My Monastic Ways
First, it's an evolved minimalist attitude, based on 'what is worth the expenditure of energy' beyond those legal obligations in which I have contracted myself. By saying this I'm incidentally asserting that ethics and morals, which provide my boundaries come under constant re-evaluation since they can be influenced if not corrupted by sentimentalities of past feelings.
As I see it, my days are very basic:
-Getting done the necessary errands/work
-Getting the food and rest for my later exercise time
-Doing the exercise time as not only a physical therapy but as a therapy for my mental and emotional venting and meditation
-Choosing what combination of hard and soft data to expose my sensory receptors
Anything not relevant or compelling enough to augment those actions is regarded quite dubiously.
How you reach those end-goals will be the journey in which you must determine the means. It may be developing a serious focus on what you'd otherwise would be doing besides those four activities. I found that subconsciously I had a slew of little habits that in the past were diversions and distractions. Particularly my relationships with people, socially; plus the perennial cultural and social traditions and events to which I give my attention and more than casual emotional energy.
Even the casual attendings I notice incidentally, or more significantly, the ones I dwell upon in my non-demand focus time: you can approach from an economy of time opportunity. For those times, it is better to let yourself go into 'veg-mode' and let your mind have its play in meditation or power-naps, so it can do its own data dumps-some of which show up as our dreams.
I've evolved from a reserved, somewhat shy guy as a youth, to more extroverted by the sophomore year of college and through the decades until reached this monastic insight. This insight developed over decades of me purging myself of the trivial and superfluous mental and emotional investments I had been devoting my energies.
If you are willing to endure the change, as an old or older-dog learning a new way to reach those goals, then this is what I had to do.
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