I am... Being Healthy!

[Image by ほにゃらら]

I was going to hold off until I got Infinite Money wrapped up completely, but I figured I would post a Sugar Detox update in the mean time!

It’s been two weeks. Overall, it’s been easier than I thought. The first day was the hardest because I couldn’t get my mind off of the experiment (it was like trying to no think about polar bears). After that it has been considerably easier, and it hasn’t been that hard to stick to my rules. However, I did have a few slip ups, which I’ll note below. But first, let’s go over the parts that had to do with why I originally started the experiment. After that I’ll talk about some other things I’ve been observing and thinking about.

Experiment Objectives

Cravings

Sugar cravings haven’t been too bad. If I see some kind of sweet dessert in front of me, I feel a pull to eat it, but it’s not that hard to resist. Other than that, I haven’t been getting many pangs for sweet things randomly during the day. Before the experiment, the main time when the sugar cravings would get the better of me was when I was getting the bus come from school, which meant that I was fairly hungry and tired. Since classes have been over, I haven’t gotten the chance to experience that yet, so I think that will be the true test.

Before, since I had not concretely decided to NOT eat sweets, I would debate with myself over whether or not I should stop and get something, and I think that made it harder. I think that since I’ve already decided, it will be easier to avoid relapsing.

An interesting thing was that I tried medjool dates at Terry’s house, since they are technically within my rules (a natural whole food) even though their sugar content is really high. While eating them, I felt that pull to “must… have… more” that I tend to experience when eating candy. And I actually got cravings for them the next day. And then I asked my mom to buy some and I ate like half of the small container (~8 dates) the same day. And I probably would have eaten more if my family didn’t eat the other half. :) I don’t get cravings/must-have-mores for the other types of fruit I eat, so it’s probably just because the sugar content in them is so high. Even though they are within my rules, it might be a good idea to steer clear of them for a bit though because my main goal with this whole experiment was to reduce cravings for things. But I’ll definitely keep them in mind for a treat in the future because they are definitely an improvement on Skittles (they actually have minerals, fiber, etc).

Health/Energy/Mood

I haven’t really been keeping track of this explicitly, since I was kind of hoping that any differences would be pronounced enough to be noticeable. No dice. My mood and energy levels have been fairly stable I think, but I can’t tell how much of that is due to the experiment. One way I might be able to test this is to keep track of how I feel when I reintroduce sugar, and see if I feel any crazier.

Weight/Measurements

Everything is the same (or within the realm of normal fluctuation).

In summary, I’m not seeing too much in terms of results yet, but again, it’s hard to tell exactly how/if things are effecting me, and I can’t just see whether my risk of cancer has increased or decreased. At least I’ve proved to myself that I can go a significant amount of time without dessert if I feel like it! I’m hoping that my desire to eat sweet things will continue to decrease as the experiment goes on.

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My Experience So Far

[Source]

Slip Ups

Non-dessert foods with more than 4% (4g per 100g) sugar in them. When I originally outlined this experiment, I said I was going to try to limit these foods, but I haven’t really been. I have been checking labels more often out of curiousity, and it turns out sugar is in a lot of foods and sauces. Go figure. I decided that I’m pretty much going to ignore this rule for now, and keep it on file for if I want to make refinements to my diet later.

Orange Juice. There was that one time where I bought orange juice at QE park because they were sold out of water. I didn’t think sticking to my arbitrary rule was worth possibly getting dehydrated, so I decided to be flexible. I don’t think this was really a big deal. I actually think I would have enjoyed water more if they had it available there.

Cookie. Okay… this is my major ‘oops’. Uh, basically, a couple days ago there was a cookie on the counter and before I knew it, it was in my mouth and it was only when I was halfway finished it that I remembered “OH YEAH I’M NOT SUPPOSED TO EAT SWEETS!” Well, damn. I’m not entirely sure what happened with that. It wasn’t like I agonised over whether or not to end the experiment and eat da cookie, it was more like a temporary memory lapse. I think what made me even realise it was how shockingly sweet the cookie was. “Hey, what the heck, this tastes a lot sweeter than I remember it. … Sweet? Oh f-”. However, I’m going to keep going with the experiment. I don’t think this one incident means that I “failed”, it’s not like I expected that breaking an addiction would happen without incident. ;) And I still want to reach the goals I set out at the beginning, so I think it’s definitely better to keep going rather than give up.

Taste Changes

Holy crow, chocolate soy milk is really sweet. It might taste sweeter to me because my tastebuds are adjusting, or it might just be because I’m focused on the sweetness when I drink it. Probably a bit of column A, a bit of column B. I’m considering buying some NesQuick chocolate syrup to I can balance the milk-to-sugar ratio myself.

Habit Changes

Now that I’ve gone through several days, I can see that there are three main habit changes involved in this experiment.

1. Replacing sweet junk food snacks with other snacks. This one has not been so hard. I’ve been eating pretzels and a lot of fruit. Whereas before I might have grabbed an icecream sandwich as a snack, now I grab a banana. It’s okay. When you think about it, bananas have a kind of cheescakey texture. Or maybe they don’t. It’s been a while since I’ve had ‘real’ cheesecake. :)

2. Water instead of Orange Juice. My default drink at home is usually orange juice, and when eating out it’s usually sweetened ice tea. At the beginning it was kind of weird to have water with my meals, but I’m starting to get used to it. I’m finally starting to reach for the water by default.

3. Breakfast. This one continues to get me. I’m used to having something sweet at breakfast (like toast with maple syrup, or oatmeal with maple syrup… mmmm), and I still feel like I want to. I would really like to have a bowl of my favourite cereal. Instead, I’ve been having fruit, garlic toast, toast with veggie bacon, the occasional spinach smoothie, and a couple times I have had my usual oatmeal but with a bit of stevia powder instead of maple syrup. The stevia does sweeten it and it makes the dish more palatable, but it’s not quite the same. Maybe it’s just something to get used to. It might be a couple more weeks before these become my default breakfasts that I go for automatically.

Before when I ate cheese, it used to be the whole reason why I liked pasta/burgers/etc and when I first stopped having it, it was kind of like “what’s the point of eating this then?”, but now I love pasta and burgers without the cheese and it doesn’t even occur to me to add it when I make them. I can honestly say that I don’t feel like I’m missing out at all now. It took a few months, but apparently I can get used to anything. I’m hoping it will be the same way with breakfast.

***

Other Observations

Overall Diet Improvement + (Lack of) Effects Thereof

Since I’ve eliminated sweets as a possibility, I’ve more than doubled my fruit intake, and I’ve more than doubled my water intake. For perhaps the first time in my life, I would classify nearly ALL of the food I’m eating as ‘healthy’ (with the exception of some pretzels, and perhaps certain deep fried/high sodium restaurant foods). Wow. How interesting.

Of course, there are still plenty of improvements I could make depending on what ideal of nutrition you subscribe to (raw, paleo, low GI, whatever), but according to conventional standards, I suspect anyone would tell me that my diet is impeccable (unless they can’t get past the idea that I don’t eat meat, dairy, eggs).

It’s just slightly discouraging that I don’t see clear evidence of any positive effects from this. It might be that the positive effects are long term and if I keep it up I’ll be healthier than your average 50 year old, but I would have liked to see more obvious benefits in the present. I have a few theories on why they seem absent.

• One is that my diet was already really healthy compared to normal before I started the experiment. Since I’m vegan, by default my diet has no cholesterol, lower than average fat content, higher than average vegetable content. Not that vegans are always healthier than omnivores, but I’m entertaining this as a possibility. I also already eat mostly whole grains at home. I’m already at what I would consider to be an ideal weight. So there’s that.
• Another possibility is that the positive effects have been gradual/gentle enough that I haven’t been able to notice them properly. An example of this is that before I went vegan, I used to get really painful stomach aches regularly. I thought it was normal for me. After I went vegan, they disappeared, but I didn’t notice that they disappeared until over a year later when I got a similar kind of stomach ache and remembered “Hey, I used to get these like multiple times a week!” When a bad thing goes away, sometimes it just falls off your radar. If I reintroduce sugar again, I might notice the bad effects return.
• Yet another possibility is that the sugar wasn’t affecting me as negatively as I suspected it was. I was pretty sure that considering how much sugar I was eating and how much real food I wasn’t eating, that my vitality must have been affected. It’s possible that I was overestimating the effects though.
• Or perhaps all of the sugar in the fruit I’m eating is preventing me from feeling the full effects of sugar reduction. It’s very possible.

Time might tell!

Filling the Void

I’ve done no-sugar and other diet related changes in the past. Before, when I did a diet limiting experiment, I would go shopping more, and when I conducted an experiment which involved spending less money, I would eat more to compensate (haha). But now that I’ve let go of pretty much any desire for recreational shopping (unless it’s just browsing with a friend), I’m left with… what?

I’m trying to direct the excess energy towards something constructive – creating stuff. But I’m also indulging by consuming lots of media. I’m not sure if it’s that much more than normal because I’ve always spent a large chunk of time consuming media (internet, blogs, games, anime, movies, educational materials, books, music, you name it). Media consumption might be one of my last ‘crutches’ to get control of before I can dive full force into creation. Right now, the amount of time I spend consuming versus creating is probably like 9:1, whereas I’d like it to be closer to 1:1.

[Closeup of Angelic Pretty's Miracle Candy print. Source]

Identity

I’ve also been thinking a bit about sugar in terms of identity. To me, desserts have to do with luxury and enjoyment, and also innocence (there’s a certain point in growing up when most people realize that eating them is probably not that good for them, but by not thinking about that you can pretend for a while that it doesn’t matter, and that you’re in some sort of alternate universe where things are simple and things that you like don’t harm you).

I know that in some of the fashion subcultures I follow(ed), sweets are idealized as they make their way into fabric prints, or being modeled as jewelry/decorations. In the quintessential lolita movie Kamikaze Girls, the heroine’s school lunch consists entirely of sweets.

[Source]

I get the sense that in our culture, if you don’t eat sugar, you’re either some sort of ascetic health nut or you’re trying to look good in a bikini. It’s just not a normal thing to do, especially for a young person. But I guess being vegan sXe isn’t that normal either. ;) Is it possible to be both ascetic and a hedonist? Since I’m actually doing this in order to enjoy my life more. It’s not like experiencing cravings, moodswings and that “yuck-my-mouth-feels-fuzzy-and-hurty” feeling from eating too much sugar is enjoyable.

I have a certain preconceived idea of what a “girl who eats a lot of sweets” is like: Carefree, effortlessly maintains her figure, cheerful, youthful, someone who enjoys nice things, maybe even a bit on the spoiled side. It’s easy to see how connotations like this make it easy to slot a sugar addiction into my identity since I see that “girl who eats a lot of sweets” persona as desirable overall. Maybe it’s kind of like how some people think (on some subconscious level) that smoking makes them a badass. It’s weird how your consumption habits can get wrapped up in your identity. What kind of person would you be without them?

It’s not that I think that eating sweets (or any other behaviour) is a bad thing. I just think that if you do anything without being fully aware of and okay with why you’re doing it, it can become a bad thing.

If I don’t eat cheese, who am I? If I don’t dress this way, who am I? If my best friends aren’t around, who am I? If I don’t shop, who am I? If I don’t play videogames, who am I? If I’m not with this person, who am I? If I don’t worry about money, who am I? If I don’t care about my grades so much, who am I? If I don’t eat sweets, who am I? I think I’ve been doing a lot of this lately.

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… Well. That’s it for now. Subscribe for future updates!

Posted on August 30th, 2011
Filed under: Being Healthy, Creating, Featuring, Living (All Posts)
Topics: experiment, log, sugar

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[Image from when I counted the number of references to sugar in my room, back in April. All of these except the mint cone are gone now.]

I decided to start this experiment while my motivation was high, since I had a feeling that otherwise I would put it off again. Don’t worry, I’ll have an Infinite Money wrap-up post soon!

I’ve tried going without sugar for 30 days twice before, but both times I started eating it again soon after since I saw it as more of a thing that I wanted to try but didn’t really care if I made it a permanent habit. Lately I’ve been eating what I consider to be way too much of it, and I actually get cravings for it that cause me to go out of my way to buy a sugary snack. There’s that, and I think that it’s crowding out my capacity to eat healthy foods. People are generally surprised when I tell them that I don’t think I eat enough fruits and vegetables – I’m vegan after all, what else is there to eat?! I do eat them, but a large part of my diet consists of grain/starch foods and sugar. Probably not the best. I’ve started getting kind of grossed out by it.

So, I decided to make my next experiment a reduced sugar diet. ‘Reduced’ because I’m not cutting it out ENTIRELY (I have a few exceptions which you can read below), but it will still be a lot less than I normally eat, probably less than half of normal. I expect it to be easier for me to give up sugar than an average person, since I already have plenty of experience turning down delicious looking food for personal reasons (lvl 4 vegan discipline yeahyuh).

The other option I was considering for my next experiment was something to do with my social life (since I tend to alternate between money/health/money/health), but after I realised I wanted to focus on social things I’ve started accepting more invitations and putting a little bit more effort than usual into making plans, and so I already have several social events lined up in the near future. Because of this, I’m going to let this area of my life proceed without a formal experiment for a while!

What I hope to get out of this experiment, in order of importance:

1. One less dependency. I hate the idea of needing something, which I why I never got into smoking, social drinking, or coffee. It took me a while to get off cheese, so sugar and the Internet are probably my only remaining vices. It’s not that I will never eat sugar again, but I want to be able to enjoy it consciously rather than feeling like I’m suffering if I don’t have it regularly. This is the main reason I want to do this experiment at all.
2. Long & short term health benefits. Less killing of the pancreas/liver, lower risk of many of the major scary things like heart disease/cancer (I’m living ’til the Singularity, just you watch! ;) ), better nutrition, more stable mood, increased energy level, improved oral health. It’s not that I feel that I’m particularly UNhealthy, but I’d like to be better than average.
3. I’d probably NOT want to lose weight since my BMI is on the low side, but I took some measurements and ‘before’ pictures of my body and skin complexion to see if anything changes. Because that would be interesting indeed. I don’t expect any drastic changes though.

Timeline:
At least a month (August 14th-September 14th), but actually it’s unspecified because I want to keep it up until I don’t get cravings any more, however long that takes. I’ve heard that cravings are supposed to disappear after 3-4 months if you go cold turkey, but since I’m not eliminating it completely (at least at first) it might take me a bit longer. I have some milestones marked in my calendar, however. The first three days are supposed to be the worst, and it’s supposed to get easier after ten days. I also have the 21-day (habit forming) mark and the 30-day mark just for interest’s sake. After my cravings are gone I’ll come up with a controlled way to reintroduce sugar to make sure that I don’t get sucked back into it immediately.

What I will NOT eat:
Candy, desserts, sweet drinks (including sweetened tea or fruit juice), natural sugars (like maple syrup), artificial sweeteners (like aspartame – except in the case of chewing gum). The reason I’m eliminating juice is that it will be an easy way to get rid of several more grams of sugar from my day and I can get more health benefits from eating whole fruit.

I’m also going to try to reduce foods that have more than 4% sugar content (like barbecue sauce, some tomato sauces, a lot of cereals), but I’m not going to be quite as strict in this area. I’m not exactly sure what to use in place of ketchup, so I might keep that (it’s not like it’s a major source of sugar for me).

What I WILL eat:
My two exceptions for sugar will be 1. chocolate soymilk, and 2. lunabars, because I think that for now the nutrition in them is worth it (my soy milk is fortified with b12, and lunabars have delicious minerals). I’m going to limit myself to one cup/one bar a day though, but if after 21 days I feel like these are sabotaging my efforts to reduce cravings, I’ll replace those out too. I’m going to continue to eat non-sweet snack foods like chips or pretzels, and I might even give baking with stevia a shot (it’s a natural, sugarless/no calorie/no side effect sweetener).

I plan to gorge myself on fresh fruit and veggies and protein and fat and water. Some people recommend eating low on the glycemic index all around and cutting out fruit, but since I think fruit is probably one of the healthiest things you could possibly eat, I’m keeping it and focusing more on eliminating the processed/refined sugar. I will probably be increasing my fat intake (ideally nuts, avocado, coconut, olive oil) to make up for the calories.

[My last coconut ice cream sandwich last night! Om nom nom nom.]

Experience so far:
Well, day 1 is over (that was yesterday). I felt really good until just after lunch when my energy level suddenly plunged and my head felt sort of weird, and then my energy slooowwly eventually creeped up again to a ‘sort of tired but not falling asleep like I was before’ level. I wouldn’t necessarily attribute that to sugar related things though because I’ve been known to get sleepy after a meal! It was kind of weird how sudden the energy drop was though. I probably noticed it more because I had been paying attention to my body.

For breakfast I had oatmeal the way I usually make it (chopped walnuts, spoonful of peanut butter, cinnamon, unsweetened almond milk) but without the maple syrup and a glass of water on the side. It was kind of weird having it unsweetened, but totally edible. For lunch I had pasta, and the canned tomatoes I used did have sugar added (and were DELICIOUS~), but it was only around 7% or so and I’m not policing non-dessert foods as much. After that I didn’t really feel satisfied so I had… carrots and lettuce and water since I wasn’t really sure what else to have besides pretzels. Throughout much of the day I’ve felt like snacking, not necessarily like eating sugar in particular, just a sort of persistent feeling of dissatisfaction/hunger. More calories required? Likely!

Around 6:30 pm I got hungry again but wasn’t sure what to make for dinner yet so I had a banana and a coconut! I like drinking the coconut water with a straw and then eating the actual coconut inside. Coconut water has a sort of sweet flavor, so that was nice, but when I bit into that banana, oh man, a tingly feeling erupted in my mouth and then spread out through my arms and legs, and before I was half done eating it I felt much more awake. I’m not even kidding. At least being a banana addict is a step up from being a candy addict.

Then I finally made a batch of burgers and had one on a bun with lettuce and ketchup (sugar, whuh-oh) and I had my glass of chocolate milk as well (a whopping 19 grams of sugar, yikes), bringing the day to a close. I felt the same kind of tingly feeling with the chocolate milk, but it wasn’t as pronounced as it was with the banana.

It’s only the first day so it might be too early to tell, but so far it’s easier than I thought, considering comments I’ve read from other people who have quit sugar (then again, they probably eliminated it almost completely, in some cases they eliminated fruit). It probably helps that last night I watched a documentary on heroin addicts so I know that whatever this experience is like it will pale in comparison to that!! Still, since I stayed home yesterday, it was difficult to get my mind off of it. If this experiment continues the way it does, it should be smooth sailing.

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Have you ever quit or thought about quitting sugar (or any other substance or food)? What was your experience like?

Posted on August 15th, 2011
Filed under: Being Healthy, Featuring, Feeling Awesome, Living (All Posts)
Topics: diet, experiment, health, life design

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[Image Source - Used under Creative Commons Attribution license. Thanks, edenpictures!]

Over the past year, my perspective has shifted away from valuing/wanting material things towards valuing/wanting experiences. Is it a coincidence that in the past two months I’ve suddenly developed in interest in performing arts?

First I picked up Astrojax (thanks Jessica!), I’ve tried singing for the first time in years, I’m suddenly practicing dance every day. I was just in a movie as a favor to a friend (and for fun). Earlier this week I even tried hopping on my friend’s rip stick – not with great results, but I tried it! Which is more than I would have done three or four years ago. For a minute I considered acquiring a skateboard.

When I say performance, I don’t necessarily mean “something you do in front of an audience,” since you could practice guitar alone or with a small group of friends if you wanted to. I know that there are tons of writings about the nature of craft and performance, so I might not be using the accepted terminology, but for the purposes of this discussion I would consider a “crafting skill” to be anything where you work towards building an end product which is a thing (drawing, design, sculpture, writing, software), that you can chip away at, erase, and redo in pieces over time. I’m considering a “performance skill” to be something where you have to execute a precise string of actions competently all at once (gymnastics, piano, Ultimate Frisbee, martial arts, competitive gaming, public speaking). Obviously, at some points the line between them is fuzzy (doing live portraits, or acting for film), but it’s a sufficient classification for this article.

I’ve never been that into performance type skills for most of my life – I wasn’t good at sports, I shied away from presentations, I quit all of my performance based lessons when I was a kid and got out of music as soon as I was allowed to in high school. There is this pressure in having to do everything perfectly at this exact moment, on cue – when everybody is watching you – that comes with performance, and that lead me to avoid those types of experiences in favor of craft based skills. If I messed up a drawing, I could redo part of it, or scrap it and do another one – people would only judge the final product, something external from me, and that made it safer. I suspect that many craft based people might know what I’m talking about.

So, what has motivated me to want to practice these types of skills only recently? It’s probably a number of factors. Once you don’t have to worry about acquiring material things, what is there left to do? Well, one area you can explore is training your body, learning skills, expanding your capabilities. Practicing dance isn’t the least healthy hobby I could take up. And I’ve always seen performance type skills as being “cool” (perhaps due to their unattainability for me) – and I’m not immune to wanting to be cool, even if it’s only in my own eyes. ;) There’s also the fact that I’ve pretty much made my hobbies my job – which is awesome, but if I’m doing them for hours professionally, I also want a different type of activity to play with in my down time! The physical nature of performance is a refreshing break from the cerebral nature of academic learning or solving design problems.

As for the ‘material‘ nature of craft vs. the ‘experiential‘ nature of performance – I’m not sure if this is directly related to my shift in attitude away from materialism, but it almost seems like a convenient metaphor. Performance still requires equipment (music instruments, gadgets for maintaining musical instruments, sports equipment, etc) and some craft based activities (like programming) don’t use many physical materials. I still like my material things (have you seen my room?!) and I still like making things (comics in the works)! But I think I’m becoming a more balanced person creatively. I want to have a huge portfolio of projects that says “look at all of the awesome stuff I’ve made”, but I also want to be able to say “look at all of the awesome stuff I can do“. It’s like a whole other world of expression and games to play has opened up for me.

[Image source: 1 and 2.]

How to start with performance skills if you’re a craft based person:

Embrace your learning style.
When I first thought about taking up dance again, I thought about signing up for lessons, but that really turned me off. Maybe it was because of less-than-stellar experiences with lessons in the past, but I’m really not a “must go to this location at this time every week in order to do something” type of person (unless it’s for a fundamental like school or work). I love learning things on my own, it’s how I taught myself drawing and web design/development. (Disclaimer: I have taken a few art classes, as a kid and in high school, but I’m pretty sure that 80% of my skill is from teaching myself and practicing on my own.) While I haven’t mastered either of these skills (yet!), and I might be missing some basic knowledge that everyone who takes lessons knows – I’m good enough at them that people pay me to do them. I want my dance practice to be about playing and exploration rather than someone telling me what to do and evaluating me. I don’t have any aspirations of performing for an audience or dancing professionally, so if that means that I never achieve mastery, then I’m okay with that. It’s better than not doing it at all. If I get stuck or get more serious about developing my skill, or if I find a class that seems to be perfect for me, I’ll consider trying lessons.

Remove the pressure of doing it for an audience (unless you want to).
Remember, you don’t even have to do it in front of anybody if you don’t want to! Learn the skill for fun and personal development. You can do it in front of other people when you get more confident. I’m practicing dance alone in my room for now, and I’ve only sung in front of a couple of other people! You can do your activity alone, jam with a few friends, upload a youtube video, or perform informally on the street. There are tons of ways to have fun with your skill outside of a traditional performance setting.

Remember how long you had to practice your craft based skills.
Remember that just like craft based skills, performance skills need to be built up, developed and practiced over time – when you start learning something, you’re going to suck, and that’s fine! Own your newbie status. :)

There are instructional videos for just about anything online.
Yup! Try YouTube or Google.

Pick something simple and fun that doesn’t require a huge time/money commitment.
I can pick up and play Astrojax five minutes at a time as a break from my regular activities. I don’t have to schedule practice, I do it anyway because it’s fun and I can see myself getting better!

Start with something quirky.
In fact, Astrojax is a great way to get started because, 1. many people haven’t heard of so nobody expects you to be good at it, and 2. the learning curve on it is great and it will help build your confidence! It’s been amazing to see my muscle memory slowly and steadily pick up things.

Then, pick an activity you always wished you could do!
Have you always wanted to play a rock song, run away and join the circus, or become a Street Fighter champion? Choose an activity you’re inspired by, even if you don’t currently see it as “something you could/would do”. That way, if you practice consistently enough, it WILL become something you do, become a part of you, and you will accomplish a life dream and feel AWESOME!

Additional Resources

If you don’t think you could learn a performance skill, maybe you need to remove some limiting beliefs?

David Seah‘s Piano Karaoke Blog Night – I found this reflective article by David super interesting – a communication designer/analytical thinker’s perspective on music and how musicians/singers think. I totally identify with him in that my interest in dance may have been rekindled by certain videogames. ;)

“Right now, she’s working out how to sing Bonnie Raitt’s Give Them Something to Talk About with Elise, who is improvising and transposing the song on-the-fly as they look up lyrics on her iPad. They’re both having a good time, and as a result I’m having a good time too. There are a lot of goofs and hitches, but no one minds at all…it’s part of the process, and it strikes me that the people here are actually playing with music. They’re not fixated on correct performance or proper technique. Instead, they are part of the experience of music. This is a bit different from how I’m used to thinking about music. My mom was an organist, played hymns at church, and taught piano lessons to seminary students. I grew up surrounded by church music of the traditional variety, everything in the key of C major. Musically, I think of C major is being the equivalent of the “Times New Roman” font in graphic design, and it doesn’t exactly move me.”

“The seasoned musicians sometimes stop and wax enthusiastically over a particular arrangement of notes…”it’s a weird transition that happens right in the middle! The whole song is C major, and then it goes into D minor; what you’d expect is it to do THIS instead. Wow. It’s genius!” This is followed by a cheerful wave of acknowledgement from the others in the room. It’s a kind of awareness that mirrors some aspects of graphic design: the suspension of completion, the playing against expected patterns, and the use of our ability to discern the direction of a change to guide our emotions. Pretty darn cool stuff.”

If Tim Ferriss is good at one thing, it’s learning how to be good at many things. (Haxx!!) See his How To Breakdance 101: Unleash Your Inner B-boy, and How to Feel Like The Incredible Hulk (swimming, tango, language learning).

Gala Darling‘s The Daring Young Girl – My First Trapeze Lesson! A writer turned high-flying circus performer, wow!

Jessica Mullen‘s Astrojax and the Meaning of Life. Hooray for Astrojax!

Check out this TED video: The LXD: In the Internet age, dance evolves… “The LXD (the Legion of Extraordinary Dancers) electrify the TED2010 stage with an emerging global street-dance culture, revved up by the Internet. In a preview of Jon Chu’s upcoming Web series, this astonishing troupe show off their superpowers.”

Lastly, a selection of articles by the ever-fabulous Steve Pavlina. Most of these are more oriented to hardcore rapid skill development, if you really want to kill it with your new skill:

• Branching Out
• Master the Basics
• Rapid Improvement
• Progressive Training
• Overcoming Fear of Public Speaking
• Videotape Your Performance

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Posted on June 19th, 2011
Filed under: Being Healthy, Exploring, Featuring, Feeling Awesome, Learning, Living (All Posts)
Topics: dance, performance, toys

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(Thanks artoz for the base photo! And Jessica for the inspiration to try combining images like this. :) )

For the past two years I have set New Year’s goals for myself – longer term goals that I wanted to take a whole year to work on. I do it in conjunction with New Year’s not because I think that the time is particularly special, but why not tap into the collective energy of everyone else who is setting goals at the same time?

In 2009 my major goal was to run 5 days a week, slowly increasing duration. I also had a secondary goal of trying 20 vegan recipes over the course of the year. In terms of running, I went from being about to jog for about 5 minutes to a whole 40 minutes!

And deciding to do the recipes was instrumental in my going vegan, since otherwise I would not have any clue what to make for myself! (Also it proved to me that vegan desserts are awesome.) It turned out that I liked 16 of the 20 recipes enough to make them again, and it gave me exposure to the different ingredients and techniques frequently used in vegan cooking and baking.

ProTip: If you’re thinking about a diet change, but aren’t sure if you want to go at it full tilt, commit to at least trying a certain number of recipes that fit that diet! You might be surprised! It makes it so much easier to switch later if you decide you want to.

In 2010 my goal had to do with freelance income. I pushed myself to increase my freelance income by 5.5% every month. I used a spreadsheet to calculate my target income for every month.

Even though I didn’t actually make “a lot” in terms of what a full time freelancer would make (I already had school and a day job), this was a big deal for me because it forced me to actually seek out these jobs and make sales every month, and it actually gave me a target to hit. Before I set this goal for myself, I might not have even done any freelance work in a given month. I was forced to get creative and ask, “okay now… I have 8 days left, and I have to sell $X worth of services/stuff. What can I do to create that?”

The result was that I made about 50% more than the goal I set for myself at the beginning of the year. I’m sure that I made at least double what I would have if I had never set this goal. On top of that, I got experience trying different kinds of offerings and promotions. The best part was that I gained confidence in my ability to support myself with my freelance design and illustration work once I leave school. Based on these results, I would encourage anyone thinking about freelancing or running your own business to try a goal like this.

On the morning of December 31, 2010, I was sitting in my hotel room in Hong Kong, looking out the 11^th story window to the bustling street below and thinking about what I might do for my 2011 New Year’s goal, or if I even wanted to have one. I had gone through some major realizations during the past six months about the purpose of life and the way I want to live it. (Here’s the answer, the short version, straight from the back of the book: The purpose of life is to feel awesome, enjoy yourself and have fun!) A few of the influences which helped me reach this conclusion, in various ways, were Jessica Mullen, Kelly Cree, Steve Pavlina, Abraham-Hicks, Dan Millman’s Way of the Peaceful Warrior, Halcyon and David Cain’s Raptitude. There are probably several more, but it’s kind of a blur.

I wanted to transition to living more in the moment, in the flow, enjoying everything I already have that’s awesome rather than worrying about the future. Sure, I think that planning can be helpful, but you can’t ever be certain where you will end up. The only thing you can truly commit to is enjoying the journey. This is a big step because I usually plan EVERYTHING down to the detail.

I had also recently encountered the concepts of minimalism and simplicity (mainly via Leo Babauta’s Zen Habits & mnmlist, and Everett Bogue’s Far Beyond the Stars), and had been trying in small ways to incorporate the concept of “less is more” into my life. For the first time in several years (maybe since 10^th grade in high school?), I had stopped trying to maintain a task list for my personal life. I would make short lists day to day if I thought it would help, but no tasks carrying over or systems like GTD. And I still maintained a task list at my job, because forgetting to do assignments for your coworkers is not good.

I found that it freed up a lot of mental RAM. I didn’t have the constant weight of 45 undone tasks looming on my mind – at most I would remember the top 3 that I actually HAD to accomplish over the next few days, and I did this just fine without needing a task list to remind me. Many of the things I would have put on my task list, it turned out I didn’t have to actually act on.

One of my friends used to say, “All problems resolve themselves if I just ignore them long enough.” We had laughed about it, but now I was actually beginning to see truth in it, at least on some level. As someone used to having a tight grip on things, this concept felt scary.

Leo Babauta’s article “The Best Goal is No Goal” really threw me. Go read it, it’s not long.

Could I accomplish the same thing I did when I threw out my task list, by tossing out my goal list? I saw the reasoning behind it. But how could I deny how much my previous experiments had helped me? I wasn’t sure that I was ready to give up the idea of goals completely. Still, I was too curious to let this idea go. Maybe I would try something in between?

So what did I actually decide to do for 2011? STAY TUNED!!

Posted on February 26th, 2011
Filed under: Being Healthy, Featuring, Feeling Awesome, Learning, Living (All Posts), Making Money
Topics: books, exercise, freelancing, goals, minimalism, new years, simplicity, veganism

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Took these after getting home from my vaccination appointment Thursday night! I got two in one arm, one in the other, and a take-home oral vaccine to take before I leave. I am now VIRUS-PROOF. Isn’t technology amazing?

I learned something Thursday: An effective way for me to dissipate anxiety is to draw a picture of a character being calm.

Normally, I’m fine with vaccinations, and I don’t have any resistance to getting them – I know it’s something that needs to be done, and I know that it doesn’t even hurt much and it’s over pretty fast, so I don’t fight it. However, having that in combination with some other things (uncertainty about whether I was going to be able to make my appointment because of the road conditions, going out to a new area of town for the first time), I was feeling pretty stressed out.

I tried telling myself to just relax and breathe, I tried reminding myself that even though I feel anxious about these types of things all the time nothing bad ever actually happens, I tried thinking of other unrelated things that would make me feel good, I tried visualizing myself going through the process of finding my way there and getting shots in a serene and unshakeable manner, but nothing really seemed to help. Then, I tried drawing a picture of myself being calm and I instantly calmed down.

Two theories on why this worked:

1. The fact that I was focused on an activity made me not think about the thing I was nervous about. Simple.
2. In order to draw a picture of someone displaying a certain emotion, I have to empathize with the character and imagine how they feel and from that I can determine what position I should draw the character in.

In this respect, being an effective illustrator is kind of like being an effective actor. I need to figure out what I would feel in order to figure out what I would do in terms of physical emotional tells, and I need to figure out what I would do in order to figure out what I should draw.

Back when I was younger (age 11-15?) it was more obvious that I empathized with the characters I was drawing. For example, if I was drawing someone with their tongue sticking out, after a few minutes I would realize that I was actually sticking my own tongue out. :P Now, I don’t even think about it, but I must still do this.  Actually, I don’t think that it mattered that I was the subject of the drawing, it probably could have been any other subject and it would have been just as effective in calming me down. Maybe this is why people tell me that I’m great at drawing expressions in characters – the fact that I do this subconsciously.

Posted on November 27th, 2010
Filed under: Being Healthy, Creating, Exploring, Featuring, Feeling Awesome, Learning, Living (All Posts)
Topics: calm, drawing, emotion, travel

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I thought I would kick off my article writing with something simple and lighthearted. Here goes!

—

You have a goal. It’s a great goal – you know that if you buckle down and work on it, your life will get so much awesomer.

Maybe you want to start exercising. Maybe it’s to lose weight. Maybe it’s practicing your craft. Maybe it’s building your business.

You feel ready. You want to do this. You KNOW this is something you SHOULD be doing.

But…

But for some reason, you haven’t started on it. Or, you started it but then put it off in order to browse tumblr and then forgot about it. This is one of those goals that will take steady work over time to achieve, but after a few weeks (or days) the goal doesn’t feel quite as shiny as when you started. I’ve been there. (In fact, I AM there right now with some of my projects.)

If only you had… something. Something simple. Something that would motivate you to keep making that incremental progress, week after week. Something… sparkly?

Sticker Charts, the Answer to your Need for Constant Shininess

A sticker chart can be a valuable tool for keeping you on track with your goal. Every day that you successfully do what you said you’d do (depending on what your goal is), you get to place a sticker in the box corresponding to that day. It’s easy, it’s fun and a little silly. It also works.

In late 2008 I decided that my New Years Goal for 2009 was to make exercise part of my daily routine, which I defined as jogging five days a week. To help me stay motivated I made one of these charts. My results were great: the only missed days in my chart are from one weekend when I had a fever. In fact, I actually “cheated” a few times in order to fill up gaps in my sticker chart by exercising twice on one day to make up for not exercising another day. Hey, 20 minutes of running is 20 minutes of running. :)

A few years ago I stumbled across The Printable CEO series of forms designed by David Seah. The idea behind them is that forms can be used to direct your thoughts and actions according to what is important to you, and they can motivate you to act by providing you with lots of fun boxes to tick. My inspiration for trying a sticker chart owes a lot to David‘s creations. Kudos to him!

So why does this work?

This method works because it uses many of the same motivators that games use to keep players interested. I am greatly intrigued by how game mechanics can be used to motivate people to make positive change in their lives. Here are some of the principles used with the sticker chart:

Instant, continuous gratification. With goals like exercising (or even more so, something nebulous like ‘practicing’ something) it can be hard to see exactly what kind of progress you’ve made that day. We are wired to love instant feedback and gratification. So, using a sticker chart provides that by giving you a small reward every time you complete a unit of progress.

Progress tracking. This chart acts like the progress bar you see when completing some sort of quest in a game. It is hugely motivating to see exactly how far you’ve come and how much you have left to do.

Momentum. When people see a progress bar, they have this urge to fill up the bar by completing the task. And once you see that first week filled up perfectly, you want to keep your Perfect streak going. You don’t want to break your combo.

It starts easy and gradually gets harder. Okay, this isn’t an essential feature of using a chart, but I would HIGHLY recommend starting with a super easy action that you have no excuse not to complete. For example, when I decided to run five days a week, the first week I just decided to jog for just 5 minutes a day.  The week after, I increased it to 6 minutes. Then 7 minutes, and so on. This allowed me to build up a few weeks of successes, and towards the end of the year I was jogging for around 40 minutes a day! I credit the idea of starting super easy to Leo Babauta at Zen Habits.

How to get started with your own chart

1. Obtain some amazing stickers.

Make the first step the easiest and funnest step. Go to a dollar store or office supply store and pick out some stickers that you love! Don’t be afraid to choose the My Little Pony or Batman stickers if that’s what you really want. Life is supposed to be fun! This way you’ll be excited to see them and use them. Caveat: Don’t pick ones that are too big, unless you want to make a really big chart.

I decided to use some rainbow star stickers that I already had laying around. I like that there are different colours to pick from (even though I decided to go the super organized route and stick them in rainbow order).

2. Define the specifics of your goal.

What exactly do you need to do? It should be a clear action like “run for five minutes” or “take notes on 5 pages of my text book”, something that you have direct control over.

How often do you need to do it? Do you want to do things on a specific day (such as Monday, Wednesday and Friday) or just a certain number of times per week?

Decide on a time frame. When will you be ‘done’ with this goal? Even if the action is something you would ideally want to keep doing indefinitely, I find that not having an endpoint in sight just makes me feel like I’m on a treadmill.  In order to stay motivated, I have to be able to see the end of the tunnel.

I’ve decided to tackle this problem by consecutively choosing mini goals that all support a larger goal. In my case, my larger goal is that I want to exercise regularly for the rest of my life, but right at this moment my mini goal is the six week long Hundred Push Ups Challenge. When I finish that, I’ll pick a slightly different goal next. (Yoga?)

3. Make your chart.

You can spend as much or as little effort on this as you want. Are you the type of person who is motivated by having a beautiful notebook to write in? By all means, make your chart look pretty. It just needs to have some sort of grid on it with a box for each day.

The first time I made one to track my New Years Goal of running every day, I spent some time designing a tracking grid in Photoshop and printed it out. The second time, I wanted to get started quickly with the Hundred Push Ups Challenge so I just scribbled some  columns in pencil on a piece of notebook paper. It’s proving to be just as effective for me.

Another thing you might want to consider is leaving some extra columns for ‘rest days’ if you want to have a few days off every week. You can still put stickers in these days since technically you are sticking to your plan by not doing anything. Fantastic.

4. Post it.

This is quite possibly the most important part of the whole process. You HAVE to place your chart somewhere that you will see it at least once a day, if not multiple times a day. This is non negotiable.

Posting it will greatly increase your motivation to complete your tasks because when you look at your chart every day, you will not want to have to see a big gaping hole in your chart reminding you of your failure.

I recommend putting it on a wall, because while you can turn off your computer or close a notebook, if it’s on your wall you can’t help but see it. I post mine above my bed side table in my bedroom, so I see it when I wake up and before I go to sleep as well as whenever I enter my room. No escape. :)

And that’s that.

Make sure you run through your first week flawlessly so you can get some successes under your belt. If you decide to make your own sticker chart, take some pictures and show me! I’d love to see if people can successfully use this method for different types of goals.

Best of luck on your quest for greatness!

Resources

• 4 Simple Steps to Start the Exercise Habit on Zen Habits.
• The Printable CEO by David Seah.
• What is Goalstreaming by Jessica Mullen. Another interesting method of achieving your goals, one that I am playing with lately. This method is more centered on documenting your progress as it happens and tapping your social network to find solutions.

Posted on November 14th, 2010
Filed under: Being Healthy, Creating, Featuring, Feeling Awesome, Learning, Living (All Posts)
Topics: game theory, goals, how to, stickers

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