42 days to a new life

Every year on January 1^st, millions if not billions of people around the globe make New Year’s resolutions. These resolutions range everywhere from making more money, to the most common goal, losing weight. Rarely does someone really stick to their New Year’s resolution and I believe it is because it is such a huge obstacle in our minds to continue anything for a year. Too many hurdles obstruct our path to success. The dessert that a friend orders on January 5^th makes us doubt our ability to last another 360 days without dessert. The party on January 15^th that lasts late into the night essentially gives us a free a free pass to skip that trip to the gym the next day, as well as every other gym day we have coming the rest of the year because “if it is going to be this hard for this long I just don’t want to do it at all.”

On top of all this we are members of a society in which the average person changes professions every 7 years and only 50% of marriages last. We get new cars every 2- 3 years and most of us will not make it to retirement living in the same house let alone the same state that we started in. We live in a society that is ADD and changing all the time. This is no longer the post- WWII lifestyle and we need to adapt our goals to this new society.

This is why I came up with a 42- day or six week “test drive” (a little bite from Steve Pavlina’s 30-day version). There are many things in my life that I want to do and although our goals may differ, I am sure that you have aspirations as well. Things like eating a raw food diet or taking on a specific meditation as a daily practice are important to me because I am interested in the effects it will have, but I know myself well enough that there has to be an end in site, otherwise I will create one by quitting. See, other than being married to Mandy for 7 years, I have major commitment anxiety and if I feel that there is no end in sight often times I just won’t stick with my goal. With the 42- day program, however, there is definitely an end in sight and after your “free trial” you get to choose whether you want to “buy” that way of living and behaving.

But why is it 42 days and not 21 days or 7 days? A few years back the Navy did an experiment in which they put glasses that flipped the vision of their pilots upside down. The reason they did this was to see how they could learn to adjust to a world that was upside down. A mysterious thing began to happen for all of these pilots. Within 18-25 days, their vision went from upside down to right side up. How could this happen? What prompted such as reversal? Well it turns out that our minds have the ability to adapt to any stimuli and make it normal after an average of 21 days. I found this amazing and have spent many days and meditation sessions thinking about it since.  What I have found in my own research has prompted me to believe that if we double this time frame (42 days), we can create some really profound changes in our lives, and new habits that can last a life time if we choose.

In the eastern traditions, which use mantras to build up energy to change circumstances and even gain enlightenment, a common prescription is 40 days of mantra (Google 40 day mantra and you will see this). The philosophy behind this is that we have inertia in our lives that keep us going in the same general direction and in order to completely change this energy it takes 40 days of continuous energy build up to change the circumstance we are aiming to correct (health, wealth, habits). My belief in regard to the difference between what 21- day science says it takes for the mind to readjust, and the 40 days of mantra is fairly simple. It takes 21 days to stop the inertia of an old habit and 21 days to readjust to the new habit we have set in motion.

Many personal development teachers use a 21- day method of coaching to change patterns in life. Though I have done this and it is beneficial, I really believe that they are only tackling half the battle. Of all the things I have done a 21- day stint for, the only thing that has lasted was my vegetarian diet (8 months). In my experience, the sticking rate increases tremendously if you hold a pattern fro more than 30 days. This happens because neurologically, the more times we do something, the stronger and bigger the connection is in the brain. The stronger the connection is, the easier it is to recall. In 21 days we have the time to get used to new stimuli, but not enough time to really get comfortable with it. After 21 days of being a vegetarian it was nothing but hard work to constantly eat that way. But after 42 days it was much easier because my brain was firing that way automatically. This method allows us to experiment with whether or not we actually want that change in our life.

Take riding a bike as an example of this. When we are first learning to ride it is not much fun. Our balance is shaky and often times we fall repeatedly. This is what it is like the first week of trying something new. After 21 days it is like riding a bike on the street. We are comfortable for the most part, but still remember falling off, making us unsure of whether we like it our not. After 42 days, however, it is like being able to mountain bike. We are not yet pros and still have a lot to learn but are competent enough to know whether we want to continue riding or not.

So, over the next 42 days I invite you to follow along and create some goals for your self just to try for 42 days and see what you think. I am going to live by example and share my daily thoughts with you as I alter my diet (vegetarian, and no alchohol), do yoga everyday, meditate to the focus and concentration paraliminal, and study tantric Buddhism. Mandy and I will be reporting about my routine and the daily changes I experience on this blog.

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