A powerful personal growth tool is the 30-day trial. This is a concept you’ve seen many times before. “Try our [product/service] for 30 days and if you don’t love it – send it back!” I’ve even run a 30-day Paleo food challenge in the past here at my gym. It’s also a great way to develop new habits, and best of all, it’s brain-dead simple.

Let’s say you want to start a new habit like an exercise program or quit a bad habit like sucking on cancer sticks. We all know that getting started and sticking with the new habit for a few weeks is the hard part. Once you’ve overcome inertia, it’s much easier to keep going.

Yet we often psyche ourselves out of getting started by mentally thinking about the change as something permanent — before we’ve even begun. It seems too overwhelming to think about making a big change and sticking with it every day for the rest of your life when you’re still habituated to doing the opposite. The more you think about the change as something permanent, the more you stay put.

But what if you thought about making the change only temporarily — say for 30 days — and then you’re free to go back to your old habits? That doesn’t seem so hard anymore. Exercise daily for just 30 days, then quit. Maintain a neatly organized desk for 30 days, then slack off. Read for an hour a day for 30 days, then go back to watching TV.

Could you do it? It still requires a bit of discipline and commitment, but not nearly so much as making a permanent change. Any perceived deprivation is only temporary. You can count down the days to freedom. And for at least 30 days, you’ll gain some benefit. It’s not so bad. You can handle it. It’s only one month out of your life.

Now if you actually complete a 30-day trial, what’s going to happen? First, you’ll go far enough to establish it as a habit, and it will be easier to maintain than it was to begin it. Secondly, you’ll break the addiction of your old habit during this time. Thirdly, you’ll have 30 days of success behind you, which will give you greater confidence that you can continue. And fourthly, you’ll gain 30 days worth of results, which will give you practical feedback on what you can expect if you continue, putting you in a better place to make informed long-term decisions.

Therefore, once you hit the end of the 30-day trial, your ability to make the habit permanent is vastly increased. But even if you aren’t ready to make it permanent, you can opt to extend your trial period to 60 or 90 days. The longer you go with the trial period, the easier it will be to lock in the new habit for life.

Another benefit of this approach is that you can use it to test new habits where you really aren’t sure if you’d even want to continue for life. Maybe you’d like to try a new diet, but you don’t know if you’d find it too restrictive. In that case, do a 30-day trial and then re-evaluate. There’s no shame in stopping if you know the new habit doesn’t suit you. It’s like trying a piece of shareware for 30 days on your computer and then uninstalling it if it doesn’t suit your needs. No harm, no foul.

This 30-day method seems to work best for daily habits. I’ve had no luck using it when trying to start a habit that only occurs 3-4 days per week. However, it can work well if you apply it daily for the first 30 days and then cut back thereafter. This is what I do when I want to learn/improve a new CrossFit skill like double unders, for example. Daily habits are much easier to establish.

Here are some other ideas for applying 30-day trials:

• Stop watching the news or give up TV.
• Meet someone new every day and start up a conversation.
• Spend 30 minutes cleaning up and organizing your home or office every day. That’s 15 hours total.
• Foam roll every day for just 5 minutes.
• Give up cigarettes, soda, junk food, or other unhealthy addictions.
• Become an early riser.
• Write in your journal every day.
• Give your business card to someone or leave it out somewhere every day.
• Take a multivitamin and fish oil every day.
• Write or post a new article on your blog every day.
• Read for an hour a day on a subject that you want to learn more about.
• Plan your day every night or early morning.
• Learn a new vocabulary word every day.

Again, don’t think that you need to continue any of these habits beyond 30 days. Think of the benefits you’ll gain from those 30 days alone. You can re-assess after the trial period. You’re certain to grow just from the experience, even if it’s temporary.

The power of this approach lies in its simplicity. Even though doing a certain activity every single day may be less efficient than following a more complicated schedule — weight training is a good example because adequate rest is a key component — you’ll often be more likely to stick with the daily habit. When you commit to doing something every single day without exception, you can’t rationalize or justify missing a day, nor can you promise to make it up later by reshuffling your schedule.

Give trials a try. If you’re ready to commit to one right now, please feel free to post a comment and share your goal for the next 30 days.

There are a lot of times where we all just “think” about doing stuff. Whether it be eating better, working out regularly, acting on that new business idea, or whatever, we often get stalled; nothing happens and we just continue to “think” about it. Well…

STOP Thinking and START Doing!

It all starts with a thought, but finish with action.

Now here are 220 Success Principles that will guide you to start taking action. It’s broken down into small chunks of info so you can quickly read it, digest it, and just start doing!

Get Success Results – 220 Principles

]]> http://richardrigor.com/blog/2010/12/27/stop-thinking-start-doing/feed/ 0 http://richardrigor.com/blog/2010/07/13/check-out-this-sub10workout%e2%84%a2/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=check-out-this-sub10workout%25e2%2584%25a2 http://richardrigor.com/blog/2010/07/13/check-out-this-sub10workout%e2%84%a2/#comments Tue, 13 Jul 2010 18:01:47 +0000 Admin http://richardrigor.com/blog/?p=86 Here’s the latest video on Sub10Workouts.com