Background

Around 2006 after about a year into college, I starting becoming frustrated with my lack of energy to even go to class, much less study for one. As I was looking for answers, I saw that a lot of people were going through the same thing.

Some were fed up with long college papers, tests, boring classes, outrageous expenses, but I also noticed that there were many who questioned why they were even there in the first place. You could tell they didn’t want to be there, but for one reason or another they kept going and complaining about it. Of course I was doing the same thing at the time.

Most of the advice that I came across just didn’t sit right with me. It was advice like “keep going” and “stick it out, it’ll be worth it later” and “you need a degree now a days” mixed in with some stories of regret for not finishing.

The advice that did feel right to me was “you don’t have to do anything” and “think for yourself”. So…soon after that I decided to drop out.

This is not meant to be “should you stay or should you go” advice. I won’t undermine your incredible ability to think for yourself by telling you what to do. I just want to get you ready for what to expect if you are considering quitting college and to share a perspective of a college dropout.

Relief

I’m pretty sure you’ll experience feelings of relief if you felt college wasn’t right for you. The day I let college go was a huge weight off my shoulders. No more giving into family pressure and reflecting on failing grades semester after semester. No more feeling guilty about not going to classes and procrastinating. No more wild college overspending on said classes and living expenses. No overly optimistic belief that I was gonna try super hard the next semester. Most importantly, no more confusion and lack of direction.

The Critics

You can bet there will be people who think negatively of you when you quit. I’ve had about 2-3 interventions where people sat me down and tried to make me see “their side”. These could be people that haven’t even met you, but heard that you quit through friends or family.

It’s disappointing that some people are brainwashed into thinking that a degree is the be-all, end-all of success. I’m sure you can think of tons of successes you’ve had without a degree. If you can walk, there goes one success already.

You can show these people all the examples you want that shatter that limiting belief. Most likely they’ll still cling to it until they’re ready to let it go.

People also might think negatively of you because they see you as being a quitter. If you quit, technically they’d be right. But who’s to say quitting is always a bad thing? Does it make sense to continue going down a path you know isn’t right for you? If you’ve ever quit smoking/abusing drugs/drinking excessively/overeating/(insert anything else that’s disempowering)….congratulations!

Debt Collection

Uh…I’m not gonna lie to you. This sucks.

Since my mentality was “must finish college at all costs”, I took on a lot of unnecessary debt. Credit cards, high interest loans, private loans, you name it. And…let’s just say they aren’t letting me forget about it (multiple phone calls every day and letters). The debt doesn’t really hit you until you decide to quit because many lenders are pretty lenient as long as you’re still attending school. Even soon out of school they’re pretty lenient with options like deferment and forbearance. Credit card companies..um…not so much.

I imagine the calls and letters would go away if I were to get a job soon and start paying them back, but that’s not how I want to pay them back.

Largely there’s been a lot of ignoring on my part. After a while of taking their calls, I realized that talking to them just made me feel bad and I wasn’t making any considerable progress anyway. Usually they would try to scare me into paying them with threats and what not, so I just stopped answering. I’m aware of the consequences of that decision and I still have every intention of paying back the money I owe, but not out of the fear/guilt state they seem to try to push me towards.

Ironically, the criticism and the debt collection calls/letters have made me feel more successful. If you’ve studied successful people, you know that criticism comes with the package, so being put to test of being able to handle it builds your confidence in your ability to persist. As far as the debt, many of the richest in the world have been broke and/or deep in debt. Those who successfully built wealth eventually recovered from those times, dusted themselves off, learned from it and moved On To Next One.

Authority

By far, the acceptance of my own authority is the biggest benefit to quitting. No one I knew of thought quitting was a good idea, so I violated a lot of expectations.

And it felt goooood.

It felt good not having to please anyone around me. It felt good to know that my decisions were aligned with my desires. It even felt good knowing that people around me would benefit because I would be able to spread my excited empowerment to them rather than my frustration and anger.

Lessons Learned

1. Make quicker, more decisive decisions

Successful people listen to their intuition and other warning signs around them and decisively take action to create an outcome they want. Taking care of it might require taking some uncomfortable action, but they do it before the situation turns into a disaster.

I didn’t have to spend semester after semester wallowing in guilt and frustration. I could have nipped it at the bud. Those semesters cost me money, but more importantly they cost me time.

Discovering the Law of Attraction helped with this. It’s easier to act quickly and decisively if you’re focused on what you want instead of bogging yourself down with blaming, complaining or other distractions.

2. Listen to people who have been where you want to go

I realized that when people give advice, it comes from certain perspectives. I have to take that into consideration if I’m thinking of acting on their advice. For example, let’s go back to the advice I mentioned in the beginning. The “stick with it” advice came from employees. Many of whom I know for a fact are “sticking with” jobs they don’t like going to 40 hours a week. However, “you don’t have to do anything” and “think for yourself” both came from successful business owners.

Sticking with it just caused me more frustration. I’m thankful I made the decision to think for myself and quit.

Some Questions for You

What are you tolerating? Are you going down a road you know isn’t right for you? Scared to quit?

Maybe you just don’t want to go through the hassle of quitting and moving in another direction? I’ll tell you straight up, dealing with those consequences while you’re feeling relief and excitement for the future yields better results than continuing to put up with what you don’t want and being frozen in fear of quitting.

Afraid of what other people might think of you? What about what you think of yourself?

Related posts:

1. How To Make Straight A’s in College
2. From Weight Loss to Good Health
3. Persistence

Thought I’d give an update as to how things were going.

30-Day Trial #4

I didn’t continue the trial too long after I started it. Around that time I was starting to think that these 30-day trials were a way for me to avoid doing stuff I was afraid of. There were some big changes I wanted to make (location) and I thought that the 30-day trials were just me stalling. After taking some time off I can see that that did have some truth to it, but I still want to keep doing visualization.

Ebay Reselling

While I was doing my other trials, I was always questioning whether I should be working on visualization, reading, etc. when there are much bigger issues to deal with. I wanted to move out, so shouldn’t I be doing stuff to make enough money to support myself after moving out? I thought so, so I did.

Ideally I wanted my sole income to be made online. I had made money online before, but I had never made a full income before. Usually when I hear about making money online Ebay comes up, so I thought I’d give it a try. I bought this book (here’s a pretty accurate review of it), bought some stuff off slickdeals.net and resold them on Ebay. I had sold a lot of stuff on Craigslist before, (everything in my apartment) so I had a pretty good idea on what to do. The intention was to get my feet wet with selling and shipping, so I wasn’t too concerned about profit. I think people who really put forth serious effort reselling on Ebay would laugh at my super beginner strategy.

One thing I like about Ebay is that it’s so easy. I guess over the years they’ve done a lot to the site to make sure everything runs as smoothly as possible. Same thing goes for Craigslist.

Purpose

Though I do like Ebay and Craigslist, the idea of reselling makes me feel like I’m going backwards. The truth is that the world doesn’t need another Ebay reseller and it felt pretty empty to me anyway. At the core, I’m just manipulating numbers for my own benefit. Writing on this blog is a lot more fun and fulfilling. It’s made me realize that making $1 the way you really want to is better than making $1000 in a way you feel you have to “settle” for. However, neither option is a win-win.

Lately I’ve really been doing some serious thought about purpose. There’s so much talk about purpose within the self help field, but up until now I really didn’t pay it too much attention other than reading a book on it. It’s a pretty big awareness raiser when you realize that even if you haven’t consciously chosen a purpose you still have one.

Clearly the purpose of me reselling was just to make some profit, BUT this is what I don’t want to see anymore of. There’s tons of stuff out there doing more harm than good and wasting people’s time. The sole reason much of that stuff sticks around is because it generates money. So many things are being motivated by fear or lack, and I don’t want to add to that.

So what do I want? I have a general idea and it is written down, but after listening to Frank Kern’s Core Influence and reading some articles on Steve Pavlina’s blog (How to Visualize your New Reality and How to Order) and reading other self-help sources, I’m pretty sure I haven’t been nearly as detailed as I should be in describing exactly what I want.

In a perfect world:

- What would your thoughts be when you went to sleep?
- How exactly would you be earning money?
- What would your friends be like?
- What would you have for dinner?

Those are some questions from Core Influence (probably somewhere before that too) and they are questions I hadn’t thought of. Looks like I got some work to do. :)

Related posts:

1. Visualization – Day 19
2. Visualization – Day 23
3. Visualization – Day 6

I’m pretty excited to implement some different strategies I’ve read in Creative Visualization, and I’d be happy to hear any other recommendations on the subject.

I want to visualize for at least 45 minutes each day. 15 min right after I wake up, 15 min in the middle of the day (we’ll say 2:00pm), and 15 before I go to sleep.

I’ll be giving updates on daily on Steve Pavlina’s Forums and Zen Habits’ Forums. :smile:

Related posts:

1. 30-Day Visualization Trial
2. 30-Day Trial #3 Revised
3. 30-Day Trial #2 – Day 1

After the revision on Day 6, the three goals were to:

1) Wake up at 6:00am daily and stay awake
2) Visualize for at least 20 minutes daily
3) Eat no processed starches, foods with refined sugars, cheese or fruits throughout the day

There were stops, revisions, twists, turns, and bumps, but it was still a fun learning experience for me. I imagine that will be similar to many 30-day trials I do. After the initial revision, things went pretty well up until around the 19th.

Waking up at 6:00am and staying awake

On most days I would go to bed late and wake up at 6am only to go right back to sleep for another hour or two or wander around and waste time.

This goal just didn’t happen at all. There were many times I wondered if deep down inside I really wanted to accomplish this goal. I do want to be an early riser, and there’s no doubt in my mind I can do it. Going to sleep when I’m sleepy has been the real source of the problem, so I’ll have to do some more searching to find out why I’m not getting to bed on time.

I know one cause is productivity-related. As I’m writing this now, I’m wondering why it took me so long to get started with this update seeing as I’ve had the whole day open to get this done. Many times I’ll wait until late at night to start something I would have liked to had done earlier. Lord, I remember my first visualization trial I probably hit the “publish” button on 80% of the posts right before midnight just to get it up on time. I think I’ll re-read some productivity books so I can dissolve this problem.

I know that isn’t the only problem though. There are days when I don’t write for the blog at all, soooo there’s gotta be somethin’ else.

Visualizing for 20 minutes

I stopped visualization after the 19th and I started doing it again around the 28th. I can tell the lack of visualization had an impact on my focus and the other two goals in this trial. Things started getting more relaxed and the days were filled with me succumbing to one distraction after another. I’m pretty sure I won’t have a problem with this goal next month though. :wink:

Cutting out processed starches, foods with refined sugars, cheese and fruits

When I stopped visualizing, I started eating processed starches and foods with refined sugars after going a month without eating any. Next time I try a goal like this I’ll put the goal in words that focus on what I want (more whole foods) not what I don’t want (processed crap).

This is a health goal, but it’s a health goal that is affected by finances. A person that has built a life-long healthy lifestyle earns enough money to buy health conscious food and supplies. I want to be a person who can afford the healthy options too. Right now I’m not quite there yet, but I can see my finances going in that direction too. :smile:

Related posts:

1. 30-Day Trial #2 Results
2. 30-Day Trial #3 – Day 19
3. 30-Day Trial #3 Revised

Personal Experience

When I first watched The Secret, I didn’t really give it too much thought and put it away for two years. Then I cracked it back open when I was at my lowest point and simply wanted to feel good. After I re-watched it, it made me feel better and it made more sense than the first time I watched it but I still felt like something was missing from it. I became crystal clear about it all only after listening to the transpacific interview/commentary on the DVD where Rhonda Byrne explains why implementing what’s on the movie works and shares her personal experience with it.

Why the Commentary is Better

There were a lot of people featured in this documentary, and each person only had a limited amount of time to speak. Today I understand why they structured the DVD like this, but I could see how it could seem unfocused and jumpy to a person searching for answers and seeing it for the first time. However, in the commentary Rhonda Byrne has the whole length of the movie to respond to the common questions and concerns Paul Harrington brings up.

After I heard her commentary, I listened to it about 10-15 more times. Then I went back to watch the movie again and it all made sense.

Related posts:

1. The Law of Attraction
2. Visualization – Day 24
3. Visualization – Day 6

Waking up at 6:00am and staying awake.

I think I’ve now formed a habit of waking up at 6:00am, walking around, then going back to sleep about an hour or two afterwards. :(  

I underestimated how difficult this would be. I thought it would be easier because I’ve had to wake up at around 6:00am for school and for jobs, and I also remember the yuck, sluggish, unrested feeling I would have forcing myself to get up. That situation is totally different from waking up at 6:00am feeling totally alert and well rested simply because you want to wake up early.

I’m pretty sure the problem stems from not going to sleep when I’m sleepy. Lately I’ve been considering the possibility that I’m self-sabotaging.  I don’t want my life to even remotely resemble a 9-5 job so maybe subconsciously I’m stopping it from getting closer to that. In many cases, it just comes down to decision. Usually late at night is when people message me, call me, or want to go places, so I might try connecting with more people that wake up early and value going to sleep at a reasonable time.

Visualization

This part of the trial has been going great as usual. I do it throughout the day now too, along with the daily 20-minute sessions. When I’ve been feeling self-doubt or frustration I take a deep breath and start visualizing. When I do that, my state changes instantly. Indecision, procrastination, doubt, worry, and anxiety are replaced with peace, appreciation, excitement and an eagerness to get started. I know that feeling is the most important part of the whole success process and I understand it a lot more now. When I do it before I write, the writing just flows and everything seems to go much easier. Because I feel abundant on the inside I can give abundantly on the outside. Contribution = power, so as a result I end up feeling more powerful too.

No processed starches, foods with refined sugars, or cheese

This part of the trial has yielded the most significant results for me. I’ve lost 27 pounds by just this diet change. The crazy thing is that I’m doing it with a lot of processed starches, fast food, and foods with refined sugars in the house I live in.

I’ve been able to keep this up because I’ve focused on less. First, I eliminated fast foods. I actually gained weight after that because I loaded up on store-bought processed junk foods, but once I had proven I could live without fast food then I cut out all processed foods. I realized cheese had the same kind of effect so I stopped eating that too. That caused me to load up on chicken/fish/beef/pork and vegetables. Taking it one step at a time has really allowed me to keep moving forwards. Glad I learned that from The Power of Less. :smile:

Related posts:

1. 30-Day Trial #3 Results
2. 30-Day Trial #2 Results
3. 30-Day Trial #2 – Day 15

I feel this could helpful to anyone starting from scratch trying to learn how they can be more effective at learning and implementing what they want to do, so I’m more than happy to share my experience with it.

When I did less, when I focused on building one habit at a time, I always felt like I could do more. During my first 30-Day visualization trial, I would visualize for 20 minutes a day, then wonder what to do with the rest of the day. I didn’t feel like I had done my best or got much accomplished. When I focused on less and took less action, it just didn’t feel right.

On the flip side, with 30-day trial #3 I set out to push myself with 7 goals to accomplish, and I made it to Day 2 before stopping. The 7 goals were ranging from health goals to productivity goals to reading goals, etc. It started feeling like an overwhelming job, and it was spreading my focus to thin.

The Solution

My best answer to that question came when I dropped the either/or thinking. Why not both? Why not do my best to immerse myself in and learn about one goal at a time? What would happen if I take one of the goals I wanted to lock in as a habit and learn all I could about it for 30 days, experiment with it, and find out the most effective way to ingrain it as a habit.

For instance, the main goal for this 30-day trial now is waking up at 6:00am (early for me). I could read articles on how to wake up early, talk to other people who wake up early now, practice to get my feet wet, and maybe even hang out with a family that wakes up early.

I got this from Steve’s article on rapid improvement and somehow it clicked that he’s approached many aspects of personal growth that way, so I want to do it too. :smile:

Related posts:

1. 30-Day Trial #2
2. 30-Day Trial #2 Results
3. 30-Day Trial #3 Revised

Since I have those two previous goals locked in as habits, for the remainder of this trial I’ll just focus on one additional goal – waking up at 6:00am and staying awake. This leaves me with 3 total goals this trial.

Why I’m cutting back

In the original trial I had 7 goals. After Day 2, I could see that this trial had gone from creating long-term empowering habits to an overwhelming and frustrating job. On Day 4, I just let it go.

I kind of laughed at myself when I first realized I had too many goals. I’ve read lots of self development material strongly advising against taking on too much. However, you don’t know how much is too much until you push yourself to the limit.

There’s no rush to create long-term habits. From now on every month I’ll tweak the trials, but I won’t add more than one goal to focus on.

Having too many goals cuts my focus right now. I can’t spend time tweaking and learning about better ways to do each goal because I’m spending so much time actingg on the many goals I set up for myself.

The time matters

Getting these habits done in a productive way is just as important to me as what I actually do. For instance, I’d like to wake up and visualize soon after waking up each day. I didn’t add that specifically in my goal, but I definitely have become aware that I do want that specification in there if I want to set up the day I envision.

That’s about it for this update. I was thinking about making another blog on this website. I would have a blog for 30-day trials and a regular blog. I don’t want this blog to just be overloaded with my 30-day trials and updates.

Related posts:

1. Doing Your Best vs. Focusing On Less
2. 30-Day Trial #3 – Day 3
3. 30-Day Trial #3 Results

So far, so good. Last night I stayed up until 1:00am and still managed to wake up and stay awake. It seems like my body is starting to adjust, so I’ll have to give this some more time.

2) Walking for 40 minutes

I originally made this just to get myself out of the house. I usually do all the other goals inside the house and writing and reading at a computer desk. This has really allowed me to get my head clear and gives me a boost of energy to dive into the other things I have planned for the day.

3) Visualizing for 20 minutes

It’s fun and easy now. I still plan on reading Creative Visualization next after finishing Awaken the Giant Within. Awaken the Giant Within is a thick book though.

4) Writing for 2 hours

Going great. I don’t have to write affirmations as much now because I have so much other stuff to write about.

5) Marketing for an hour

I’m cutting it out! The main reason is because I want to make sure I have all the other goals really enforced as habits before I tackle marketing. I want to create life-long habits, so there doesn’t have to be a rush. Maybe the next 30-day trial I might try it. As a result of really putting efforts into marketing, I know i’ll have lots of feedback and messages to respond to and I want to make sure I’m effective in replying and responding in a timely, high quality manner. I don’t want to feel overwhelmed or stressed out by it, and I’d like to develop a system (or use one that’s already out there) that I could use for the long term.

I’ll just hold off on this for now. No need to introduce three brand new habits anyway.

6) Reading for an hour

I’ve been trying to finish Awaken the Giant Within for about 2 months now. I know that if I’m up late finishing this trial, I don’t want reading to be the last thing I do. Last time I started reading late, it was only a matter time before I started to fall asleep.

7) No processed starches, cheeses, foods containing refined sugars

I’ve been eating a lot of greens and meats. I find when I eat only greens I’m always hungry. Guess I need more nuts/seeds in the diet. I want to step up my food variety. Last time I tried something like this, I found that the more bored I got with my meals, the stronger the urge to completely binge on the things I was trying to avoid.

Problems

Too Long?

The main problem is that this trial is taking up the whole day. I thought this might happen which is why I added the fact that I wanted to have it all done before 2:00pm in the original post. The reason it takes so long to finish everything is because of these breaks I take. When I finish one of the goals above, I take a break, and it usually ends up being more than an hour. After that hour I’m out of productive mode and have slipped into chill mode.

Too much?

If I cut out marketing that leaves six goals. I find that the more goals I add, the less time and focus I have to put on each specific goal. This reason alone has caused me to question having six goals. The ultimate goal is to have these habits stick one way or another, so after this trial is finished I should be able to see if having more goals makes it take longer for the habits to lock in.

Related posts:

1. 30-Day Trial #3
2. 30-Day Trial #2 Results
3. 30-Day Trial #2

From December 1 – December 30 I want to do the following daily:

1) Wake up at 6:00 am and stay awake!

I want to wake up at 6:00am and stay awake unlike the much of the last trial. Preferably, when I wake up I’d like to feel well rested, full of energy and motivated to start the day of right. I imagine that will take some planning the night before, getting to bed by at least 11:00pm, and doing some physical activity soon after I wake up.

2) Walk for 40 minutes

I want to take a 40-minute walk from 6:30am – 7:10am. Rain, sleet, snow, whatever!

3) Visualize for at least 20 minutes

This is probably the last time I’ll be mentioning this in the trials. After this 30 days I’m pretty sure I’ll have locked it in as a habit. I imagine this should be the easiest part of the trial for me because I actually look forward to it. It makes me feel good.

4) Write/edit for 2 hours

For now I’ll stick with writing affirmations + updates on the trial + other blog posts. Usually while doing these affirmations ideas pop in my head about what to write about, but when I’m consistently reading I find plenty of things to write about. I also want to read some self-editing books so I can make sure I post an article soon after I finish writing it.

5) Market for an hour

This would include connecting with others, contributing to other blogs, forums, social media and bookmarking.

6) Read for an hour

About 40-50 personal development books have been sitting in my closet collecting dust for a while. I read about 17 books and then it all came to a stop, but I have been listening to unabridged audio books from Audible. I imagine if I can get an hour of reading in a day, I’ll be able to consistently finish books and even put some reviews on here.

7) Eat no processed starches, foods containing refined sugars, cheese, or fruits

I can handle this all the way up until we get to the fruits. I’ll have to do some more research as to what fruits I should eat and which ones I shouldn’t, so that may change. So far fruits have had the same effect as foods with refined sugars and processed starches by making me feel sluggish and lethargic.

Have #1-6 done by 2:00pm

40 min (walking) + 20 min (visualization) + 120 min (writing) + 60 min (marketing) + 60 min (reading) + and an extra 90 min for cooking and eating, shower, brushing teeth, breaks, etc. = 6.5 hours. 6:00am + 6.5 hours = 12:30pm if . By having it done at 2:00 pm I’m actually giving myself some leeway.

I found that last 30 days my time with this blog extended throughout the day. Sometimes I would do my writing or visualization in the mornings and many times at night and I found it to be pretty stressful getting things done if I procrastinated with them. I found if I got it all done as early as possible then it made the rest of the day flow much smoother and I didn’t have to keep putting my focus on it and procrastinating with it.

I’ll be giving updates every 3 days and on Sundays I want to cut out #4 and #5. It’s going to be tough, but I’m up for the challenge. …. Let’s Go! :smile:

Related posts:

1. 30-Day Trial #2 Results
2. 30-Day Trial #2
3. 30-Day Trial #3 Results