me – there are new ones coming very soon! Stay tuned.

I’m closing the comments section here so please proceed to the comments section over at The Celes Show site to post your comments. Look forward to seeing you guys there!

PS: Oh by the way, for those who are wondering where the videos section of PE is now, it’s gone – I’ve decided to merge the PE videos initiative as part of The Celes Show. This way, it’ll be a more holistic effort – no point having videos on 2 separate sites which will only diffuse my efforts.

From now onwards, anything to do with articles, challenges, manifestos, ebooks, etc come under PE. Anything video-related will come under Celes Show. So there’s no overlap in efforts. See you guys there at Celes Show (and here at PE as well).

Related Posts

• My Upcoming Talkshow – The Celes Show
• Any questions for me? Let me know via “Ask Celes”!
• Update: Talkshow and Latest Media Coverage in Radio 938 LIVE, Today and Lianhe Wanbao (Nov ’09)

I started to outsource my manifesto design process (gosh, should have done this long ago in retrospect), so expect to see more of them, on a more frequent basis. I told my designer that I wanted to a clean and simple design with stickmen to exemplify the idea of meeting new people, and he did a fabulous job. Check it out below:

(Click image for larger version)

Source article: 10 Useful Tips To Make New Friends

Also, you can now easily access all manifestos in the all-new manifestos section. I’ve categorized them for your easy reference.

Feel free to like/share this on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc if you find it useful. Convenient share buttons can be found below this post.

Related Posts

• How To Have More Best Friends in Life: The Heartfelt Guide
• 10 Useful Tips To Make New Friends
• [Manifesto] How To Create More Meaningful Relationships
• [Manifesto] How To Deal With Critical People

Hello and welcome to Day 20 (Feb 22) of the 21-Day Fitness Challenge! It’s now the 2nd last day of the challenge.

21DFC Day 20 - Share What Has Worked For You

If you’re still here, living true to your daily fitness habit after 19 days, you are a winner. You are now almost ready to continue on your fitness journey without 21DFC.

All of you have heard from me in the past 19 days on how I have transformed fitness from something I abhored to something I relish in and automatically do on a daily basis.

For today’s task, I want to hear from you. Share the big things that have helped you to cultivate your daily fitness habit these past 3 weeks. Even if you have not been exercising every day, share what has been most helpful in enabling you to do *more* physical activity. Your tips will be extremely helpful to those who have not been able to do so.

As you share your tips, be sure to read what others have to say. Reflect them onto your situation. And see how you can apply them.

Tomorrow will be the last day of 21DFC. I will be posting the last task, followed by a round-up / feedback post after the challenge is over. Stay tuned.

Share Your Plans/Progress for Today!

What is your intended fitness plan for today? What physical activities are you going to do, and how long do you want to do them for? Share with us!

Update your progress as you go along. At the end of the day, review your progress and share your learnings.

Check out other participants’ responses and join in the discussions!

Image: Gymnast

Hello and welcome to Day 19 (Feb 21) of the 21-Day Fitness Challenge! We now have only *3* days left before 21DFC comes to a close!

21DFC Day 19 - Try a Different Fitness Activity

What fitness activities have you done before? What fitness activities have you been doing for 21DFC? What activities do you plan to do in the future in living a physically active life?

In today’s task, I’d like to challenge you to try out a different activity for fitness.

Meaning rather than exercise a particular body part in the gym all the time, try to workout a different body part.

Meaning rather than stick to the same few sports, try a different sport.

Meaning rather than do the same fitness activites each week, try some new activities.

The objective is to open yourself up to different ways to keep yourself fit.

After all, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of physical activities out there! From dancing (salsa, tango, ballroom dancing, etc), to ball games (basketball, rugby, football, volleyball, etc), to racket sports (tennis, badminton, squash, baseball, etc), to martial arts (judo, taekwando, mixed martial arts, wushu, karate, etc), to water sports (swimming, water polo, water aerobics, etc), to sea sports (canoeing, dragon boat, kayaking, sailing, surfing, wakeboarding, etc), to many other kinds of fitness activities (ballet, yoga, pilates, fencing, gymnastics, wrestling, frisbee, etc). Why limit yourself to the same few activities you’ve been doing?? If you don’t like it, simply quit after the first try. There’s no obligation to continue at all.

Identify a few new activities to try out. They could be activities you’ve always wanted to do but never got the chance to do. They could be activities you would have never imagined yourself doing, but you want to branch out of your comfort zone and try that now.

You don’t have to do that right away today, since it might not be possible. (But if you can, by all means – go ahead and do that!) Go read up on the activities today, research on existing groups / classes you can join in (if applicable), then plan for it in your schedule.

For me, the new activities I want to try include a sea sport (sailing?), dragon boat, and rollerblading / ice skating. I already have a friend who does dragon boat, so I’m going to check with him on his plans and join him in his next dragon boat session. With rollerblading, I’m going to check on classes later today. And I have a friend who has been keen to try sea sports for recreation, so I’m going to link up with her today to set up plans in that regard.

How about you? What new activities do you want to try out? Why? When are you going to do them?

Share Your Plans/Progress for Today!

What is your intended fitness plan for today? What physical activities are you going to do, and how long do you want to do them for? Share with us!

Update your progress as you go along. At the end of the day, review your progress and share your learnings.

Check out other participants’ responses and join in the discussions!

Image: Gymnast

Hello and welcome to Day 18 (Feb 20) of the 21-Day Fitness Challenge! We now have only *4* days left before 21DFC comes to a close!

21DFC Day 18 - Seek the Path of Highest Enjoyment

How do you normally approach your fitness activities? Do you ‘make’ youtself exercise even when you don’t want to? Do you pick exercises which you feel you *should* do, instead of exercises you like to do? Do you *force* yourself to exercise for X duration of time every single time, even when you want to work out for only Y amount of time sometimes?

Let me tell you a story. In the past, I used to approach fitness like a chore, an obligation, a “must-do” and a “should-do”. When I go workout, I would tell myself that I must work out for x minutes today. When I don’t exercise after X days, I would tell myself that I really should start exercising again. When I go running, I would tell myself that I should at the least cover Y distance today.

The result? I would successfully complete the workouts for my desired time frame and at my desired frequency a week. At first.

Gradually, I began to resist exercising. I would keep saying “I should really exercise today”, but more often than not, I would not. And on the days I did, I would have overeaten by a large margin prior, in anticipation of the workout which I would do later, because of the mental stress I had put on myself. (Which was a separate issue of emotional eating altogether.) Then after the workout, I would again eat, not because I was hungry, but because I felt I deserved reward for overcoming my internal resistance to do the workout. (The question, though, was why would there be resistance to overcome in the first place?)

I later realized exercise had become such a huge block to me because I had created so many stories surrounding it, exerted so many mental pressures on it, in my mind. In fact, I don’t recall *ever* thinking exercise/fitness as fun in the past. I had always seen it as something that *drained* me, that required *energy*, that required *exertion* in order to be accomplished.

And that, was what prevented me from adhering to fitness as an ongoing habit. While I was successful in *squeezing* the most out of my fitness activities at first, be it via calories burned, or time spent working out, or weight lost, these were merely temporary. In the long run, my self-imposing approach towards fitness backfired on me *big* time. Exercise had became such a (mentally) painful act in my mind that deep down, I didn’t want to do it anymore.

Has this happened to you before? Resisting fitness because it felt painful / exhausting / tiring to you? Giving all kinds of excuses not to do physical activities? Feeling pressured / worn out whenever you’re exercising, even though you have barely started?

Today, I use a different approach towards fitness. I do only workouts which I *want* to do. I workout for however long I want – be it 1 minute or 2 hours. I workout as and when I want to, without making mandatory only book.

The end result? I’m exercising every single day now without fail. I *voluntary* wake up early to go to the gym. I work out longer and *harder* than I used to. When I don’t exercise, I feel weird, empty almost. In spite of whatever aches and pains, I exercise all the same – and end up feeling better during / after the activity. I have *never* been so consistent nor prolific with my exercises before.

Chances are, the resistance you used to feel / might still be feeling towards fitness is not physical. It’s mental. And it’s because you have made fitness a chore, instead of something you *want* to do.

Your task today is to identify how you can make fitness (even) more enjoyable in your life. Do you feel any resistances toward your (daily) physical activities? If so, why? How can you start transforming fitness into something you truly want to do? What changes do you need to make to your current approach?

Share Your Plans/Progress for Today!

What is your intended fitness plan for today? What physical activities are you going to do, and how long do you want to do them for? Share with us!

Update your progress as you go along. At the end of the day, review your progress and share your learnings.

Check out other participants’ responses and join in the discussions!

Image: Canoeing

Hello and welcome to Day 17 (Feb 19) of the 21-Day Fitness Challenge! We now have 5 days left before 21DFC comes to a close!

21DFC Day 17 - Integrate Fitness into Your Life

Not sure if all of you saw this link in my Day 15 comment – Check out this article at Business Insider, on how sitting can kill you. (Of course, not literally – the title is a tad exaggerating, but the gist is there.)

Here’s what I felt was the crux of the article:

…the difference between the fatties and the non-fatties in the study had nothing to do with exercise. None of the folks in the “inactivity” study were allowed to exercise. The folks who didn’t get fat didn’t exercise–they just didn’t spend as much time sitting. Instead, they stood. They walked. They took stairs instead of elevators. They fidgeted. Etc.

Which ties in to today’s task – Integrate fitness into your life.

This is something I’ve been alluding to in the earlier days of the challenge, especially Day 2. If you want to make fitness a habit that sticks in your life, then it’s about learning to integrate it into your life.

What does that mean? That means that fitness isn’t just something that happens during your exercise/yoga/gym/etc sessions for X minutes a day, X times a week. It’s something that happens all the time, 24/7, for the rest of your life.

This means fitness isn’t something you do intensely for X weeks or X months to “hit” a certain goal (be it to lose weight, gain muscle mass, achieve a certain look, shed off a certain disease, etc), then stop thereafter once that goal has been reached – it’s something that you live by on an ongoing basis.

This means fitness isn’t something you try to force (i.e. pushing yourself to run when you hate running; doing resistance exercises because everyone says they are important – even though you don’t like doing them; forcing yourself to stay 1.5 hours at the gym when you really just want to work out for 30-45 minutes). Fitness should be something you do because you want to do it.

This also means that fitness isn’t something you have to deliberately *set aside* time for – it’s something you do as part of your life, as part of living.

The more you fall into the former, the less likely you’ll stick with the habit of being physically active post the challenge. The more likely you do the latter, the more likely you will naturally live true to it.

How do you integrate fitness into one’s life though? It’s simple:

• Seek opportunities to be physically active wherever you can. Where you have 2 options, one of which requires more activity and the other which is more sedentary, pick the former. For example, walking over taking the bus for short distances (unless you’re pressed for time). Climbing the stairs over taking the lift. Opting for sports as a social activity (where possible) vs. eating/drinking/slacking. Standing over sitting. Moving over being stationary.
• Combine fitness with other things that are already in your life. For example, fellow participant Glenn had an ingenuous plan for his 21DFC workout. He uses the oven daily (is that right, Glenn?) and always sets it for 20 minutes. Since it’s 20 minutes that he has to wait for, he takes the time to jump on his rebounder. Now, whenever he sets his oven, he knows it’s exercise time. Great plan, isn’t it?
• Do activities that you gravitate toward. Run if you like to run. Jog if you like to jog. Walk if you like to walk. Go swim if you like swimming. Go to the gym if you prefer. Dance if you enjoy dancing. Do yoga if that rocks your boat. Go for resistance exercises if they are your thing. Do whatever you normally would want to do.
• Recognize fitness is not a one-off thing – it’s something that will be with us for life. Don’t work towards fitness as a short-term goal. See it as a life-time habit. You know, like brushing and flossing, showering, washing your face, wearing clothes, talking to people, and so on.

You don’t have to do the above for 100% of your fitness activities, but try to do that as much as you can. The more you do so, the more likely you’ll be physically active – for life.

How are you integrating fitness into your life? How can you do it even more?

Share Your Plans/Progress for Today!

What is your intended fitness plan for today? What physical activities are you going to do, and how long do you want to do them for? Share with us!

Update your progress as you go along. At the end of the day, review your progress and share your learnings.

Check out other participants’ responses and join in the discussions!

Image: Push-Up

Hello and welcome to Day 16 (Feb 18) of the 21-Day Fitness Challenge! We now have 6 days left before 21DFC comes to a close!

21DFC Day 16 - Set Aside Time To Exercise Every Day

Do you set time aside in your calendar to exercise every day?

In Step 5 of the pre-work on Day 0, you were given a 21-day fitness chart to plan your fitness activities for the 3 weeks of 21DFC.  The reason why I issued the chart as part of the pre-work is because by first identifying what physical activities you are going to do, and when/what time you are going to do them, you dramatically increase the chances of them happening.

Even though I did not fix up a schedule for my exercises at the start of the challenge, that was because I had already set aside the 3 weeks to focus 100% on my fitness. I knew that I was definitely going to exercise; it was just a matter of the time of the day I was going to do it. I also knew that participating in the challenge, having to write the daily task posts and post my comments, were all natural reminders to get my exercise done for the day.

Moving forward though, for the habit to be a self-sustaining one, it’s essential that I deliberately set aside time to exercise every day, in my calendar. The very same calendar I refer to every day for my appointments, to work, to get my errands done, etc (i.e. Google Calendar in my case) – not some random desk calendar which I refer to once a year.

Why? Because relying on memory to exercise is simply not a foul proof method. With all the things that scream for our attention every day, there are bound to be days where we will “forget” to exercise.

Case in point – if you look at the number of participants who signed up for the challenge, a good number are no longer with us anymore. Why? Is it because they don’t have time to exercise? No, of course not. All of us have the same amount of time every day. Is it because they don’t want to be fit? No, of course not – if they don’t want to be fit, why did they even sign up for the challenge to begin with? Is it because they are not passionate enough about their goals? It’s questionable, but I believe that the people who read PE are people who are passionate about being better people, and as a corollary, about improving their fitness too.

The actual reason is going to differ from person to person, but I believe a big reason is because they did not schedule 21DFC/fitness into their life. They signed up, thinking that putting their name down will take care of everything. Unfortunately, many of them probably forgot about the whole challenge altogether in that same evening. The remainder who remembered, probably only recalled doing it for the first couple of days, before letting slip of it from their mind – thereafter not even checking PE anymore.

Ever since Week 2, I have fixed down time to exercise, on a daily basis, in my calendar. From Mondays-Fridays, I set aside 10am-12pm for my gym workouts (including 30 minutes walk to the gym). During this same duration, I’ve also synced other activities such as checking email, catching up on my Google feed, updating my site, writing, etc, so it’s two very productive hours in the morning. Then after my workouts, it’s straight to lunch.

Then on the weekends, my exercise sessions are in the evenings – jogging/running, specifically. That’s because my gym membership is only for off-peak timings, so I can’t go to the gym on weekends (well I suppose I can if I want to; I just need to pay the regular entry fee). It’s all good since it helps me vary my exercises a bit. (Post 21DFC, I may set aside Sundays/weekends as rest days, depending on how it goes. But gym on weekdays are definite.)

These activities are set aside in my Google calendar, to recur an infinite number of times, until the day I die. (i.e. I’ll be sticking to my fitness sessions for life!)

Today, your task is to set aside time to exercise every day (or X times a week, depending on how regularly you want to exercise on an ongoing basis post 21DFC). What time do you plan to exercise? What days do you plan to exercise (if not every day)?

After you are done, schedule that in your organizer/calendar/notebook/whatever time management system you use. Now, we’re all set for a lifetime of fitness!

Share Your Plans/Progress for Today!

What is your intended fitness plan for today? What physical activities are you going to do, and how long do you want to do them for? Share with us!

Update your progress as you go along. At the end of the day, review your progress and share your learnings.

Check out other participants’ responses and join in the discussions!

Image: Surfing

(Click image for larger version)

Source article: 8 Helpful Ways To Deal With Critical People

The manifesto series has been extremely popular, with many shares and reshares on Facebook and Tumblr, so expect to see them on a regular basis from now on. If you have any requests of manifestos you’d like to see (of articles that are already on PE), let me know in the comments area.

Feel free to like/share this on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc if you find it useful. Convenient share buttons can be found below this post.

Related Posts

• 8 Helpful Ways To Deal With Critical People
• How To Deal With Rude People – Part 2
• How To Deal With Rude People – Part 3
• [Manifesto] How To Nay-say the Naysayers