User Profile: myown

Today I want to talk a bit about one of our inspiring users - myown from Plano, Texas. 

She joined the loopchange community just about 3 weeks ago and has just successfully completed her first 21 day mission (congratulations!).  That first mission, she chose to "let physical hunger guide eating."  She (like most of us probably) tended to eat beyond the point that she was satisfied, either by going back for seconds or thirds just for the sake of eating, or by snacking for no reason.  Basically she wanted to put an end to the "stuffed and bloated" feeling she was often experiencing. 

As she was working on that mission a very neat thing happened.  She began to read the other missions on the site.  She began to connect with the other users and she began to spend a bit of time each day encouraging the other loopchangers in their missions.  She shared her experiences when she had something to share and she gave encouraging words freely.  She joined the community and pretty much overnight, she became a valued, contributing member who shared he fears and struggles and made a very real impact on the lives (and missions) of those around her. 

Since that day three weeks ago, myown has come up with her own way to use the site.  She has started two more missions on the site and is actively working to improve herself by knocking out one bad/unnecessary behavior after another (Exercise 10 minutes a day every day and Three weeks without junk food).  She is taking control of her life and it is incredibly inspiring to witness.  Just imagine what she will accomplish this year if she keeps this pace up!  She'll be an entirely different person in 2013 than she is here at the beginning of 2012.

So there you have it.  Come see what other folks are doing.  Get inspired.  Start doing something yourself.  Yes January is gone, but don't let that dissuade you!  myown is DOING it.  Others are DOING it.  You can do it too.

The World is a Negative Place

I just came across this great blog post by author Jamie Anne Richardson.  I think it is wonderfully observant and I love that she is going to try and change her circle of influence by LEADING them to a more positive outlook.  Those are many of the things that I dream loopchange will do; take a small group of people and slowly allow our outlooks on life to become positive, breaking free of the negativity that we seem to be constantly assaulted by.

Her post is called Happiness Pledge and I think it is fantastic.  It actually reminds me quite a bit of an old mission on loopchange by a user named #1 (here).  I know that his being intentional with his outlook on life did have a very real affect on him over the course of his 70+ days. 

Mrs. Richardson's actual "mission" (as far as I know she will not be documenting it at loopchange) is:

"Here is my plan: every day for the next 21 days, I am going to focus on finding the good. And every day (that I am within reach of a computer), I am going to post three good things about the day on my Facebook author page."

Go check out her article.  I think it is a very good one!  If it sounds good to you, document it at loopchange!  Who knows how many people your mission will influence!

Change! Stop Being Afraid!

To take the red pill, or the blue pill. That was the question facing Neo in the mega-hit movie The Matrix. One pill led down the rabbit hole, where all of his questions would be answered and the life he knew would be gone forever. The other pill led back to his own bed and his old life and he would be left wondering if this had all been a dream. Because he's the hero in our movie, he chose the new life. He chose to leave his old life behind and face the unknowns of a world he'd never experienced before.

How many of us would have had the courage to make such a choice? Not many, I'm afraid. For most people, change is terrifying, sometimes even infuriating. Try changing the location of the coffee machine at your office or if you're feeling particularly brave, try changing the flavor of the coffee. Do both and you're likely to need a police escort to your car! Such a meaningless thing, but it would generate such a large reaction.

People hate change. Is it because they like their lives so much? I don't believe so. I read that Oprah recently had a poll on her website where the question was simply, "Are you happy with yourself". A whopping 75% of those polled responded 'no'. Only 1 in 4 of us consider ourselves to be happy. Isn't that shocking? Isn't it sad?
 
So should we conclude that people are generally unhappy and that they generally want to stay that way? That doesn't make any sense either. Walk up to any random person on the street and ask them list off the things that are going badly in their life right now and they are almost certain to rattle off a quick list of five or ten things.

So it's not that we're already happy...and it's not that want to be unhappy. There must be something else to this.

I recently read about a scientific study that had been done on mice. Researchers had set up a pedal that the mice would push to get a food pellet. Once the mice had mastered this, the researchers played a cruel, cruel trick on them. They wired the pedal so that it gave the mice a large shock of electricity at the same time it dispensed the food pellet. It shocked the mice every time they went for a food pellet. Reading the results of that study, it appears that the most a mouse ever went back to that pedal was five times. Never did a mouse go for a 6th time. The mice literally starved to death rather than go back and be shocked again (sounds like a horrible experiment doesn't it?).

I think that as children grow to become adults, with regard to change, we are very much like those mice. I think we've learned that trying to change and failing is very painful. I think we've learned that trying to change all on your own is incredibly difficult. I think we've learned that if we announce to the world that we're trying to change, there will be a long line of people looking to tell us why we won't be able to do it and why we're almost certainly going to fail. I think we've learned that because of their own insecurities, people love to point and laugh when they see someone fall short of their goals.

The world is a cruel place and changing requires courage and thick skin. Those are two qualities that many of us just don't feel like we've got. Not today anyway. Maybe tomorrow. No, not tomorrow, but Monday for sure. Or maybe after the holidays or after New Years.

I think at the most basic level, people don't change because of OTHER people. That is a horribly sad reason to continue on a course that has led to unhappiness. Isn't it time to to start making the best decisions for yourself rather than choosing the path with the least amount of risk or the least amount of difficulty?

You CAN change the way you want to change. You CAN be the person that you want to be. Isn't it time you stood up and embraced your true identity? It all starts with a single choice, a single decision. Make that decision today.

Keeping a Journal for Wife and Kids

Loopchanger - Woody - has done what I think is an amazingly awesome thing.  I asked him here to tell you about it.  Heeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrreeeee's Woody:

Thanks!  I'm really happy to be given the opportunity to share what I've learned through this process that is currently 55 days old (and counting).  It has been an absolutely amazing experience and I believe it has enriched my life tremendously.  Even if the Journals were never read or enjoyed by my Wife and Kids, the benefit that I've gotten is mind boggling.

So awhile back, I was at a conference and one of the speakers was discussing that he keeps a small journal for each of his children.  In this journal, he generally writes a sentence or two every so often when something neat or funny happens.  The amazing thing was that he has 6 kids!!  I can't even imagine.  Anyway, I had actually kept a journal for my first born with sporadic entries through my Wife's pregnancy and into baby/toddler life.  I was probably writing once a month or so.

Unfortunately, when my second child was born, I found that my writing completely dried up.  I think I felt a lot of guilt over the fact that my first born had gotten a lot more entries and at their current age (5 and 2) there was an awful lot more 'interesting' going on with the 5 year old than the 2 year old.  Anyway, this fear of in-equality led to me abandoning the project completely which is horribly sad.  But anyway, this speaker inspired me to begin keeping separate journals for each child with an entry of some kind written every day. 

As sort of an add-on, I decided, why not add my Wife to the mix as well?  And so it was that I decided that I would commit a small part of each morning to write SOMETHING to each member of my family that I got, enjoyed, laughed at or regretted about the previous day.  This was a daunting and scary commitment, but with the help of loopchange and a belief that there was a lot of good that could come from such a project, I committed to a 21 day trial.

It turned out that with practice, I was able to complete my journal entries in just about 15 minutes.  Quite a small price to pay for such a (potentially) meaningful project.  In just the first few days, I experienced some absolutely amazing realizations.  Before this project if I were asked "how are things", my response would have been "nothing new, same old stuff".  But with only 15 minutes of focus each morning, my eyes were suddenly opened. 

Every single day, awesome, inspiring, lump in your throat inducing, hilarious things were happening in my life but somehow I wasn't taking notice of them.  I wasn't dwelling on them.  I wasn't allowing myself any moments to reflect on them and store them away in my memory.  They were very literally passing before my eyes and disappearing from my mind forever.  In retrospect, I find it horribly sad that so many wonderful memories are just lost.  Forever!


As time has gone by, the sense of wonder I get when I reflect on the previous day hasn't diminished at all.  Sure, over the 50+ days there have been plenty of entries where I've phoned it in (normally because of some distraction in my life that is preventing me from getting 'peaceful' before beginning my 15 minutes.  But all in all, it has been wondrous.  Sometimes I write a single sentence.  Sometimes I write a full page.  Some things that I've recorded that stand out in my mind (it will be incredibly difficult to limit this to 5 each):

With my Oldest:
-  first time riding a two wheel bike without training wheels
-  coming to me to talk it over when I'd accidentally hurt her feelings
-  collecting roly-poly's in the yard and researching on the internet what they eat so she could keep them
-  first run-in with some girls at school who didn't like her
-  reading a book by herself for the first time

With the youngest:
  -  first time he said "i yuv you"
  -  first time playing with a baseball and bat
  -  first time he said "I'm Daddy's boy!"
  -  first injury - a little cut over his eye
  -  first trip to Disneyworld (complete with kisses from all the princesses)

And many more, just as good about my Wife.  My only 'rule' is to keep it positive.  I don't re-hash arguments or use the journal as a means of getting in the last word or re-hashing arguments.  All in all, this mission has very literally changed my life. It has also given me an entirely new 'approach' to parenting and marriage.

If I don't have SOMETHING interesting to write each morning, some interaction, something to laugh about, something interesting, something touching, etc then I'm not doing it right (it being parenting and being a husband). 

To sum up - EVERYONE should be doing this.  It will absolutely change your life.