Personal development experiments

With the Random Acts of Courage behind me, I’ve decided to take a few days to think about them, and exactly what I learned from them. For example, I needed to run through my head exactly why I chickened out of asking to go on a roof of a tall building on Wednesday. And I believe I now have the answers.

Below are the 3 main lessons I learned from my Random Acts of Courage.

1. Environment is more powerful than willpower

I’m planning to expand on this concept in a future blog post. But I noticed how this applied in my random acts of courage – some challenges turned out to be surprisingly easy when I found the right environment for them.

2. There’s a reason why I don’t do most of those acts regularly

Some of the challenges actually left a sour after-taste in my mind after completing them. For example, when I lay down in a busy store on Tuesday, the sales attendant seemed rather upset when she asked me to leave. And I felt bad about it afterwards, because I felt like I generated a net negative of emotions in other people.

And quite a few of the other challenges felt similar, or neutral. Random things to do that either weirded people out, or didn’t affect them at all. So if it’s not something I enjoy intrinsically (like walking around barefoot, or climbing trees), and if it’s not something that makes other people happy, then I don’t see much reason to do it.

On the other hand, I love doing things that generate positive emotions in people. My favourite one being giving out free hugs. That one always cheers up several hundred people when I do it, both those I hug and those who just watch but don’t want to get a hug themselves. Yay!

But I will look a bit more into some of the acts of courage I did, because I sensed a potential for them to be useful. For example, haggling seems like a really useful skill in the right circumstances. And so does having courage to ask for a free sample. And finally, I think busking has some real potential to cheer people up, so I’ll look a bit more into juggling or potentially playing an instrument in public.

3. The REASON why you do something is vital for motivation

I spent a long time puzzling over why I chickened out of asking to go on a roof of a tall building on Wednesday. And I came to the conclusion that it’s because I didn’t want to make things easy for myself. You see, I didn’t want to mention that I was doing the Random Acts of Courage while I was doing them. (And yes, as a friend pointed out, I broke that with the embarassing facebook status challenge.)

So, when I thought about going to ask to go on the roof of that tall building, I suddenly realised I had no good reason to give for why I wanted to go there. I didn’t want to mention that I was doing Random Acts of Courage. But I didn’t really have any other good-sounding reason for asking. And so I chickened out and ran away.

On the other hand, when you do have a good reason for what you do, you’ll be surprised by how much resourcefulness you can find inside yourself. So whenever you’re feel a lack of motivation, have a good think about why you’re really trying to do what you’re trying to do.

It might give you a big boost in motivation. Or it might make you realise that you don’t really have a good reason for you intended action, and maybe you’ll think of something else you would prefer to accomplish.

…

And that’s all for the Random Acts of Courage. Again, a shout out to Niall (@ndoherty13 on twitter) for coming up with this great experiment!

I already have my next personal development experiment planned, but I’ll be busy in the next few weeks, so I’ll probably get around to it in late May, or maybe in June. And I’ll save announcing exactly what it is until a bit closer to the experiment itself (Feel free to send me your guess on a postcard.)

Have a great day!

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Today went considerably better than yesterday. I completed three of the challenges, and half-completed the last one (which I will fully complete tomorrow).

Today’s challenges:

1. Ask at a store’s customer service desk if you can make a public service announcement.
2. Juggle in the centre of town for 10 minutes and collect money.
3. Talk to a beggar about their life.
4. Ask a local business owner about their online presence.

Thursday report

Juggling in town turned out to be the most straight-forwardly scary challenge I have set myself so far.

I say straight-forwardly, because it’s an act of courage where I was 100% sure it’s the right thing to do and had no bad feelings about it. I asked my friend Josh beforehand, since he’s got busking experience, and he said it’s legal to busk in Leeds without a permit. He also gave me a few tips.

At the same time I found the idea pretty scary. But hey, that’s something I can handle! So on my way to town, I decided to apply a couple of techniques from Unleash Your Confidence. First I played with my Instant Confidence Thought to give me a boost of confidence, and then I tweaked the mental movies I made about juggling. I banished the negative ones of people shouting and booing when I drop balls and replaced them with movies of people being excited and happy to see me juggling.

Along the way to the busy shopping streets, where I intended to juggle, I spotted a computer store that would be good for asking to make an announcement over the in-store intercom. I considered doing it immediately, but felt a bit anxious and decided to do the juggling first.

So I got to a spot where I wanted to juggle. I put down a hat with a few seed coins in it, took out my juggling balls and started juggling.

Now, the tips that Josh gave me were to talk, talk, talk, as that gets people to stop and get engaged. And he also advised me to step down my juggling a bit so I don’t drop any balls, as that makes people leave.

I quickly found out that it was very tricky to talk to people passing by without making eye contact, but if I took my eyes off the balls, I started dropping them. Hmmm.

After a few minutes of juggling, I was approached by two girls asking if I could perform at a club night they were organizing that same night. We talked for a bit, and they gave me their phone number, so I could call them if I decided to say yes.

I really wanted to call them up and say yes, because that would be a brilliant random act of courage, but I felt utterly exhausted by the time the evening rolled around, and I knew that I wouldn’t have a good time if I went. (That’s also the reason why I’m writing this report on Friday morning.)

Anyway, back in town, I juggled for a few more minutes. And then I was approached by a little girl, maybe 3 years old, followed by her grandma.

I got talking to those two (well, the grandma). The little girl seemed utterly fascinated by the juggling balls and helped me pick them up when I dropped them (although she didn’t throw them to me, despite my repeated requests).

I’ve also asked the grandma to snap a few pictures. The one you see above is the best one I have that shows my little juggling assistant.

Anyway, I continued juggling, and while not many people stopped and nobody gave me money, I had a thoroughly good time, and did my juggling act for about 20 minutes in total.

Talking to a beggar, intercom announcement and local business

Next, with my great juggling experience filling me with an extra helping of confidence, I decided to head back to the computer store to ask to make an announcement over the intercom.

But I figured I might as well circle around and see if I come across any beggars along the way. Which I did.

So I started talking to the beggar I saw, and eventually sat down next to him and talked to him about his life. He was a carpenter who lost his job, and then couldn’t pay rent and so lost his home. It was sad to see him, not only because of the situation he was in, but even more so because of how beaten down he seemed by life. We chatted some more, and eventually I gave him some money end left.

Next up, I saw a store where I could ask the owner about their online presence. It was a dry cleaning store, which was actually something I had been search for earlier this year.

So I went in, made a few enquiries as to how much it would cost to get some dry cleaning done, and also asked for the owner. He wasn’t around, but he’s going to be around tomorrow (Friday), so I’ll go in again then to talk to him about his online presence.

To clarify a bit why I chose this particular challenge – a while ago, I got quite interested in online marketing, reading a lot of posts on the warrior forum. And one piece of advice was to contact a local business owner and offer to help them set up a website and maybe a mailing list, since for a small amount of work, you can get big results, if nobody else has a proper website centred around the terms that somebody would search for on google to find the local business.

Afterwards, with these challenges completed, I finally got to that computer store, and went to the customer service desk to ask if I can make an announcement.

“Hi, customer service?”

“Yes?”

“I was wondering if I can make an announcement over the in-store intercom.”

“Regarding?”

“I just wanted to wish everyone a nice day.”

“No.”

Oh well. It was worth a try. The guy was very firm on tat, so I thanked him for his time and went home. Challenges completed!

Tomorrow’s challenges

For tomorrow’s challeges, I’m switching up the environment.

I’ve decided that there are a couple of fun challenges I can only do in a bar/club environment. And while those are not my favourite places to be, I figured that for the sake of Random Acts of Courage, I’d go for it!

So, on Friday night, I’ll be hanging out with my friend Ben, and we’ll be going to some bar/club type place. (I’m leaving the organizing up to him. He knows this stuff.) I’ve asked him for a place where you can hear people over the music, since most of my challenges will involve talking. Let’s hope that works out!

In any case, here are the…

Challenges for Friday:

1. Approach a girl with the pick-up line “I like salad.”
2. Approach a girl while pretending to be deaf-mute
3. Ask a girl for her phone number
4. Get a piggyback ride from a stranger.

(Note that as these are all evening challenges, I’ll be posting Friday’s report sometime on Saturday.)

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(pictured above: me holding a carefully negotiated free sample of handmade soap)

I’ve got some not-so-great news today, folks. I’ve failed to complete some of today’s challenges. Then again, they wouldn’t be challenges if they weren’t challenging, right?

Below is my list of today’s Random Acts of Courage, with the completed challenges in bold:

1. Get back in contact with a childhood friend/mentor and thank them for the positive impact they’ve had on your life.
2. Get on a random bus. Get off after five stops. Find your way home.
3. Walk into a tall building and ask at reception if you can go up on the roof to look at the view.
4. Ask a stranger for some personal advice.
5. Ask a stranger for his/her phone number.
6. Strike up a conversation with a stranger and find out a) their greatest fear, and b) their greatest passion.
7. Give a stranger a genuine, elaborate compliment.
8. Ask someone very different from you to share their viewpoint on a controversial topic. Don’t resist anything. Just listen.

Bonus challenges completed:

• Ask a stranger to toss a frisbee with you in the park.
• Call up friends and ask them to hang out in the park.

[click to continue…]

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