Hi everybody. I know this was a travel blog for my major trips, but I'm thinking about doing an experiment. Or rather, a year worth of experiments.
When I was in my 20s, a friend of mine did a project for herself where she took a picture of her bed every morning for a year. I did 365 days of happiness (more on this later).
It feels like ages since I've had a year-long project.
Now that I am 40 (hopefully twice as good as my 20th year), I am thinking about doing a year's worth of experiments with the premise “What would it feel like if…?”. The thought being that, for a year, I would run experiments for different lengths of time (weekly, monthly, etc) testing things out to see how it feels. Here are some examples of what I’m thinking.
What would it feel like if I used lotion for a month
What would it feel like if I had shingles for a month (THIS experiment happened without my provocation)
What would it feel like if I took Gabapentin for two weeks?
What would it feel like if I took an antiviral for 10 days?
What would it feel like if I walked to BART rather than drove to BART for a month?
What would it feel like if I cut out processed foods for a month?
What would it feel like if I did push-ups every night before bed for a month?
What would It feel like if I made a personal phone call every day for a month?
What would it feel like if I sent a postcard every day for a month?
What would it feel like if I meditated for 20 minutes everyday for a month?
What would it feel like if I flossed everyday for a month?
What would it feel like if I focused on looking up or looking down?
What would it feel like to watch a Khan Academy video everyday?
My idea is to ask a question and document it. Say what I feel beforehand, what I expect to feel during, and what I feel afterwards. What are the changes I noticed? What are the changes I expected but didn’t notice? Do I want to continue something to extend the duration of x benefit?
Just by thinking "how would it feel", I’m already noticing a change. I've had to open my mind to come up with "experiments" that I don’t already do now, that I’d be willing to try, that I believe will have positive outcomes.
This reminds me of the 100 Days of Happiness phenomenon. I was feeling down in the dumps and decided to post one good thing a day on Facebook for 100 days. I thought it would be nice to find at least something good everyday. What I didn't expect is that by looking for something good everyday, I ended up looking for something good ALL THE TIME. And even after I posted a good thing, I'd keep looking for an even better thing. When the 100 days were up, I decided to extend it to a full year because my overall happiness had increased tremendously since day one and I didn't want it to stop.
Side note: Bad things happened during those 365 days. A good friend passed away. My grandmother passed away. Coming up with something happy on those days was hard, but HAVING to find something good those days was mood altering. Instead of wallowing in sadness, looking for only sad things, I had to (if only for a few minutes) broaden my mind and look for something good. "I had a root beer today" was one of those posts. It didn't turn my whole day around, but it might have stopped the slippery slope into depression. Knowing that I could find happiness in very dark times was and continues to be valuable.
Coming back to the year-long experiment...I feel like even the act of thinking up experiments has opened my mind. It makes me think how many things can I do that are new and how many experiences I was going to have anyway would be enhanced by asking the question "How would this make me feel" or "what can I gain from this?"
Krista and I booked tickets to travel to Yellowstone and now I’m asking the question "How would it feel to camp for five days?" I know when I camped for two days my level of cleanliness decreased, because you just get used to being dirty. I know that my mind slowed down, because I didn't need to do something every five minutes. What else will I learn?
If nothing else, this mindset is the experiment. How aware can I be this year? What can I learn from being so aware and from trying new things? What will surprise me?
I'm open to it. I'm up for it.
If you are too, feel free to follow along.
