I am someone who puts a lot of pressure on myself which means every goal I set myself becomes an all or nothing exercise, and pretty soon the joy of the journey is lost. Not long after that I end up feeling overburdened or a failure.

I have been looking for help with this personality flaw for a long time and from my search it seems that the people who are most successful in introducing change in their lives are the ones who see each change as a lifestyle experiment.

I know from my professional life that experiments are able to succeed or fail to produce the outcome. Both results are good results as you end up learning something. So on that basis I am going to conduct a month-long experiment to determine what lifestyle will work for me going forward.

I am using advise from a number of sources to inform ‘a perfect month of health’ to see how I feel if I am diligent in applying the recommendations.

My sources for advise are:

The key principles and tactics that I am using this month are:

  1. Set a clear ‘Why’ that I can keep referring back to when motivation is low or if I slip up and need to reset
  2. Prioritise sleep, and keep my going to bed and getting up times consistent. Bed time will be 10:30 and my getting up time will be 7:00
  3. Remove process food and inflammatory foods for a month, following the principles of the Wild Diet, but not counting calories or using a food diary. I will also continue to use Intermittent Fasting to support my health goals.
  4. Exercising a minimum of 22 minutes a  day and introducing weight based training at least twice a week. I will have a general goal of being more active, but I will experiment with mixing activities up so that I increase mobility, strength and balance, but reduce the risk of injury
  5. Focus on reducing stress by managing my time and not over committing my time. I will reduce the amount of time I spend with negative people, and meditate every day both as a guided meditation and as a Qi Gong physical meditation
  6. Adjust the balance of tech and human interaction, reduce the amount of negative content is pushed at me and choose how I use tech to engage with my fellow humans. I will limit my news consumption, adjust all my notifications, only use one item of tech at a time, talk versus email and put down tech by 8:30 PM to wind down for sleep.
  7. Increase social interactions in my own community both in the village, with colleagues and with old friends. Aiming at increasing this to at least one event per week.
  8. Review and develop my experiment for June.

I will conduct and record my observations and metrics each primary goal and the impact is has on my physical and mental state in this blog every day in May.