The last 30 days of January...

[MasterD]

For me a 30 day challenge too. I am extremely serious about this, so I took the freedom to make my own thread. I will report daily in the beginning and probably at least every few days till the end of my challenge.

My major concerns are:

• Dramatically improving health and mental clarity / ability to focus/concentrate
• Get far more structure into my day. This means sticking to a pre-established morning-routine and a routine right before bedtime. It also means learning about a time and life management system (Time of Your Life/Tony Robbins, Getting things Done by David Allen), getting the best pieces out and integrating it into my life.
• Dramatically improve my ability to be pro-active and positive to situations and behaviours of people that normally would drag me down to my 'lower self'.
• Finishing my internship report and the last courses of my Master's Applied Physics degree, so that I can start my Master thesis by the end of March.
• Grow in the ability to relax myself.

Therefore for the next 30 days (January 2 - January 31) I commit myself to do the following as my morning routine.

• Rise at 6am every morning
• Run for 30-45 minutes every morning
• While running go through my morning power questions
• Do the five tibetan rites right afterwards (a series of 21 each)
• Shower
• Have a healthy breakfast (vegetables+avocado)
• Go through my personal vision, personal goals, affirmations
• Plan my day
• Do the D-Lux Egoscue Exercise routine
• Listen to a motivational tape, to get me into a work state. Skip this if I am already totally motivated to start working.
• Work for 90 minutes on my education without any interruption. Before that no e-mail, chit chat, reading, allowing myself to get distracted.

Further the following will be my evening routine:

• Go through my vision, goals and affirmations again. Rewrite where needed.
• Write in my journal.
• Listen to a relaxation tape.

Further I will also do this:

• Work on Getting things Done / Time of Your Life for 90 minutes a day.
• Listen to the Perfect Health paraliminal daily.

Further I commit myself to the following restrictions:

• No internet forums or reading blogs. I will make an exception for Stevepavlina.com :-).
• No unpurposeful internet surfing for more than 20 minutes a day
• No movies and watching television for max 30 minutes a day and only with roommates.
• Doing things that I KNOW that will let me lose my focus. Like reading about or watching internet marketing seminars; or personal devolpment stuff that is not directly related to my goals. If I allow myself to do this I just get to inspired to do things that are unrelated to my goals that I want to work towards.

Further I will follow Steve's raw food/fruit experiment and if he is enthusiastic about it I will join him by January 15 and do the same challenge for 30 days. Till that date I will stick to the diet that is recommended to me by Anthony Robbins companies (I am currently doing a personal coaching program).

This may seem like having high failure chances; however I have great faith that I can work myself through this challenge with great enthusiasm. Many, almost all, of the above list items I have already been doing daily but not as consistent as I would like to. The main part of my challenge is thus getting more structure into my day. Only the early rising, the tapes and the restrictions I have not yet practised before. Also a new thing I will be learning this month is a time/life management system. One change I might carry through is moving the Egoscue exercises from the morning to the evening. I will decide upon this in the first week.

[MasterD]

This was a hard day. I usually keep myself to a pretty strict diet based on the pH miracle by Robert Young, but with the holiday days I have been cheating quite strongly, so I felt really sick today.

Nevertheless, I got up at 6 am, went running, did my Tibetan rites, took a shower and had breakfast. However, I could not get myself to do the rest of the routine and listened to a relaxation tape and had some sleep for some more hours. Also skipped work and did not work on GTD/TOYL. Did the Egoscue exercises in the evening.

Tomorrow I will get up again at 6am and at least do the running and tibetan rites. Then I will notice how I feel and if I have enough energy do the rest of the routine. I hoped to have a better start of this challenge, but I have to give my body a chance to expel all the garbage that I put in during the holiday days. On to writing in my journal get ready for bed.

[MasterD]

Still had some severe detox/sickness symptoms in the morning, so I postponed my running and the rest of my morning routine till later in the day.

I definitely feel better this evening, so I hope I can make it tomorrow. I planned to make sure I have two succesful days in a row and then restart my 30 day challenge.

[MasterD]

I officially failed this trial... My major challenge was getting up at 6am in the morning, but I am still struggling with low energy levels after cheating so much at the holiday days. One thing also hard is that it is dark and freezing outside so I am totally not motivated to go out and running. I'll slowly work myself up in the routine I mentioned above, adding one bite at a time...

[wulph]

Sorry to hear your trial didn't go according to plan. I'm sure that even in these few days, you've learned some things that will help your future trials.

Specifically, I highly recommend you chunk it down. A lot. Concentrate on one or two action items per trial. I think you've done some great work in expressing your goals; this may work better as, say, a 2-year plan than an instant change.

Best wishes in your future successes with personal improvement!