30-day first-aid trial of food and fun

[smallstar]

Actually, immediately after writing the previous post, closing the computer and going to sleep, new hobby ideas started to flow to my mind again (which was not necessarily a good thing, since I was supposed to sleep at night. ). Anyway, this being the case, it was sufficient to stop for an hour, to concentrate on the matter, to stress its importance, and everything else followed more or less unconsciously.

[smallstar]

== DAYS 15-16 REPORT ==

Food: I almost forgot the snack due to a work meeting. Status: 14,5 breakfasts in 16 days, 1 snack in 1 day.

Hobby: BODY JAM (Aerobics class)... as if I was not tired enough. When leaving home, I was unsure if I would be able to do the work-out at all without falling down from tiredness and injuring some muscles. However, after the work-out, I was feeling so euphoric that I decided to take another one! (BodyPump, already tried this year, so no notch from that one.) Too bad that it was the last one on the evening, because I felt I could even have taken a third one in the row. Anyway, this program was a bit gay for me, since the moves included a lot of butt-shaking. As a consequence, the "less agile" sex was outnumbered 20 to 1. Still, I already faced the worst, maybe I could learn to like this one too.

Status: 12 hobbies tried in 16 days, 8 hobbies left to try.

Mood: 1

[smallstar]

== DAYS 17-18 REPORT ==

Food: Getting used to the breakfast+snack per day. What's the best, my appetite in the evening has already lowered. Status: 16,5 breakfasts in 18 days, 3 snacks in 3 days.

Hobby: CHESS. 7-8 years ago I played Chess on two clubs, twice a week or more. It's strange that I have stopped altogether. The return to reality was naturally that I got beaten by almost everyone, including inferior-ranked players. In addition, I seemed to lack the 'combat spirit' that I once had.

Status: 13 hobbies tried in 18 days, 7 hobbies left to try.

Misc: I got a crisis again. It seemed all of a sudden that a lot of my suppressed emotions from the past came back to me: the mixed hatred for an ex-friend, the lust for a certain woman that I never had, and lots of more. I feel like contacing all my old friends and making things up, but at least these two cases have already ignored my emails requesting for a meeting during the last year. (For some others, I'm already organizing a reunion.) Following this, my working efficiency has been terrible. I need an effective cure soon, I'm currently designing a personal ritual resembling the Satanic Rituals, hopefully it will help.

Mood: -1

[Scott Bird]

Originally Posted by smallstar

Mood: 1

Nice one - I hope there are more days like that one.

[smallstar]

== DAYS 19-21 REPORT ==

Visited by my fianceé again. Had (a previously unheard of) fight with her because she belittled my problems. She apologized later. Need to improve communication.

Food: my snack system completely collapsed during the weekend's irregular schedules. Status: 19,5 breakfasts in 21 days, 4 snacks in 6 days.

Hobby: BADMINTON.

Hobby: SCIENCE MUSEUM (named Heureka, mostly for kids). Super-expensive, and not as cool as when I was a kid.

Hobby: PERSONAL RITUAL. I have written a whole separate thread about this. In short: I used a lot of psychodrama, imagination and religion-like elements to stop worrying about an upcoming court case, and to stop wasting my time hating the other party.

Status: 16 hobbies tried in 21 days, 4 hobbies left to try.

Mood: -2

[smallstar]

Originally Posted by JeffS

Interesting thing to emphasize here. I read a book called "Improv Wisdom" not too long ago ...apparently one rule of improv (acting, comedy, etc.) is to always accept the premises of others. So if your improv partner says, for instance, "that is a HUGE piece of cheese," you respond as if you, too, see the cheese, and build on the idea. It's "against the rules" to make like your partner is crazy, that there's no cheese there.

Anyway, the book extrapolates from that that it's a good life habit to "always say yes." (Within reason, of course.) If somebody invites you to a party...go. If someone wants you to help them with something, agree. You get the idea. It's really easy to decide that there are certain things that we just don't do (trust me, I'm expert at saying no to things for that reason!), but why not try?

Openness to new things has always been one of my core values. I was planning to have a trial "A trial of trying something new everyday for 30 days", but as this is what I was doing already (or at least was too easily able to do), I decided to make the trial a bit more challenging.

The strange thing is that even if I am always willing to try new ideas, I'm always careful about meeting new people. Maybe this could be done with a later trial...

Originally Posted by Scott Bird

Nice one - I hope there are more days like that one.

I'd like the score to settle somewhere around +3 instead... +4 and +5 are extremely rare experiences, and I don't know what a prolonged exposure to them would do. (Note: the Mood score is a "weighted average", not necessarily the mood of the time of the writing.)

[madgeylou]

Originally Posted by JeffS

Interesting thing to emphasize here. I read a book called "Improv Wisdom" not too long ago ...apparently one rule of improv (acting, comedy, etc.) is to always accept the premises of others. So if your improv partner says, for instance, "that is a HUGE piece of cheese," you respond as if you, too, see the cheese, and build on the idea. It's "against the rules" to make like your partner is crazy, that there's no cheese there.

Anyway, the book extrapolates from that that it's a good life habit to "always say yes." (Within reason, of course.) If somebody invites you to a party...go. If someone wants you to help them with something, agree. You get the idea. It's really easy to decide that there are certain things that we just don't do (trust me, I'm expert at saying no to things for that reason!), but why not try?

my improv class was taught the same thing (lo these many years ago!) -- never say no to your partner onstage.

if you need to transform the energy, then go ahead and do that. "wow, that is a huge piece of cheese. and that's a huge rat behind it! run!" but never say no.

i like the story of how john and yoko met too -- apparently she had one painting you had to climb a ladder to see. once you got up there, it was simply a painting of the word "yes!" i've read that this is the piece that started the wheels turning in john's head and heart, and got him to begin a friendship with yoko.

how much can we transform the world by filling it up with good yesses? i contemplate that sometimes, but there's really only one way to find out!

[smallstar]

== DAYS 22-24 REPORT ==

I'm really getting lazy now, turning down new hobby ideas as I seem to be able to reach 20 without them, and canceling a possibly problematic reunion in favor of my favorite RPG session. The ritual has taken away some of the bad thoughts, or at least changed them to more positive ones. I will still need to do some work on them though.

Food: Back to the snack. Status: 22,5 breakfasts in 24 days, 7 snacks in 9 days.

Hobby: GO. The game that would be known by outer-space aliens (Emanuel Lasker, ex Chess World Champion). Too bad that I seem to have my fill of strategy games by now.

Status: 17 hobbies in 24 days, 3 hobbies left to try.

Mood: 0

[smallstar]

== DAYS 25-27 REPORT ==

Food: One breakfast was under the limit, but considering that I almost threw up during the following training session anyway, it was a good thing not to eat so much. Also one snack was missed. Status: 25,5 breakfasts in 27 days, 9 snacks in 12 days.

"Hobby": REVISIONISM TECHNIQUE. I got the idea for this huge mood booster by listening to Steve's podcast about subjective reality and the law of attraction. A more detailed inspection in
this thread.

Status: 18 hobbies in 27 days, 2 hobbies left to try.

Mood: 3

[smallstar]

== DAYS 28-30 REPORT ==

Food: The snack system works on weekdays but not on weekends. Status: 28,5 breakfasts in 30 days, 11 snacks in 15 days.

Hobby: SINGING.

Hobby: MEDITATION. Just 30 minutes of sitting without doing nothing. Very relaxing for the body (except that I cut the blood supply from my legs) but a pain for the mind - how can I block all those thoughts? Towards the end, I started to have some very crazy ideas, like how is would feel to be a foetus, how to paint the whole world with different shades of red, and *censored*. I can easily do any visualization where I should think about something - thinking about nothing is much harder. It may sound funny, but perhaps my worst fear is of nothingness.

Status: 20 hobbies in 30 days.

[smallstar]

=== CONCLUSION ===

The outcome corresponds very much to the expectations. I know I could do it (in spite of some warnings), and I did it. I suppose that taking into account the number of new hobbies I turned down towards the end, I could have done 25, if I only had put it as a goal. Anyway, there was a risk of over-exhaustion, so probably better this way.

== FOOD ==

I'm very satisfied. This thing really worked. Now I'm already dependent on 4 meals a day. My weight has risen 2 kgs, I hope to convert them to muscles soon.

== HOBBIES ==

The pattern of new hobbies, organized day by day:


1 1 1 0 0 2 2 = 7
1 0 0 1 0 1 1 = 4
0 1 0 1 0 2 1 = 5
1 0 0 1 0 0 0 = 2
1 1 = 2
-------------
4 3 1 3 0 5 4 = 20

Making the head start of 7 hobbies during the first week naturally helped.

New hobby graph by type:
* Aerobics classes: 3 (Stretching, BodyJam, Combat)
* Other sports: 4 (Bowling, Laser Rifle Maze, Dance Pad, Badminton)
* Strategy games: 2 (Chess, Go)
* Public performance: 2 (Toastmasters, Singing)
* Political: 1 (Anti-War)
* Handicraft: 3 (Drawing, Painting, Baking)
* Attractions: 1 (Science center)
* Self-help: 4 (EFT, Ritual, Revisionism, Meditation)

Hobby with the most fun:
* Laser rifle maze

Hobby with the biggest mood boost:
* Revisionism technique

Hobby with most time spent:
* Dance pad

Hobbies certain to continue with regularly:
* Dance pad
* Revisionism technique or related visualization

Hobbies uncertain to continue with regularly:
* Toastmasters
* Body Jam (as I want to learn to dance!)
* Singing

Hobbies to continue irregularly:
* Almost all of them

So many hobbies, and so many potential social circles to start growing. Unfortunately, I did not get any new close contacts this month (this is about the only thing where the trial failed), but I have become somewhat closer to some people I already knew. I may take a later trial at some point, which will focus entirely on meeting new people.

== MOOD ==

The mood pattern:


-2 -2 -1 -1 0 0 0
0 0 0 1 1 1 1
1 1 -1 -1 -2 -2 -2
0 0 0 3 3 3 3
3 3


Luckily, I could soon get out of my initial depression, largely due to the influence of this program and due to new exciting things to do. Later on, I felt overexhausted, but with help of two powerful visualization techniques, I could overcome even them. Even now when writing this, my mood is strangely "out of scale" - I feel more safer and secure than for a long time (at least when not drunk).

== FUTURE PLANS ==

OK. 30-day trials work. So, which will be the next one? As the holiday season approaches, and I'll be spending more time with my fianceé, my next trial will be centered to her. A 23-day trial of romance, smiles, kittens and overwhelming cuteness, based on the same idea: doing one new thing with her every day, and visualizing at least one new positive picture every day. I won't report the details of the trial in this forum (rather than just a summary).
After that, I have plenty of ideas already: tidiness trial (which would be hard as ****), Massive Muscles trial, meeting new people trial, creativity trial, pescovegetarian trial, public performance/speaking trial, etc.

== THANKS TO ==

Steve Pavlina of the "formalization" of the 30-day trial idea, and my audience for the attention. Smallstar out, see you soon.

[Nicketas]

I think the hobby idea is a good thing, and no, its not too much for anyone

Be as avant-garde and experimental as possible when trying new things to do for fun.

Throw yourself out onto the town with no particular destination in mind and do it every day.

I've had some of the best experiences in my life doing this and I've met some amazing/wonderful people in the process.

DO IT.

[The Protagonist]

Get your self a heavy bag, gloves, learn how to punch and begin boxing as a hobby. It's GREAT for cardio, and relieving stress.