Transformations

When I started working on Programming Success (using affirmations and visualizations), I was looking to transform myself on a behavioral level. I was intending to apply my daily-schedule mojo on it and see how much of myself I could change internally.

The daily schedule thing didn't work out. I had a tough time figuring out when to do it, how many affirmations to work on, how to generate the emotions everybody said were key to it... If I did it in bed at night, I fell asleep almost immediately (see why here). I tried it while brushing my teeth in the morning (and at night: I wish I'd picked up the twice-a-day habit when I was 7), but even with the Sonicare's 2-minute timer, there wasn't enough time to do more than two with any level of attention. If I sat down in a chair during the quiet period before I went to work, my attention kept floating away or I'd nod off.

Which affirmations to do wasn't really clear early in the process. I had over a half-dozen candidates, with no clear reason to prefer one over another. Some were long-term things, some short-term. Some could legitimately be called grandiose. Long-term affirmations are basically gestures of faith, because you don't expect any concrete results just because you did the affirmation that morning.

In the end, I took a much more organic, flexible (dare I say artistic) approach to affirmations, and my expectations of them changed radically. I ended up doing just 3 on a daily-or-more-often basis:

• I am a lean, strong, healthy, sexy man


• I believe the universe is plotting to do me good today: I can't wait to see what it is


• I am the happiest guy I know

Each of these were helpful to me, but in unexpected ways.

I use the "lean, strong" one during my early-morning runs whenever I feel like I have to stop and walk a bit. It makes my legs feel more powerful and boosts my confidence that starting to run in my late thirties isn't a complete waste of time. I have not magically lost twenty pounds, or added 2 miles onto my running distance or tripled the frequency of our romantic interludes. I've had a cold twice during the experiment, but that's as much due to the Michigan winter as anything to do with my constitution.

I use the "plotting to do me good" one every morning when I'm shaving or brushing my teeth, and it gets me optimistic before anything really has a chance to happen. When something unexpectedly great happens (many of these have been Web-based, for some reason), I feel like the Publisher's Clearinghouse people have just tracked me down. Even when it doesn't, it jacks up my mood a notch all day anyway.

The "happiest guy I know" one is pure brainwashing, since I know many people happier than me, including one guy who I have never seen angry and is totally my hero. But as a mood elevator, this one should come in prescription form. Love it, love it, love it. It gives me an instant endorphin rush every... single... time. It's worth the price of admission, as the movie review guys say. The moment the words start coming out of my mouth, I am the happiest guy I know.

So in the end, I don't know that any of my affirmations have changed me in a permanent way, but the instant-gratification boost they bring me (as long as I remember to say them) makes them well worth continuing. I believe an optimistic, upbeat mood is key to continuing, upward change, so even thought it's all in my head, it enables me in very real ways.

And who knows, that million dollars may show up one day anyway.

I've been reading a lot of Seth Godin's stuff, both online and his print books, and he has an interesting concept: succeeding by doing less.

His theory is that the best websites or blogs should focus down on their "core competency" (to use a business-speak phrase) and strip away anything that prevents the audience from getting to the big message. On a corporate website, that message is usually "buy our stuff!" But on a blog like this, my message is the things that have worked for me and that I think will work if you try them.

My goal is to supply useful tools for changing your life. This blog is merely my "research" (such as it is: a study of one person is what the statistics people call "anecdotal"), a day-to-day recounting of tactical successes and failures so that if you want to do all the reading, you can decide for yourself if I know what I'm talking about.

However, the site is pretty light on the "just the facts" part. If you're anywhere near as busy as me, you want bullet points, sound bites, acronyms to help you remember and internalize this stuff so you can get on to doing it. I believe that's why you're here, and I'm going to address this problem in the immediate future. You're not going to read X months of posts to pick out the stuff that's relevant to you. You may not even have the time to select a category of interest and wade through everything I've ever thought.

I'll work on it. I promise I will. Because if I'm not helping, it's not really worth doing. Writing these blog posts helps me think deeper about the stuff I'm doing, but what's changing my life is the doing.

I'm concerned about you, and if you're not doing something after reading my material, then I've failed.

More soon.

This is to convince the web elves at Technorati that this blog really belongs to me. Technorati Profile