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

Well…it’s time for 30-Day Trial #3!
Let’s just get right into it.

From December 1 – December 30 I want to do the following daily:

1) Wake up at 6:00 am and stay awake!

I want to wake up at 6:00am and stay awake unlike the much of the last trial. Preferably, when I wake up I’d like to feel well rested, full of energy and motivated to start the day of right. I imagine that will take some planning the night before, getting to bed by at least 11:00pm, and doing some physical activity soon after I wake up.

2) Walk for 40 minutes

I want to take a 40-minute walk from 6:30am – 7:10am. Rain, sleet, snow, whatever!

3) Visualize for at least 20 minutes

This is probably the last time I’ll be mentioning this in the trials. After this 30 days I’m pretty sure I’ll have locked it in as a habit. I imagine this should be the easiest part of the trial for me because I actually look forward to it. It makes me feel good.

4) Write/edit for 2 hours

For now I’ll stick with writing affirmations + updates on the trial + other blog posts. Usually while doing these affirmations ideas pop in my head about what to write about, but when I’m consistently reading I find plenty of things to write about. I also want to read some self-editing books so I can make sure I post an article soon after I finish writing it.

5) Market for an hour

This would include connecting with others, contributing to other blogs, forums, social media and bookmarking.

6) Read for an hour

About 40-50 personal development books have been sitting in my closet collecting dust for a while. I read about 17 books and then it all came to a stop, but I have been listening to unabridged audio books from Audible. I imagine if I can get an hour of reading in a day, I’ll be able to consistently finish books and even put some reviews on here.

7) Eat no processed starches, foods containing refined sugars, cheese, or fruits

I can handle this all the way up until we get to the fruits. I’ll have to do some more research as to what fruits I should eat and which ones I shouldn’t, so that may change. So far fruits have had the same effect as foods with refined sugars and processed starches by making me feel sluggish and lethargic.

Have #1-6 done by 2:00pm

40 min (walking) + 20 min (visualization) + 120 min (writing) + 60 min (marketing) + 60 min (reading) + and an extra 90 min for cooking and eating, shower, brushing teeth, breaks, etc. = 6.5 hours. 6:00am + 6.5 hours = 12:30pm if . By having it done at 2:00 pm I’m actually giving myself some leeway.

I found that last 30 days my time with this blog extended throughout the day. Sometimes I would do my writing or visualization in the mornings and many times at night and I found it to be pretty stressful getting things done if I procrastinated with them. I found if I got it all done as early as possible then it made the rest of the day flow much smoother and I didn’t have to keep putting my focus on it and procrastinating with it.

I’ll be giving updates every 3 days and on Sundays I want to cut out #4 and #5. It’s going to be tough, but I’m up for the challenge. …. Let’s Go!

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 . 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.

Everything’s going so great and I feel so good. I think I feel this good because I’m always thinking of possibilities. The feeling is much more intense now that I’m actually moving and progressing. So far I’ve done every one of these every day and even faithfully implemented the diet change I squeezed in on Day 6.

Waking up at 6:00am

I thought it would raise productivity because it gives me an early start, but no. If I don’t go to bed before 11:00pm the night before, I feel sluggish waking up at 6:00am and then the whole day follows that sluggish feeling.

Writing for 2 hours

I want to scale this down to an hour, but on the other hand I really want to make sure I can be consistent with this so I’ll keep the extra hour until the trial is up. A while ago I was really struggling for content. The archives page will show that in June, July, and August I had a combined 3 posts. Turns out all I needed was to consciously give myself time to write without the pressure of posting. Now I’ve got so much content it’s becoming hard to find the time to edit it and with every two-hour session I just add to it. I do count editing as part of the writing because I often take things out and totally rewrite them and it’s difficult to separate the two.

Visualization

This is my favorite part of the day. Just being in the reality of your dreams is a cool feeling I like recreating. Visualization is happening unconsciously now throughout the day very often. I could really see myself keeping this habit for the rest of my life.

No processed starches and foods/drinks with refined sugars

Since I started this on the Day 6 this is actually Day 9 of me trying this. So far I’ve lost 8.5lbs with this diet change and without any real exercise. My goal here is to create a healthy lifestyle, so weight loss isn’t all I want, but it still should would make sense that I should lose some significant weight.

The food selection has been a little weird. For the first couple of days it was all fish and green beans. Then it switched to chicken and green beans for the next two days. Then I started eating different meats, vegetables, and fruits. I guess all that’s left is to mix some nuts/seeds in there and I’ll be cool. I feel so excited and I’ve realized that this goal is waaaaaaaaaaaay more important than any other goal to me. I thought that building this blog up would be more important to me but no. I’ve been overweight since I was 6 and it would be super tremendous if I could really be a healthy weight and live a truly healthy lifestyle and help others do the same.

“The common denominator of success — the secret of success of every man who has ever been successful — lies in the fact that he formed the habit of doing things that failures don’t like to do.” – Albert E.N. Gray from The Common Denominator of Success

The first time I read The Common Denominator of Success, I didn’t “get it”. It was a long time ago and I kinda shrugged it off, but I’ve recently came back to it and really taken it in after realizing the importance of creating empowering habits.

If you want to be as successful as the people you look up to, you’re going to have to develop habits that empower you as much as or more than their habits empower them.

If I were starting all over consciously pursuing personal growth again, I would make building empowering habits a top priority. To be more specific after I chose a goal that would impact me the most, I would immediately begin creating new habits that would empower me to achieve that goal. So putting a focus on habits would be step #2.

The experts recommend habits

I notice that the high quality, credible advice from the blogs, the books, the audio, the interviews, or straight from direct conversation with successful people usually comes with a habit attached.

- When first began taking piano lessons, the piano teacher advised me to get into the habit of practicing 30 minutes a day.

- When I hired a personal trainer, he wanted me to get into the habit of eating more empowering foods, and get into the habit working out.

- Spiritual growth books or videos they might recommended getting into the habit of meditating, or praying, or visualization

- If you want to be a writer, good writers will tell you to get into a habit of writing.

Many times they won’t come out and literally say the word “habit” but they’ll tell you do something daily or in some way consistently which points to a habit.

The successful athletes, musicians, singers, actors, and hosts you see on TV all have developed empowering habits. The successful writers, engineers, developers, business owners, professors all have developed empowering habits.

Personal Experience

When I first started getting into personal growth I didn’t know where to start so I tried a lot of stuff. I listened to everyone say “Take action!”. I read some different books and blogs. Listened to different personal development audio. Wrote in my journal a little. I started a personal growth blog, hired a personal trainer etc. Eventually I realized that I could keep taking action but none of it would make a lasting, long-term difference if I couldn’t be consistent with whatever I was trying.

Every time I started something I would do it for a little while, then fall off with it leaving me overwhelmed with a trail of unfinished projects and unconsciously reinforcing in my head “I don’t finish what I start”. I guess continuously trying stuff and not following through with it was a habit too! Since I fell off with that stuff, I shifted back to the old comfort zone where the old, disempowering habits were further enforced and overall frustrating the hell outta me.

Without knowing it, what I was really trying to do was develop a habit with the things I tried, but I didn’t know how to do that. I didn’t know about 30-day trials/challenges or starting small or focusing on the essential or accountability and support. Habits are how real growth happens.

Right now I’m close to the middle of my 2nd 30-day trial. For the first time since starting this blog, I feel like I’m where I’m supposed to be with it, and it’s all because I’m developing new habits that I have consciously chosen.

I started pursuing personal growth on August 22,2008. If I had done some small 30-day trial each month I would have done 13 trials and working on the 14th right now. I’m sure there would have been several empowering habits that stuck out of all that.

Think about how your life would be different if over this next year you developed even just 5 new empowering habits to keep for the long term.

It took about 13 months for it to really click for me. It doesn’t have to take you that long!