Fran Gets Fit

30 day sleep trial, day 2

In bed before midnight again, by the skin of my teeth but definitely in.Very headachey today. I rarely get headaches these days so it must be to do with my change in sleep pattern. I would have thought that I'd be waking up feeling refreshed, not headachey, but its too early to judge. I actually had time for breakfast this morning, as well as dropping people off here and there before work.

I'm very hopeful that this trial will be successful as I'm quite excited at the prospect of using the 30 day technique on some of my other BYY goals. I'm particularly thinking of the way I seemed to stop doing the Five Rites everyday after doing them every day for six months. A 30 day trial could bring them back into my life.

30 day sleep trial, day 1

It certainly paid off to identify my possible stumbling blocks before executing my 30 day trial. I spent a few days reminding my Daughter, who has got into a habit of going to bed at the same time as me, about the 30 day trial and explaining my reasons for it. She is still against the idea that it includes weekends, for the duration of the trial, but that is why I started on a Monday so it gives her a few days to get used to it before weekend. By the time the first evening of the trial rolled around she was quite amenable to getting ready for bed earlier. We Sky plussed Teachers and Heroes, on the hour ahead option so that it didn't clash with Prison Break and whatever else we watched at ten o'clock. I had also expected that my partner would stay up late and keep me awake opening and closing doors, watching TV and rattling about in the kitchen. As it was he went to bed at the same time. In fact, as he got first go in the bathroom he was in bed before me! This morning we all got up a lot easier and I didn't have to nag anyone.

30 day trial to establish a new habit

We often want to establish a new habit but the prospect seems so daunting that we fall at the first hurdle and don't start at all. We resist change, especially if we perceive it as being permanent, and dwell extensively on any negative aspects. I am going to try a 30 day trial, based on the concept by Steve Pavlina.

You shift your way of thinking from being overwhelmed at the prospect of giving up a habit to looking at it as a temporary change and that if you don't reap any benefits you are free to go back to your old habit, knowing that you gave it a shot. If you do find that the benefits you expected actually occur, then it will probably be harder to ditch the new habit than to revert back to the old, especially as your brain will have re-wired. As far as I know your brain produces new neuroconnections and neuropathways only if they are bombarded for 21 days in a row. This means that our brain does not accept new data for a change of habit unless it is repeated each day for 21 days. It was also found that the "re-wiring" did not occur if there was even one days break. So, the 30 day trial has to be restarted if any exception is made.

In a nutshell a 30 day trial is a conditioning technique, a rewiring based on the 21 day bombard with a few days extra. Those extra days round it up nicely to a month block and also fit in with our culture for trialling things for 30 days, such as downloads of new software.

After the initial focus the habit runs automatically. Creating a new habit means that you direct your focus to override your default behaviour to establish a new behaviour. I used to think that I couldn't change certain habits because of lack of will power but I always had a niggling feeling that couldn't be true as surely someone who could give up as many addictions as I had must have buckets of willpower. I realised that willpower is really a short lived thrust which you use to get a goal off the ground. As Steve says, "Willpower is a concentration of force. You gather up all your energy and make a massive thrust forward. You attack your problems strategically at their weakest points until they crack, allowing you enough room to manoeuvre deeper into their territory and finish them off.

The application of willpower includes the following steps:

1.         Choose your objective

2.         Create a plan of attack

3.         Execute the plan

With willpower you may take your time implementing steps 1 and 2, but when you get to step 3, you’ve got to hit it hard and fast

Use Willpower to Create Self-Sustaining Momentum" read more on willpower at Steve's site.

I embarked on Your Best Year Yet, by Jinny Ditzler nearly a year ago and one of my goals was to "establish a better sleep pattern". I gave up caffeine and found that helped me actually fall asleep when I get to bed but I need to work on getting enough sleep. Setting weekly goals to go to bed before midnight a few times a week was getting me no-where.When I re-visited Steve's 30 days to success 30 day trial I was inspired to use it to put some serious work into my sleep goal.

Most people find it more successful to only do one 30 day trial at once and this has lead me to realise that I could have tackled most of my BYY goals in turn on a 30 day trial basis if I had broken them down differently but the BYY way is to be working on all ten goals at once. I can still do that but also be experimenting with a thirty day focus on changing my sleeping habits. I must admit though that I am very much drawn to the idea of knocking off a goal at a time with laser like focus.

You are what you eat

Good old Gillian was on again tonight. It amuses me that her photo's  on some of her books etc. must have been taken when she was still in knee socks. I agree with her basic views that we all need to drop the junk and eat more fruit and vegetables but her TV programmes are becoming more and more staged. On tonight's episode she had an ambulance with a patient inside that was constructed from pork pies and later she "stormed" into a church to harangue the vicar.

She has stopped calling herself a "Doctor" since it was revealed where some of her qualifications came from and someone even got one in the name of a cat. I bought one of her cereal bars once and was shocked at the calorie and sugar content. Anyway, this article by Deborah Ross is very funny and includes such gems as

DEAR DOCTOR: I am a Nobel prize-winning physicist, a concert pianist, an Olympic swimmer, a world champion ice-dancer, a tireless charity worker and an exemplary spouse, parent and pet owner. However, I do have a weakness for chips. Can I feel proud of myself in anyway whatsoever?

I am horrified at the way you live your life. What are you playing at? Such accomplishments count for nothing considering you are on your way to an early grave. Idiot!

And

DEAR DOCTOR: I tried your Chinese mushroom, Tibetan fingle berry and Venezuelan yongy-yongi fruit smoothie the other morning for breakfast, and guess what? It made me sick! I was pretty miffed as it took me eight years and God knows what in travel costs to personally collect the ingredients. I even sprinkled the smoothie with the blue-green algae collected by big-breasted women at low tide during a full moon, as you suggested. I wish, now, that I'd just had a bowl of Special K. Help!

OH, GO away. I don't have the time for this. Tibbles and I have some more disgusting and impossible smoothie recipes to devise before setting up a website selling unproven nonsense to a gullible public. So shove off.