Whew. 30-Day Trial #2 is complete. To read more details about the trial go here.

To recap, basically I had four goals with this trial:

1) Wake up at 6:00am daily
2) Visualization for at least 20 minutes daily (continuation of my first visualization trial)
3) Eat no processed starches or foods with refined sugars throughout the day
4) Write for 2 hours daily

I was able to do it all every day except waking up at 6:00am on Day 24. I can’t say it was easy, but I’m definitely glad I tried it and completed it.

Waking up at 6:00am

Technically, I did wake up at 6:00am every day except for Day 24 when I woke up at 7:00am. However, on many days at 6:00am I felt completely unrested and would soon fall back asleep. I would wake up, turn off the alarm across the room on my cell phone, walk around for a bit to try to stay awake, and then go back to sleep for another hour. I often didn’t quite feel rested because there were many days I would stay up past midnight because I wanted to get the writing part of the trial done.

This was a case of me not being super clear about what I wanted. I didn’t just want to wake up at 6:00am, but I wanted to wake up at 6:00am and stay awake. I wanted to be full of energy and actually get the day started at 6. I’ll be extending this trial for 30 more days to really get this right, so I’ll make it a priority to go to bed at a decent time.

Visualization

I’ve done it for at least 20 min a day for 60 straight days. Today I visualized for about 45 minutes. It has really helped me change my state throughout the day. It’s much better and more intense when I do it in the mornings or mid afternoon. I still want to learn more about it but I think it’s a habit I’ll have for the rest of my life.

Overall, I can see my life moving closer towards my vision for it. I wanted empowering habits that would allow me to be able to create value and deliver it frequently while feeling completely relaxed and never feeling overwhelmed. I think it’s coming together pretty nicely.

No processed starches or refined sugars.

This has been going great. I’ve lost 14 pounds living a pretty sedentary lifestyle :smile:. However, I’m really focused on creating a healthy lifestyle, so I plan to eventually add some weight training, cardio, and more water.

Another thing I notice is that I’m not nearly as thirsty as usual.

I’ve actually cut out more foods than processed starches and refined sugars. For one, I’ve cut out cheese after hearing some awful things about it. I’ve also cut out fruits for now. They affect me similarly to the foods with refined sugars so I thought it would be appropriate to just cut out all sugars.

This diet change really has me feeling good for the most part. Sometimes I do have intense sugar cravings that are at their worst when I’m hungry. Since I’m not having foods with refined sugars, processed starches, cheese, or fruits I’m feeling very limited as to what I can eat, but it’s a work in progress. So far it’s been pretty much meat and vegetables. I want to include some nuts/seeds and more greens.

Writing 2 hours a day

This was by far the hardest part of the trial, but because I completed it, I have an absolute abundance of writing. I’ve written several thousand affirmations on my computer journal and several hundred by hand. I also have about 5-6 articles that just need to be edited and posted. I’ll have to let you see the articles to really be able to tell if the affirmations work, but I think with more time they’ll begin to really sink in.

This has been the most beneficial part of the trial. Starting off with two hours was a big challenge, but now that I’ve proved to myself I can do it, I can see me pushing it to 4 hours a day or maybe even 6 on weekdays.

I do want to finish this and visualization earlier in the day. It’s kind of stressful for me to write and visualize and night like I am now.

Final Thoughts

I’ve been having questions about changing the goals during the 30-day trial. If there’s a better way to optimize a goal in the trial, should I change it? or keep it the same for the sake of consistency? I’m thinking that changing it is the obvious answer. I wouldn’t want to be consistent with something I didn’t want to keep as a habit for the long-term, but I also don’t want to do too much adding and tweaking. I want to at least implement a plan consistently enough to see how I need to modify it.

I’m really glad I did this trial. It DEFINITELY pushed me and I learned so much about myself and about the things I’ve tried. I gotta say I’ve learned way more from actually doing these things than reading about them on blogs or books so I would definitely encourage anyone reading this blog to try their own 30-day trial.

There has been much support along the way so I want to thank readers, people who stopped by to comment, and different members of forums. Next month I’ll make some tweaks to these different goals and hopefully really lock them in as habits.

Related Articles

1. 30-Day Trial #3 Results
2. 30-Day Trial #3
3. 30-Day Trial #3 – Day 19
4. 30-Day Trial #2 – Day 15
5. 30-Day Trial #3 Revised
6. 30-Day Trial #3 – Day 3
7. 30-Day Trial #2 – Day 8 + New Goal