Title: How to make your hobby lifelong?

Dear fellow Toastmasters, old friends and new faces,

[Introduction] Thanks Joy, our meeting manager, for choosing this wonderful theme: lifelong hobby. I want to talk about my secret behind my hobby of reading and exercising.

To build a lifelong hobby, I have 3 tricks for you. Trick number one : do what you love and love what you do. Trick number two: being in the flow. Trick number three: repeat trick number one and two.

The key point of doing what you love and loving what you do is to enjoy the activity itself, not just its outcome. Let me explain this concept with my exercise hobby. Most people know that exercise is good for our health and wellbeing, right? We love losing weight, keeping fit, getting likes on social media.

However, to sustain exercise as a lifelong hobby, we need to fall in love the exercise itself, not just its great benefits. in my case, it is rowing. I enjoy doing this! Do what you love and love what you do

My second point is being in the flow. Let me explain what flow is. Have you ever experienced a time when you are so focused on our task that you could not feel time passed but get so much work done?

Do you know how to enter the flow each time you work?

[show the chart] Concretely, let me explain this chart with my reading hobby as an example.

The horizontal axis is my reading skill. Left is poor and right is great. The vertical axis is difficulty of a book. The bottom is the children’s books; the top is adult’s books.

When my reading skill is poor but I read an adult book, I feel anxious. On the other hand, after I improve my reading skills but I read a children’s book, I feel bored. The sweet spot is to stay inside this channel, being in the flow, where my reading skill matches the level of difficulty of the book.

My last point is Repeat, Repeat and Repeat. If we practice a good hobby only once, well that is a good topic for a toastmaster speech, but it isn’t lifelong. Therefore, we have to repeat our hobby day after day, week after week, month after month, so that a great hobby becomes a lifelong excellent habit that stays with us for many years.

In closing, I build my lifelong habits by using these 3 tricks, do what you love, love what you do, being in the flow and repeat trick number one and two. Finally, I sincerely hope you start building your lifelong habit today . Just like what I did with my reading and exercising hobbies more than a decade ago. If I can do that, so can you!

Thank you .