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

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 DVD under “Settings” (not available when viewed online). 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.

This is a continuation of 30-Day Trial #3 Revised.

Waking up at 6:00am and staying awake.

I think I’ve now formed a habit of waking up at 6:00am, walking around, then going back to sleep about an hour or two afterwards. :(  

I underestimated how difficult this would be. I thought it would be easier because I’ve had to wake up at around 6:00am for school and for jobs, and I also remember the yuck, sluggish, unrested feeling I would have forcing myself to get up. That situation is totally different from waking up at 6:00am feeling totally alert and well rested simply because you want to wake up early.

I’m pretty sure the problem stems from not going to sleep when I’m sleepy. Lately I’ve been considering the possibility that I’m self-sabotaging.  I don’t want my life to even remotely resemble a 9-5 job so maybe subconsciously I’m stopping it from getting closer to that. In many cases, it just comes down to decision. Usually late at night is when people message me, call me, or want to go places, so I might try connecting with more people that wake up early and value going to sleep at a reasonable time.

Visualization

This part of the trial has been going great as usual. I do it throughout the day now too, along with the daily 20-minute sessions. When I’ve been feeling self-doubt or frustration I take a deep breath and start visualizing. When I do that, my state changes instantly. Indecision, procrastination, doubt, worry, and anxiety are replaced with peace, appreciation, excitement and an eagerness to get started. I know that feeling is the most important part of the whole success process and I understand it a lot more now. When I do it before I write, the writing just flows and everything seems to go much easier. Because I feel abundant on the inside I can give abundantly on the outside. Contribution = power, so as a result I end up feeling more powerful too.

No processed starches, foods with refined sugars, or cheese

This part of the trial has yielded the most significant results for me. I’ve lost 27 pounds by just this diet change. The crazy thing is that I’m doing it with a lot of processed starches, fast food, and foods with refined sugars in the house I live in.

I’ve been able to keep this up because I’ve focused on less. First, I eliminated fast foods. I actually gained weight after that because I loaded up on store-bought processed junk foods, but once I had proven I could live without fast food then I cut out all processed foods. I realized cheese had the same kind of effect so I stopped eating that too. That caused me to load up on chicken/fish/beef/pork and vegetables. Taking it one step at a time has really allowed me to keep moving forwards. Glad I learned that from The Power of Less. :smile:

Since my day is wide open and I have plenty of time to work on building empowering habits to accomplish goals, the question I’ve had lately is do I do my best, push myself, give it my all, and possibly focus on multiple goals? or do I put my focus on less and work on locking in one habit at a time during the 30-day trials?

I feel this could helpful to anyone starting from scratch trying to learn how they can be more effective at learning and implementing what they want to do, so I’m more than happy to share my experience with it.

When I did less, when I focused on building one habit at a time, I always felt like I could do more. During my first 30-Day visualization trial, I would visualize for 20 minutes a day, then wonder what to do with the rest of the day. I didn’t feel like I had done my best or got much accomplished. When I focused on less and took less action, it just didn’t feel right.

On the flip side, with 30-day trial #3 I set out to push myself with 7 goals to accomplish, and I made it to Day 2 before stopping. The 7 goals were ranging from health goals to productivity goals to reading goals, etc. It started feeling like an overwhelming job, and it was spreading my focus to thin.

The Solution

My best answer to that question came when I dropped the either/or thinking. Why not both? Why not do my best to immerse myself in and learn about one goal at a time? What would happen if I take one of the goals I wanted to lock in as a habit and learn all I could about it for 30 days, experiment with it, and find out the most effective way to ingrain it as a habit.

For instance, the main goal for this 30-day trial now is waking up at 6:00am (early for me). I could read articles on how to wake up early, talk to other people who wake up early now, practice to get my feet wet, and maybe even hang out with a family that wakes up early.

I got this from Steve’s article on rapid improvement and somehow it clicked that he’s approached many aspects of personal growth that way, so I want to do it too. :smile:

Over the last two days I haven’t been doing much of anything I had planned to do with this trial. I did manage to stick with visualization and not eating any processed starches, cheese, or foods with refined sugars.

Since I have those two previous goals locked in as habits, for the remainder of this trial I’ll just focus on one additional goal – waking up at 6:00am and staying awake. This leaves me with 3 total goals this trial.

Why I’m cutting back

In the original trial I had 7 goals. After Day 2, I could see that this trial had gone from creating long-term empowering habits to an overwhelming and frustrating job. On Day 4, I just let it go.

I kind of laughed at myself when I first realized I had too many goals. I’ve read lots of self development material strongly advising against taking on too much. However, you don’t know how much is too much until you push yourself to the limit.

There’s no rush to create long-term habits. From now on every month I’ll tweak the trials, but I won’t add more than one goal to focus on.

Having too many goals cuts my focus right now. I can’t spend time tweaking and learning about better ways to do each goal because I’m spending so much time actingg on the many goals I set up for myself.

The time matters

Getting these habits done in a productive way is just as important to me as what I actually do. For instance, I’d like to wake up and visualize soon after waking up each day. I didn’t add that specifically in my goal, but I definitely have become aware that I do want that specification in there if I want to set up the day I envision.

That’s about it for this update. I was thinking about making another blog on this website. I would have a blog for 30-day trials and a regular blog. I don’t want this blog to just be overloaded with my 30-day trials and updates.