Personal Growth From the Bottom Up – BroderickDurisseau.com
A Blog Dedicated to Personal Growth, Success and Goal Achievement

Man…it’s been a while. Feels good to be back in the game though.

Thought I’d give an update as to how things were going.

30-Day Trial #4

I didn’t continue the trial too long after I started it. Around that time I was starting to think that these 30-day trials were a way for me to avoid doing stuff I was afraid of. There were some big changes I wanted to make (location) and I thought that the 30-day trials were just me stalling. After taking some time off I can see that that did have some truth to it, but I still want to keep doing visualization.

Ebay Reselling

While I was doing my other trials, I was always questioning whether I should be working on visualization, reading, etc. when there are much bigger issues to deal with. I wanted to move out, so shouldn’t I be doing stuff to make enough money to support myself after moving out? I thought so, so I did.

Ideally I wanted my sole income to be made online. I had made money online before, but I had never made a full income before. Usually when I hear about making money online Ebay comes up, so I thought I’d give it a try. I bought this book, bought some stuff off slickdeals.net and resold them on Ebay. I had sold a lot of stuff on Craigslist before, (everything in my apartment) so I had a pretty good idea on what to do. The intention was to get my feet wet with selling and shipping, so I wasn’t too concerned about profit. I think people who really put forth serious effort reselling on Ebay would laugh at my super beginner strategy.

One thing I like about Ebay is that it’s so easy. I guess over the years they’ve done a lot to the site to make sure everything runs as smoothly as possible. Same thing goes for Craigslist.

Purpose

Though I do like Ebay and Craigslist, the idea of reselling makes me feel like I’m going backwards. The truth is that the world doesn’t need another Ebay reseller and it felt pretty empty to me anyway. At the core, I’m just manipulating numbers for my own benefit. Writing on this blog is a lot more fun and fulfilling. It’s made me realize that making $1 the way you really want to is better than making $1000 in a way you feel you have to “settle” for.

Lately I’ve really been doing some serious thought about purpose. There’s so much talk about purpose within the self help field, but up until now I really didn’t pay it too much attention other than reading a book on it. It’s a pretty big awareness raiser when you realize that even if you haven’t consciously chosen a purpose you still have one.

Clearly the purpose of me reselling was just to make some profit, BUT this is what I don’t want to see anymore of. There’s tons of stuff out there doing more harm than good and wasting people’s time. The sole reason much of that stuff sticks around is because it generates money. So many things are being motivated by fear or lack, and I don’t want to add to that.

So what do I want? I have a general idea and it is written down, but after listening to Frank Kern’s Core Influence and reading some articles on Steve Pavlina’s blog (How to Visualize your New Reality and How to Order) and reading other self-help sources, I’m pretty sure I haven’t been nearly as detailed as I should be in describing exactly what I want.

In a perfect world:

- What would your thoughts be when you went to sleep?
- How exactly would you be earning money?
- What would your friends be like?
- What would you have for dinner?

Those are some questions from Core Influence (probably somewhere before that too) and they are questions I hadn’t thought of. Looks like I got some work to do.

This month my focus will be on visualization. My first 30-day trial was on visualization, but I really didn’t dive into it like I want to now. Plus at that point I didn’t know enough about it or have enough direct experience doing it consistently to write too many quality articles about it. I’d like to read at least 5 books on the subject, listen to several hours of audio, and share what’s useful on this blog. I’ve probably spent 20 minutes visualizing each day for around 80 days since Oct 1. During the last month I went for about 10 days straight without consciously taking time out to do it, and I could definitely tell the difference in those days.

I’m pretty excited to implement some different strategies I’ve read in Creative Visualization, and I’d be happy to hear any other recommendations on the subject.

I want to visualize for at least 45 minutes each day. 15 min right after I wake up, 15 min in the middle of the day (we’ll say 2:00pm), and 15 before I go to sleep.

I’ll be giving updates on daily on Steve Pavlina’s Forums and Zen Habits’ Forums.

30-Day Trial #3 didn’t quite go as planned. I started the trial with 7 goals then ended up cutting it down to three.

After the revision on Day 6, the three goals were to:

1) Wake up at 6:00am daily and stay awake
2) Visualize for at least 20 minutes daily
3) Eat no processed starches, foods with refined sugars, cheese or fruits throughout the day

There were stops, revisions, twists, turns, and bumps, but it was still a fun learning experience for me. I imagine that will be similar to many 30-day trials I do. After the initial revision, things went pretty well up until around the 19th.

Waking up at 6:00am and staying awake

On most days I would go to bed late and wake up at 6am only to go right back to sleep for another hour or two or wander around and waste time.

This goal just didn’t happen at all. There were many times I wondered if deep down inside I really wanted to accomplish this goal. I do want to be an early riser, and there’s no doubt in my mind I can do it. Going to sleep when I’m sleepy has been the real source of the problem, so I’ll have to do some more searching to find out why I’m not getting to bed on time.

I know one cause is productivity-related. As I’m writing this now, I’m wondering why it took me so long to get started with this update seeing as I’ve had the whole day open to get this done. Many times I’ll wait until late at night to start something I would have liked to had done earlier. Lord, I remember my first visualization trial I probably hit the “publish” button on 80% of the posts right before midnight just to get it up on time. I think I’ll re-read some productivity books so I can dissolve this problem.

I know that isn’t the only problem though. There are days when I don’t write for the blog at all, soooo there’s gotta be somethin’ else.

Visualizing for 20 minutes

I stopped visualization after the 19th and I started doing it again around the 28th. I can tell the lack of visualization had an impact on my focus and the other two goals in this trial. Things started getting more relaxed and the days were filled with me succumbing to one distraction after another. I’m pretty sure I won’t have a problem with this goal next month though.

Cutting out processed starches, foods with refined sugars, cheese and fruits

When I stopped visualizing, I started eating processed starches and foods with refined sugars after going a month without eating any. Next time I try a goal like this I’ll put the goal in words that focus on what I want (more whole foods) not what I don’t want (processed crap).

This is a health goal, but it’s a health goal that is affected by finances. A person that has built a life-long healthy lifestyle earns enough money to buy health conscious food and supplies. I want to be a person who can afford the healthy options too. Right now I’m not quite there yet, but I can see my finances going in that direction too.

When I hear people say that they’ve watched The Secret and nothing has happened, I always ask if they’ve listened to the commentary that comes on the movie. The commentary is a transpacific interview given by the producer, Paul Harrington interviewing the executive producer and creator of The Secret, Rhonda Byrne. Until I listened to that commentary, the actual movie didn’t click for me.

Personal Experience

When I first watched The Secret, I didn’t really give it too much thought and put it away for two years. Then I cracked it back open when I was at my lowest point and simply wanted to feel good. After I re-watched it, it made me feel better and it made more sense than the first time I watched it but I still felt like something was missing from it. I became crystal clear about it all only after listening to the transpacific interview/commentary on the DVD where Rhonda Byrne explains why implementing what’s on the movie works and shares her personal experience with it.

Why the Commentary is Better

There were a lot of people featured in this documentary, and each person only had a limited amount of time to speak. Today I understand why they structured the DVD like this, but I could see how it could seem unfocused and jumpy to a person searching for answers and seeing it for the first time. However, in the commentary Rhonda Byrne has the whole length of the movie to respond to the common questions and concerns Paul Harrington brings up.

After I heard her commentary, I listened to it about 10-15 more times. Then I went back to watch the movie again and it all made sense.