Alex Shalman . comPractical Personal Development

In my effort to make Life Design an ongoing experiment, I actively tweak and optimize my thoughts, behaviors, and ultimately my life by forging new habits. The beauty of this system is that it is extremely simple, yet it delivers results that are life transforming.

Life Design Experiment (LDE) is a system for being the type of person, that takes the required actions, to obtain the desired results. LDE will either automate the execution of necessary, yet undesired task, or take on a belief system in which this task becomes pleasant and unobtrusive.

I. Evaluation Phase

This is the phase of LDE where you get to be totally creative and come up with anything you want for your life. Dream without inhibitions, without limits, and without regard for what may or may not be possible; dream like a child.

1. Brain storm possibilities. Which areas of your life are you interested in improving upon or transforming. This could be your health, wealth, intelligence, communication skills, talents, and just about anything you can conceive of.
2. Identify bad habits. Consider any habitual patterns that are causing, or will cause, negative results in your life. This could be something like smoking, complaining, yelling, alcohol, watching TV, and anything else you can identify within yourself.

II. Paradigm Phase

This is the phase of LDE in which you can transform your belief system to facilitate the acquisition of desired results. By associating enough pleasure or pain to something, you can completely alter the way you perceive it, or at least the way you feel about it.

1. Pleasure. Determine the positive out come of the possibility created in the Evaluation Phase. What will it look like if that possibility became a permanent habit for you? What type of person would you be?
2. Pain. Determine the negative out come of continuing the inadequacy or bad habit that was identified in the evaluation phase. What would it look like if that habit stayed with you for the rest of your life? What type of person would you be?
3. Attachment. Based on points 1&2 above it is time to attach strong emotions to these habits. Let’s say you wanted to master the habit of jogging daily. You would associate strong euphoric feelings to jogging, tell yourself all the great benefits of jogging, think about how great you feel when you jog, and how awesome it’s going to be being in shape. You will repeat this process to eliminate bad habits, by attaching painful feelings to the thought of continuing these habits. This will create a paradigm shift that will make it easy to replace bad habits with good ones.

III. Execution Phase

A. Tools

1. Journal log. If you look ahead for a moment into the re-evaluation phase, you will notice that it calls for looking at the results. In order to have detailed results we need to keep detailed logs of our progress.

One way of keeping a log is to just number 1-30 on a sheet of paper, and check off each day that you’ve successfully completed your task. The same can be achieved by checking off days on a calender. The concept behind this is that success is addicting, and you won’t want to break the chain of check-marks that you have created for yourself.

Another way of keeping a log is the method that I use, and it requires a bit more effort, but provides a huge payoff. While checking off your completed tasks daily, take note of your different emotional, physical, and mental states as the experiment progresses. This feedback is very useful during re-evaluation.
2. Post it. Your new habit might require you to do something at a time where you are unlikely to remember. Morning time for example. Put a post it note next to your bed, so when the alarm scares you out of your sleep, you will know exactly what your next order of business will be.

3. Rubber band. If your new habit is not an action than a post it note won’t help, because it won’t be able to follow you around all day. Wearing a rubber band on your wrist can serve as the reminder you need in order to keep consistent with your new thought habit. (Ex. 30 day zero-complaint experiment would be a great candidate for this.)

B. Process

1. 30 Days to Habit. This is an ideal number of days to turn an spontaneous action into a ritualized action (aka habit). This short deadline gives you the incentive to keep the action going, just long enough to turn it into a habit, and to re-evaluate if it’s worth keeping at the end.

2. Start. The only time we really have is right now. If we don’t start a process right away, we are not guaranteed that there will be a tomorrow. Now is the time to start.

3. Temporary. If you have successfully completed phase II of LDE, and you still hold some sort of limiting belief about what you are about to undergo, you can think of the experiment as something temporary. Do not think of it as a life long change, rather than a simple 30 days of your life, after which you can re-evaluate, and make a decision as to whether you want to keep going or stop.

IV. Re-Evaluation Phase

1. Results. If you have been keeping a detailed journal of your 30 day LDE trial, than you will have a good idea of the benefits available in your ongoing participation in this action. You will also have a good idea of the progress made, and the energy expended.
2. Choose. With the results at hand, you are capable of drawing a conclusion as to the efficacy of your new habit. Is it one which is life changing and should be kept, or one that was a waste of time and energy and should be dropped?

Either way you choose, you now know a few things about yourself. You know that you are capable of doing something you didn’t think you could, for a whole 30 days. You know you can apply this method to anything in life. If you kept your habit, your on your way to gaining tremendous benefits from it. If you dropped the habit you can go on living without regret that you tried it, but didn’t like it.

You have now built up your habit muscle, and can choose your next habit to pursue. You are now living the Life Design Experiment!

Summary
I. Evaluation
1. Brain Storm Possibilities
2. Identify Bad Habits
II. Paradigm Shift
1. Pleasure
2. Pain
3. Attachment
III. Execution Phase
A.Tools
1. Journal/Log
2. Post it
3. Rubberband
B. Process
1. 30 days to habit
2. Start
3. Temporary
IV. Re-Evaluation Phase
1. Results
2. Choose

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