Suggestions for Future 30-Day Trials (Blog)

[elai]

Try being a swinger couple for 30 days.

[seeker5]

Originally Posted by elai

Try being a swinger couple for 30 days.

That definitely fits Steve's wish to have a social 30 day trial. I assume, it will include detailed pictures and descriptions of the activities like with the Raw Vegan Diet

[seeker5]

Other suggestion:

Give a completely different speech at Toastmasters every single day for 30 days. Sign up at 7 different weekly clubs that meet each on a different day of the week. Extra: No researching or preparing of your speech before each speech. Only figure out what you'll say 5 minutes before your turn to speak. Visualization ahead of time of your speech about giving a great speech is allowed.

[Pegasus]

30 days without buying anything made of plastic (good luck with that one!)

30 days without driving or riding in a car (only using public transportation or riding a bike or walking)

[BillPerry]

Since several people are speaking about the vow of silence (pun VERY intented),
I think it would be interesting for Steve to do the vow of silence, and ONLY speak while doing the podcast about it close to the ehd, but BEFORE the vow is up.

I think the quality of podcast might be affected, one way or the other, since all of his ideas would be different.

Bill Perry
LucidBlog

[delpino]

How about learning Chinese for 30 days. I'm learning Chinese for some time now and think its very interesting since the concept is completely different from that of English.

Oliver from
Chinese-Course.com

[theknightwhosaysni-NI]

Strike up three conversations with total strangers each day.

Speaking to strangers has been one the most important growth experience I have had so far. It has dramatically improved my social skills.
I have noticed that sharing these kind of experiences is a real value for people nowadays, because many have lost this ability to speak to strangers without being afraid.
It is absolutely amazing to experience how actually easy it is, and I am sure many people would have better lifes if they realised that.


To spice it up you could strike conversations with a goal in mind, like :

-Try to have a conversation about a specific topic and last more than 15 mn for each conversation
-Try to make them laugh more than 3 times for every conversation
-Try to have a cup of tea with a total stranger
-Try to give him/her some love and ask him/her to do the same to 2 other people the same day (thus generating a chain of love )
-Try to improve your story telling skills by telling stories to strangers you just met
-Or any other goal that seems challenging to you.

[ncallack]

I think is would be very interesting to find something you feel is too big for you to personally make a difference, write about it, and do something outside of your comfort zone.

Some things to consider addressing:

Terrorism
Loss of our constitutional rights
Injustice
Corrupt politicians

[BillPerry]

Ncallack,

I don't think addressing stuff like Terrorism and Corrupt Politicians is necessarilly a good idea, I think it might be more useful to address the positive goals we have regarding those situations.

I mean, rather than focus on "ridding Terrorism", chunk up and address "spreading more love and understanding". Not sure if I am making any sense here.

Bill Perry
LucidBlog

[wulph]

Here's one that I've been tossing around:

Technology-free for 30 days

Our lives have become so dependent on gadgets, computers, and streaming media. I often wonder how I would fill my days if I were Amish.

For my purposes, I would allow a limited subset of technology, such as electric lights and washing machines ... toilets and transportation ... etc.

Clearly this would make continuous blogging difficult; however, you could get someone to transcribe your handwritten entries, for example.

[seeker5]

Originally Posted by delpino

How about learning Chinese for 30 days. I'm learning Chinese for some time now and think its very interesting since the concept is completely different from that of English.

Oliver from
Chinese-Course.com

And the 99.995% of us who aren't learning Chinese would have to find something else to read other then his blog for 30 days

[Steve Pavlina]

Originally Posted by Fullcrum

Image streaming. The Genius Code by Learning Strategies Corporation.

I actually did go through that program -- I have most of their product line.

Image streaming wasn't new to me. I learned essentially the same technique years ago from a personal coach. He called it "released thinking."

It's a great technique. I've been using it successfully for years. I also do a more active version of it where I'll first read a stream, and then I'll modify it and replay it as a way of giving new instructions to my subconscious.

[-B-]

My perception that a lot of these suggestions, while valuable, seem to be, for lack of a better description, small changes, learnings, or alterations of behavior.

If it's worth anything for my first post, the two ideas that so far seem to have the best potential for profound personal growth, are 1) 30 day vow of spoken silence, and 2) have a conversation (not just speak) with a new person each day.

The 30 day vow of silence is especially noteworthy. For those who haven't tried something like it before, and it would be more difficult with children, it can profoundly change your awareness of the nature of communication. Not simple human communaction, but all aspects of communication. As an earlier poster alluded to, a great deal of human communication is non-verbal - for to grasp, to really understand how deeply true that is, something like a week, or 30 days of silence, really is neccessary.

For myself, doing something like this in my youth altered my perceptions of the world around me irrevocably for the better, and in a way I could not have understood at the outset. Children especially, I noticed, respond more powerfully, and communicate more strongly with their bodies than they do with words and spoken concepts they may not yet fully understand.

[Calculusaurus]

I think it would be good to choose something that would inspire people and raise consciousness. Learning a skill, like piano or a language, might inspire a few people to do the same, but nothing more. Talking to a stranger (or two) a day would inspire your readers in a bigger way.

You could always do something impractical, but wholy enlightening, like the guy who lived biblically for a year, and wrote to tell about it.

[qed]

30 days of fasting from dawn to dusk. No food, no water, no sexual activity while fasting. Preferably, follow the moon cycle (+2 days if you wish).

[qed]

Focus your abilities to cure your partial color blindness in 30 days or less.

[seeker5]

Originally Posted by qed

30 days of fasting from dawn to dusk. No food, no water, no sexual activity while fasting. Preferably, follow the moon cycle (+2 days if you wish).

No food no water for 30 days??? Can we get a different blogger to do this so if they die, it won't be as big of a loss?

[Fullcrum]

Steve you said, "It's a great technique. I've been using it successfully for years. I also do a more active version of it where I'll first read a stream, and then I'll modify it and replay it as a way of giving new instructions to my subconscious."

Could you explain this in more detail? It sounds like an effective strategy. I'm very much into improving the methods by which we learn! Especially since being in school I notice many people in bad mental states, with either limiting beliefs or worse (in that it's more insidious) they try to act dumb to prove to everyone that they're cool. So with your help I can spread love joy and intelligence!



~~~~~~~~~~~




Or just image stream a way to get rid of your red color blindness.

[microsdad]

Since you live in Vegas, how about 30 days of gambling a set amount of money and seeing if you end up with profits or losses. Another idea would be 30 days in a wheelchair. How much more difficult might your life be?

[inverse Paranoid]

I think it may help if we articulated a goal to help distill a prospective 30 day trial from the multitude of possibilities. How about: “An immersive and challenging trial that profoundly alters your day-to-day life and elicits the full spectrum of your talents and abilities, in an area where you’ve little experience, causing you to create something new.”

I’d really love to see Steve in a sink or swim situation. A 30 day vow of silence sounds like it’s on the right track, but he likely won’t create a new form of body language from your experience. Still, compared to the other suggestions I’ve heard so far, it’s the clear frontrunner.

Perhaps a useful hybrid would be to learn a foreign language for 30 days and communicate only in that language. This would be similar to not speaking (since most people won’t be able to understand anything he’s saying) and it would be interesting to see how much of the new language Erin and the kids pick up on over the trial.

Maybe Steve could even furnish us with a list of things admittedly outside of his comfort zone. Or do a '30 Days of Steve Outside His Comfort Zone' trial. Now that could really make for interesting updates.

[stormylee]

Originally Posted by Erki

Link is not working. Clue from universe to go out and do it myself, it seems.

edit: do you mean her? Flickr: Photos from Pioneer Woman

Sorry about that: Confessions of a Pioneer Woman.

[oakspringer]

You know there has something I've always been interested in.

I've always wanted to know how Steve's thoughts get him from point A to point B.

For instance, I've always been curious about the inner world and thought process that leads you to the conclusions and inspirations.

So maybe for 30 days you can blog about your inspirations, thoughts, your inner journey or monologue, etcetera.

I'm sure that would prove to be very interesting and very growth oriented, as becoming aware of all of our thoughts is quite an interesting task.

And generally, I would be interested to know how Steve thinks

[qed]

Originally Posted by seeker5

No food no water for 30 days??? Can we get a different blogger to do this so if they die, it won't be as big of a loss?

I said "while fasting", meaning between dawn and dusk... so he can eat before and after although nonstop muiltiday fasts are possible as well for 2-3 days.. not suitable for everyone though.

[ArthurHung]

30 days of one speech minimum per day.

Your family doesn't count.

[ami]

You can donate anonymously to the environment by planting a tree a day for 30 days. Find locations in your city where you think a tree may grow and plant a tree there.
Trees don't reduce your CO2 emission, they actually absorb CO2.

This may require some time before the trial to search for locations and check on the type of trees to plant, their cost and watering needs. I'm frequently frustrated by the large areas covered with grass which consumes a lot of water and gives little shadow...

Trees need more water when they are young but after a couple of years their water needs reduce and they give plenty of shade. Googling nevada trees gives some interesting pages to start with.

You can also register each tree's location using a GPS and take pictures regularly of the trees, perhaps once a day or once a week and make a movie showing trees grow.

Maybe you can convince the city's gardening department to cooperate.

Good luck,
Ami

[impaul99]

Here's a good one.

Identify 1 charity per day that you can truly believe in.

At the end of 30 days, donate the proceeds from traffic increases from same time last year to those 30 charities equally.

[beel]

the only trial suggested that sounds feasible for a daily blog is meeting one person per day or something along those lines. anything else would be too specific to be interesting and applicable to a wide range of people on a daily basis. not to say that many of them are not good ideas for trials, just that many would lack in relevant findings to blog about.

[javamannen2]

Originally Posted by elai

Try being a swinger couple for 30 days.

Or, do just the opposite... try 30 days of total celibacy.

[Trezker]

Someone suggested training chess skills. I'd much prefer reading about you learning Go. Go (board game) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Reading about a guy learning to play a board game is however a rather uninteresting subject to many I think. But in the depths of Go there is many interesting parallels to life. "Go can be seen as embodying the quest for self-improvement"

[cnwoods]

I've got two ideas I'd love to see.

First, along the same 'diet' lines, I've read versions of how much water a person's supposed to drink based on their bodyweight. According to that, being a larger person, I'm supposed to drink about 13 litres a day. I tried, but could only get up to about 9 at most, for all of a day before I gave it up as not practical for me. Still, I felt better than when I fell below the daily 2L level. How about seeing if you can get up to your 'optimum' level and maintain it?

Second, with all the hype about social networking online these days, and people trying to build networks everywhere, I'd like to see how hard it would be to maintain an expanded network if the connections were actually built to a meaningful, interacting level. If you added someone to your personal network each day, finding out as much as you could about them, and then building that connection from there, at what point would you have to start dropping off quality to maintain quantity, and how much time would each new 'network connection' add to your daily workload. You could ask for volunteers out of your forums who'd understand that it was in the way of an experiment and may fall over short of a meaningful ongoing connection. I'd put my hand up for starters.

Votes for the others: I like the vow of silence too. We have something called Vipassana meditation retreat down here in Australia where you're not allowed to speak, smoke, eat meat etc for the duration - 3 weeks I think. I've heard from friends who've done it that it's quite challenging.
Also, not having a car myself (although I can drive) I'd also find the public transport thing interesting. But from personal experience, you'd probably never get back home in time to post...

Crystal