How my first experiment of 2024 is going

2024 is the year of experiments. Let me take a step back and explain my love for the word. “experiment.” Experiment rings with the feeling of exploration and youth. It evokes feelings of a joyful curiosity in me. If you are trying to update or upgrade your habits and are learning to integrate and take “action.” Try replacing the word “action” with “experiment.”

It takes the pressure of “success” off. For me, the goal is to be less concerned with success/failure. It’s about gathering data so I can make the next best decision. What is a “win” is likely not to be a “win” for all of my life. For example. I can create the most amazing morning routine in the summer, but by the nature of well, nature, that routine will not work in the winter. I have to go for a walk at 5:30 am in the summer; the sun isn’t even close to coming out at that time in the winter.

Life is in a constant state of flow; it is always evolving. I see a lot of suffering happening because we want to hold onto something that is no longer. We say things like, “I feel lost,” or “I need to find myself.” You aren’t lost, so there will be nothing to find. It’s the natural cycle of death and rebirth.

Let me say that I am not about forcing any experiments. January, nothing came to me, so I didn’t run any. February, I decided to experiment with my beliefs. If you saw that blog post, I go into detail, but to sum it up, I set alarms on my phone to go off randomly throughout the day, seven days a week, asking, “What is my belief about this?” I also wrote the same question on a Post-it note and taped it up on my desk.

How it went.

I set the alarms to remind myself to ask that questions. 3/4ths of the problem is awareness of the problem. One of the first times my alarm went off was when I was working out. I had been complaining about how hard this workout was, and I wasn’t sure I could do it. You are addicted to your thoughts and feelings patterns. You slip right into them and don’t even realize it. That first alarm going off had an immediate effect. I changed my thoughts and felt strong finishing out my workout. There was a direct and immediate effect of noticing my thoughts and updating them.

It helped when it came to my work and even with my parenting. Parenting two boys, 4 and 10, who are both smart and have ADHD pushes my emotional capacity and overall sense of worthiness as a mother. There were times when the boys were fighting that I felt overwhelmed and unsure how to resolve it. I would stop myself and say, “I can do this. What are my new beliefs?” Then I’d coach myself; there isn’t a perfect solution; my goal here is to deescalate the emotions and refocus attention.

Ask yourself something enough times, and you’ll start automatically doing it.

Did you catch, that I caught myself? Because my alarm went off at unpredictable times and intervals. Because I asked, “What are my beliefs about this?” enough times, I could self-initiate without the prompt. As a side note, this is the magik of meditation. You do something enough, or even better, create a large enough emotional charge while doing it; you will remember to keep doing it, and thus, a habit is born.

For beliefs that came up multiple times, I used Symbolic Hypnosis. If I go a layer deeper, it’s not just about working out, parenting, or writing a blog. Now that I have the data, I can see the thread that ties them all to the fundamental belief that I am not good enough. Pivoting in real-time with my question and doing Symbolic Hypnosis on myself has leveled up the fortitude of my beliefs and behavior.

For March, I’ve decided to experiment with romanticizing my life. Over the next few days, I’ll be feeling into what exactly that means and how I can experiment with it. Keep an eye out for the blog post.

If you are interested in working on some of those deep routed beliefs, schedule a Symbolic Hypnosis session here.