Formalizing Wakeup Walk

Implementation Intention: As soon as I get up I’ll put my clothes on, grab my coffee thermos and notebook, and walk around the block or to the pier. I’ll drink my coffee, and plan my day and do emotional control meditation to positively flip my mood. This meditation will be separate from my formal vipassana/samatha sit.

Tiny Habit and Step Ups: Daily minimum will be once around the block in the sun. Will always attempt emotional meditation, and will include planning, though I think all of it is a Tiny Habit that will not require a step up.

Mental Contrasting:
1) Positive Aspects
The idea of starting my day out on a good note is rather foreign to me - all too often I get up in a pretty bad mood, feeling as though I’m already behind on the day. I think a positive vibe is really important - I usually come back feeling amazing. I think it has many side benefits - potentially better sleep, not feeling like a total shut in, feeling like I’m a part of this city and not a useless habit hamster, and it makes me more likely to get out later in the day rather than feeling scared and wanting to hide. I feel that it energizes me. And it’s something that can replace my failed attempt at getting excited at waking up via my “bacon and water” habit. I also think it will dissuade me from late nights or drinking or eating badly the night before and tie me to a better family of habits. I want to tie myself to great mornings rather than great nights, which will in turn help push me towards a better night time ritual and hopefully better sleep.

2) Obstacles
Rain. I hate going outside in the rain. The first rainy day is not going to be fun. I can counter that by getting a good rain coat in the States when I’m back - I had a great one that was light weight and made me utterly comfortable in bad weather, but I have no idea where it went. I finally got good shoes that are more waterproof - now all I need is more socks. Luckily these are all things easily solved by a few relatively cheap purchases.

Day 1037 & Wakeup Alarm Habit

Day 1037 Record Keeping
Day 1009 Fixed Meditation (10 min)
Day 883 Writing (2/30)
Day 423 Rowing (100 15 lb kb swings, 4x25, Russian style)
Day 164 Mobility/Stretching (back smash, hip smash)
—–
Eating
Day 261 Pantry Check (DiD NOT DO)
Day 259 Food Recording (DID NOT DO)
—
Early to Rise
Day 192 Water (DID NOT DO)
Day 192 Sleep Recording  (12:30|7:40|8:30)
Day 163 Bedtime Curfew
Day 1 Wakeup Alarm 19
–
Good sleep, great wakeup.

Wakeup Alarm Habit
Whelp, I think I’ve unlocked becoming a morning person. Over the course of the last week or so, I’ve casually started setting an alarm 8 hours after I go to sleep. In every case, I’ve automatically woken up about 20 minutes before my alarm goes off. And it didn’t matter when.

It’s important to me that I’m waking up automatically without jerking awake. It’s also really important that I’m getting enough sleep. These things seem to be happening, and they seem to be happening based on things I do the night before. There is something about the act of setting the alarm that seems to make me know I’m going to wakeup to beat the alarm. I’ve always wondered how people who woke up naturally did this. I know I’ve done this while traveling, for fear of missing a flight or something like that, but I never thought I had it in me in regular life. This is a huge huge breakthrough, one I’m going to test out by formalizing the habit.

Implementation Intention
As soon as I record on my iPhone when I’m going to sleep for my Sleep Recording Habit I will set an alarm 8 hours later. This is another habit I’ll record for the previous day’s behavior.

Tiny Habit & Step Ups
It’s already Tiny, and I don’t think any progression is needed. For my Early To Rise family the only progression is the time I go to bed/sleep, and maybe how much time I dither in bed after waking up.

Mental Contrasting
1 positive aspects associated with completing your goal.
I’ll feel better since I associate, right or wrong, a person who has got his “shit together” with someone who gets up early. I’ll be able to feel like I have time in my day rather than feeling that it’s a constant rush. I’ll be able to take my time to do things. I’ll be able to progress in skills that involve time - like meditation or mobilization. I’ll be able to have time to actually do some decompressing should I need to add that later. This will help me accomplish more, do more, and cram more changes and experiences into my day. I won’t have to rush! I’m beginning to actually feel excited about getting up in the morning, something that I haven’t really felt since I was a child. That’s incredible!

2 obstacles:
I think the largest obstacle has nothing to do with this habit - it’s getting away from dithering on the computer to go to bed early. If I over do this habit I think it might cut into my meeting people/going out time, even though that is something I want to change anyway. I need to be very sure to plug in and charge my phone, something I tend not to do since I misplace my charger and especially my wall outlet charger.

The Holiday Effect Part 2

Yesterday I described the Holiday Effect, how this time of year tends to really mess with self discipline.

Specifically, a last minute trip to my personal kryptonite, Tex-Mex food.

What I did was use mental contrasting and implementation intention. I also took my phone along and, a la my No Bread Challenge and the Flash Diet, took pictures of the bread, tortillas, etc, that I would have problems with.

 

This went well, and the picture taking really underscored and boosted my willpower. I even, in the last picture, took an appetizer - a breaded and fried stuffed jalapeño, and took it out of it’s breading and ate it. That’s a lot of willpower for the problems I had and described before we went.

Here’s where I can improve:
-Make the implementation more detailed. I didn’t describe how I would treat getting a Margarita, so I ended up getting one and drinking the rest of my dad’s when he couldn’t finish it.
-Ask for more food. I was hungry after sharing fajitas for one, so I ended up eating a little bit of the breading after I ate the de-breaded stuffed jalapeños. After that I was still hungry, and I could have very well just asked for something more in order to be full. The key is eating enough - or at least having enough options - you can always take the rest home, which makes it easier for the next few days. In that way you can think of it as an opportunity in addition to being a challenge.

Again great job - I didn’t eat ANY chips, no tortillas, no rice, maybe half a spoon full of the beans, and none of the sopapilla that they ordered. More than anything implementation intention and the “flash diet” of taking pictures helped. Did mental contrasting really help? I don’t know, but it really helped with underscoring the situation before I went out.

Let’s see how it works the next time - AND it may very well be a great protocol to put into motion when I’m home or visiting friends for the holidays in general.

The Holiday Effect

I just got a text message from my mom:

Can u get back by 6? I think dad wants to go to Los cucos

I was just talking about lapses in willpower caused by friends. But really it’s not just friends - it’s family as well. And this is so natural during the holiday season. I’ll call it the Holiday Effect.

It’s almost like the universe just provided me with a perfect opportunity to practice a protocol to handle this.

There’s nothing wrong with Mexican - it can be great as a high carb day. But Mexican is my kryptonite. I want nachos and flour tortillas. I have so little discipline right now.

But I know how to deal with it in theory. Using my meditations I take several steps back from the problem, and I’m also using blogging to step back. Implementation intention and mental contrasting are techniques that work. I can do this. So….

Implementation Intention:
When I go to Los Cucos tonight I will drink water instead of reaching for chips.

When I go to Los Cucos tonight I will order fajitas or something meat and veggie intensive and tell the waiter I don’t want any tortillas.

Mental Contrasting:
Positives: In nailing my eating I get to lose weight. I can lose fat. I can gain the body I need in order to do other things - like breakdancing and martial arts and more advanced bodyweight exercises like pullups and enjoying travel and take advantage of new experiences that come with that - surfing, hiking, climbing. I will look and feel great, which will increase my confidence so that I can take that energy and invest it in everything else.

I can move on from the eating habit instead of floundering. I can nail it, I can move on, and master all the other skills I need to have the life of my dreams, including writing a book on all this - techniques that will actually help other people improve in their life when it comes to fitness, but also in habit formation in general. And I will be the one who has broken through this skill that humans have yet to master.

Things stopping me: I’m hungry. When I’m hungry my discipline plummets. I love Mexican food. I will think to myself - well, I messed up the last two days, so why not forget this for today and pick it up another day?But I must know that in that path lies the destruction of this entire project. I fear this - I fear falling back into failure, and it’s hilarious because this isn’t as hard as my depression. I know that I can summon up willpower through my meditative techniques. I fear that I will just flounder on in fixing my body, and somehow that fear of moving on makes my flounder on, because I can be secure in knowing that the world is out to get me. Because if it’s out to get me than I have an excuse to not be my best.

Floundering is what everyone does in this - how many people do I know who have learned how to eat right and keep doing it for years at a time, such that it becomes a part of who they are? This is the power of real transformation, and not just floating in these concepts without any real lasting self change. And I’m afraid of being that non-changing person.

These tests always come when you’re at your weakest. But it’s a fantastic opportunity and challenge to show excellence - it’s like jumping ahead of the curve instead of just incrementally advancing. It’s a chance to gain major points if this were a game.

I’ll use this as an experiment, and we’ll see how it goes afterwards.