Life Engineering Experiments–February 2012

2012 is going to be a year of change. 

To engineer that change, I plan on doing mini “life experiments.”  Experiments to last anywhere from a week to a month to possibly the entire year. 

Since one of my primary intentions for this year is to SIMPLIFY, I am starting with the PhD of simple living, Leo Babauta of Zen Habits.  Today Leo launched his premium membership and a new mini-course, Creating the Habit of Meditation.  I figured it was a perfect way to kick-off February.

So here’s the plan:

Follow the guidelines in the mini-course and learn how to practice meditation everyday for at least 5 minutes.  I’ve read about the benefits of meditation many times before and know a little about the many ways to do it.  But for February I plan to strictly follow the recommendations in this course.

Since I’ll be spending focused time on the Zen Habits website, I plan also committing to reading the material related to De-Cluttering.  Seems like a natural place to start if SIMPLIFYING is the goal.

So here we go.  Little steps to LIVE A BETTER STORY.

UPDATE:

Good news, Bad news.  I did really well with the meditation habit.  Many times the 5 minutes were over and I wanted more.  I only missed a few days here and there.  Mainly because of my travel and the unpredictable weekends.  But I really enjoyed the “quiet time” and feel like I am benefiting from it.  I can’t put my finger on it, but I sense of calmness and control after my meditation time.  I focus solely on my breathing, in and out.  Struggle with mind wondering but it’s no big deal, its natural.

The bad news is that I never really started the clutter clean.  In fact, the clutter is probably worse now than a month ago.  Obviously I wasn’t ready to attack that and didn’t really WANT it bad enough.  So what.  I’m not going to beat myself up.

Now it’s March 1.  What to do next?  I’m definitely going to keep doing the meditation 5 minutes per day.  Improving my eating habits is probably next on the list to add.