May 2012: For this month’s 30-Day Project, I’m trying to overcome my embarrassment about selling things online. I’m reporting what I’m doing on Facebook. DIY CBT Example. Come watch me try to overcome my anxiety about sales. And since I’m doing that, I’ll let you know that I now have three things for sale on my website (NOT e-books but e-delivery so no shipping costs).

1. 30 Ideas for Simple 30-Day Projects 4.99 USD

2. Mini Positive Psychology Project – Happiness Tweaking 9.99 USD

3. Humor Boost 9.99 USD

Note that will say below that you can get my 30-Day Projects Updates via my blog, but I’m only doing them on Facebook at the moment. I haven’t had time to change the info below.

It’s a “gateway” project to encourage people to have a go at participating, and see how fun they are.

Announcement and Details Here.

Day 29

Today’s New Thing: Txting from the web rather than my phone. I really don’t like txting on a cramped up phone keypad so switching to txting from the web unless I am away from my computer solves a problem.

Day 28

My Day 26 status update, in which I challenged a negative self belief with problem solving, has turned out to be very therapeutic.

I’ve been trying more new things that fall into the category of “I don’t think I could be good at at.”

I generally don’t have much of a “taste level” when it comes to ascetics so I tend to avoid even trying to make anything “look pretty”. Avoidant coping has not helped this problem!

Today’s New Thing: I am trying out this pop from top notifiation designed by Chris Coyier, who is one of my longstanding internet crushes (I love his video screencasts).

(At the moment it’s popping up on every blog page load, and if I have some time I’ll figure out some cookies so it doesn’t do that for repeat visitors, but that’s currently a “C” priority task ).

Day 27

Today’s New Thing: I’m taking a break from pumping out new blog posts to focus on better organizing the ones I already have. Since there are now 265 published posts, the navigation has become unwieldy and I need to make the choices of what content to view less overwhelming for site visitors. This is quite a big task but I’m approaching it bit by bit.

Organizing and “knowing what other people are likely to like” also fall into the category of things I don’t think of myself as being good at, and therefore avoid quite a bit, but better to test and revise than avoid.

It’s

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Today’s New Thing:

I’m really good at providing a service, but I’m less good at running a business. Today I decided to take some small problem solving actions in the direction of “Search Engine Optimization.” I’m not planning on doing anything weird (!) but, it was time I invested some time in this.

SEO basically just means making it easier for my blog content to be found on Google. For example, I’ve tended to write my blog post titles with people who are already regular readers in mind, without really thinking about whether the titles will rank well in search engine results and entice people who are scanning Google search pages to want to read the article.

As usual, taking problem solving action prompted me to try to identify what specific thoughts have been causing me to avoid doing this.

The two thoughts that I came up with were:

“You’re probably not going to be very good at it”

and

“What if you put a ton of time into it and it makes your search rankings worse rather than better, or doesn’t improve them at all”.

Balanced / Self-Compassionate Alternative:

“Well, no wonder you’ve been putting it off if you’ve been having those thoughts. That’s understandable. But – those thoughts might not be true. They’re just thoughts and might not be reality.

The right thing to do is to give it a go. You might not be good at it, or you might be. If you’re not good at it – no one can be good at everything – but there is every chance you can be good at it.”

Today’s New Thing:

The past week my S.O. and I have been trying to not talk about work when we’re having chill out time (which for me mostly means not talking about computers and admin stuff, since I don’t discuss specific client sessions anyway). It’s been quite cool to be more conscious about what topics we’re talking about and to try to come up with some new topics.

Today’s new thing: I asked some questions on some forums. I usually don’t ask questions on forums/discussion groups because of the thoughts:

“You probably haven’t searched thoroughly enough. Someone probably already asked your question.”

and/or “It might be a stupid question.”

and/or “You’ll probably work it out yourself 5 mins after you ask, so just wait a bit longer.”

I decided to challenge these thoughts by asking some questions. I asked half a dozen across three different forums/discussion groups. Three questions didn’t get replies and one of these I realized afterwards was a stupid question, two got moderately helpful replies, and one answer really moved my thinking forward by letting me know about an option I wasn’t aware of and has resulted in a significant jump in learning because I went away and researched the info in the answer I was given.

Realizing I had actually asked a stupid question was quite helping in getting the experiential learning benefit of realizing that it was no big deal and didn’t require any self-criticism!

A common cognitive distortion is underestimating your ability to cope if feared things happened, and I think there was a little bit of this occurring. But in reality…I feared I would ask a stupid question > it happened > I coped! Hopefully people will see from my examples that cognitive distortions aren’t just about big fears, but can also underlie very small fears too.

Day 23 – Today’s new thing – I made some banana and chocolate muffins using a new recipe and a type of vanilla extract that I haven’t purchased before.

Day 22 – This is turning into a “30 days of speeding up wordpress project” – sorry so boring!

I learned how to make some small optimizations by following some advice I read on a blog (I followed the stuff listed under #1. Warning – It won’t mean anything to anyone except to my fellow WordPress users).

The last few weeks of this 30 day project has turned out to be so much about moving to my new server, and that was something I signed up to about a week into the project, just to try.

What’s funny is that the VPS company have a 7 day money back guarantee and a couple of days after I signed up, I almost invoked the guarantee because I thought I was in over my head. To give you an idea, there is no control panel. It’s completely command line, meaning that communication between me and the VPS box in California is via a black screen with one tiny little command prompt. I thought “oh cr@p there is no way I can do this” but after a couple of days I went back and gave it another try, and within a couple of weeks I’d managed to successfully migrate my site. Although in the process I needed to “rebuild” 3 times, which means I screwed up big enough that I needed to start over 3 times!

Today’s New Thing:

Made the move to my new server! I easily did 30 new things just in the last two days! – setting up a firewall on the server, creating databases from the command line…..

Had lots of moments today of “This X isn’t working as it should” and had to go back and nut out what I’d done wrong.

My brain is fried from so much new learning. Luckily I have the next 12 hours to rest. Going to go watch Project Runway!

Today’s New Thing: Taking care of some blog security housekeeping that I have never gotten around to figuring out and implementing.

Feels good to be doing it.

Something I’ve learned about myself is that the reason I avoidant cope with putting safety and security measures in place is that I want to feel trusting and safe, and tackling this type of thing activates thoughts about “there are people out there who would want to do something that is harmful to me (hack my blog) for no good reason”. So, the avoidant coping is about avoiding these thoughts being triggered and the associated anxiety and sadness. More info about understanding this type of thing in yourself is here.

Day 19′s New Thing:

These are a bit boring, but since it’s my first week back seeing therapy clients in Christchurch after my break in the US, I’m quite focused on my new clients.

I spring cleaned the javascript running on my site for the first time. I found and deleted some scripts that weren’t essential. I also learned how to get some of the scripts to only run on the pages they are used on, rather than running on every page of the site. This doesn’t seem very exciting but it was! I got to run some tests and see that my page load speeds got faster immediately, so that is very gratifying. It is part of the “improving user experience” push that I am doing with the site. I never imagined I would be doing this type of thing when I trained as a psychologist but it’s amazing! I love learning stuff from internet tutorials & being able to apply info immediately after learning it, rather than uni learning which involves a huge time gap between learning information and applying it!

Day 18′s New Thing: Today’s new thing – not feeling guilty about skipping a day :-)

Today’s new thing: I ordered some custom sticky notes/post-it notes. Very exciting. They have my name, email and blog address on them for sending out to GPs and other referrers.

Today’s New Thing: Spent quite a few hours today working on my new VPS in preparation for transferring this site over. (The website address won’t change).

Since I have no prior experience with the command line, it’s a steep learning curve, but I made some good progress with the set up. It’s amazing how much human effort has been put into writing tutorials and posting them online so people like me can learn what’s needed.

Also, asked another new question on Facebook.

“What was the last really nice thing someone said to you? Reply in the comments :-) My example, my supervisor just replied to an email I’d sent with a nice, cheery “Welcome Home!” and said she was looking forward to seeing me. Sweet!”

(btw, all psychologists have supervisors in case it seems strange why somebody who runs their own business has a supervisor. Its a requirement.)

I have been travelling back from NYC to New Zealand the last few days.

New Things:

1. When I travel back to New Zealand from the East Coast of the US, I usually spend a day in Los Angeles to break up the travel time. I have often said to myself “I should drive down to San Diego. I’ve never been there.” Previously I have always decided to conserve energy and not do the drive.

I finally did it! Very spontaneously (or as spontaneous as one can be about something they’ve been thinking about doing for years), I decided if I woke up early enough (I’d arrived in to LA at midnight), I’d go down there. It took over 3 hours each way to drive and I only had 2 hours down there, due to needing to return to Los Angeles for my flight. Really pleased I did it, despite the very short time there, since I probably would’ve spent a lot of time driving around if I’d chosen to stay in LA for the day.

2. Related to above. I usually do a lot of planning but decided to be spontaneous. Once I got to San Diego, I asked one person on the street which beach I should go to, and just followed their advice, without any Googling. They sent be to Mission Beach.

3. I decided to try asking some questions on Facebook, which hopefully people will answer by leaving a Facebook comment. The questions are designed to help people increase self awareness. This is what I posted today:

“Asking a Question on Facebook: Which of the following emotions do you MOST want to experience more of in your day to day life? Choose from: joy, serenity (including calm/relaxation), excitement, pride, inspiration, awe, gratitude, interest, amusement, hope.” Join In.

Today’s new thing:

Making a decision without overthinking it!

Bought a cheap bag to carry my excess luggage back to NZ, without excessively deliberating which one to get.

Today’s new thing: Met up with a friend during her lunch break near her work, which involved us meeting somewhere I hadn’t been before.

Today’s New Thing:

I got myself a Linode! It’s a Linux Virtual Server.

I’ve been very, very happy with my current host – Bluehost. (Bluehost are an awesome option for anyone who is starting out with a website. I’ve found their live chat/ticket support really great, and their hosting is incredibly cheap).

But, now that my site is getting bigger and I am more experienced running a website, I want to be able to tweak my server. The main reason for this is that I want to become a speed freak, meaning I want to get my page load speeds down as quick as I can possibly get them.

There has been a lot of optimization I’ve been able to do since I’ve been working on this lately, but this will allow me to make even more tweaks (this is the type of stuff I do during the couple of months a year I am in NYC and not in Christchurch seeing clients. Am cramming in some last minute website work before I get back to client work next week).

Today, I figured out how to use different template files for different categories of blog posts, so I can style the pages related to my 30 Day projects differently than the main blog. I implemented a few tweaks and now have the framework in place to be able to do this easily.

Today’s new thing – Am working through a great big list of housekeeping tasks to make my site speedier. Today’s tasks were that I learnt how to clear out all the old, autosaved blog post revisions, and how to repair and optimize my database.

New Thing Number 6: Today I did something off my bucket list. I went for a (group) night time bike ride around Central Park.

It was really fun – 10pm-midnight, and we went all around the park.

New Thing Number 5: Today I figured out how to display different sidebar content on different types of pages on my site, and set this up.

Today I bought frozen pizza – the first time I’ve eaten frozen pizza since I was a kid! When I’m in the US, I like buying a brand of tofu and vegie lasagna called Amy’s and the supermarket had a $1 coupon for the pizza tacked to the freezer, so I bought the pizza instead. It was nice. I prefer the lasagna but I enjoyed the change. I also made a $25 Kiva loan to Mrs Cheng, 35, a rice farmer from Cambodia.

Experimenting with a new feature on the website (in the right sidebar) that shows people who have mentioned @DrAliceBoyes on twitter.

I wanted to show my appreciation to the colleagues and readers who mention my site on Twitter – people like Jonathon @everydaymanager.

I also changed the Tweet button on the site, so now anytime you use that Tweet button to share my content, you too will show up in the sidebar. Before, I had the Tweet button set up so tweets sent using the button didn’t actually include my twitter name, which was a weird way to have it set up.

New thing Number 2:

Today I tried Worry Exposure, which is a CBT technique that I use in therapy sessions. I’m a bit embarrassed that I haven’t tried it before, because I try most of the techniques that I use in sessions. I also made an instructional mp3 of how to use it, that I’ve put up for sale on the main blog.

New thing Number 1:

I added a comments option on a blog post on the main blog, which I haven’t done previously.

For this project, updates may not be everyday, since there will be some days when I’ll be travelling and some work days when I don’t think I’ll have the time to try something new. But, I’ll try to get to 30 new things for the month. Expect some to be very small.

As part of my Self-Compassion project, I’ve been really enjoying doing body gratitude – gratitude for how well my body works. I’ve been doing body gratitude generally, and also, whenever I notice an area of my body has some tension or strain in it, thinking kind thoughts like:

“The parts of me that are my left foot and my right foot have been carrying the rest of me around all day to so many places – I’m so grateful for having had that experience and for that ability”.

If the phrasing “the parts of me” sounds odd, its because I’ve been trying to shift from thinking of myself as my brain, and my body as something that carries my brain around, to living in my whole body. So, I’m trying to use alternative phrasing rather than “my feet having been carrying me around all day.”

I think its interesting that I’ve tried body gratitude before and it hasn’t worked as well in a standalone way as its worked as part of this broader self compassion project.

Today, each time I’ve been waiting on a subway platform, I’ve been using the self compassion technique of gently rubbing my own arm. Gently rubbing your own skin releases Oxytocin. Oxytocin promotes feelings of calm & connectedness. This technique works SO well (at least does for me). The effects are very physical. Feels a bit like taking a Xanax without the drowsiness, cognitive impairment, or disinhibition.

I’ve been reflecting on yesterday’s instance of getting sucked into a task that wasn’t a good use of time and spending hours on it. For me, when I waste time, its not usually things like playing video games or looking at Facebook, it tends to be more like yesterday’s example. I’m trying to stay present with the feeling of what it’s like to not be able to shift from a task, even when I know its not a good use of time. Usually I just want to forget this feeling after a big block of time wasting happens. Instead, I’m trying out staying gently present with the feeling, and seeing if I can get really soft to it, and if I can develop some more kind and compassionate feelings about it. Note that I don’t mean staying present with feeling the sadness about having wasted time, I mean staying present with the feelings of my attention being sucked in to something and what that’s like to experience.

Ventured off the productivity track today. Spent HOURS making a variety of beautiful CSS3 buttons that I knew I couldn’t use on my site because too many people use Internet Explorer which doesn’t support the new technology. Started blaming people who use Internet Explorer. Compassionate Self Talk: “You’re angry about the time you wasted, and are having the urge to shift the blame around. It’s good that you want to feel better but thinking everyone who uses Internet Explorer is stupid and annoying, is probably going a little bit too far. Some acceptance of the fact people do use Internet Explorer probably would’ve helped. You could’ve acted based on how things are, rather than how you wish they were. That would’ve been more skillful, but its ok to have screwed up. It’s late. The thought of re-doing the work using the old technology will feel less overwhelming after a good night’s sleep. You can just sit with the feeling of overwhelmed for a little while and wait for it to pass.””

Feeling jealous of someone who is more awesome at something than me. Made worse by the shame about feeling jealous. I let the feelings land rather than trying to shove them away, and practiced being really soft to them. Worked well.

Worried about getting older today. Self compassion approach: Figured out the anxiety-thoughts were that getting old would mean I would stop being interested in having an exciting life, and stop constant learning and innovating. Compassionate self talk: Well that ain’t going to happen – even when you want a break from seeking new learning you can’t help yourself. Its your personality. That isn’t going to change. Results: Huge sense of relief at having figured out and reality tested the thoughts. This was more of a cognitive therapy approach than a self compassion approach, but given that it worked, I’m happy with that, and I did pay kind attention to the neg thoughts rather than shunting them aside.