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New Year’s day is tomorrow. I know a lot of people want to kick off the New Year with some form of New Year’s resolution to make changes in their lives. Whether it’s starting a new business, launching a new blog, joining a gym, changing your diet, quitting smoking or doing something else to improve your life, one of the more popular methods of making a change has been the 30 Day Trial, which I first heard about from Steve Pavlina’s blog.

Basically, the 30 day trial is a commitment you make to yourself, to do something for 30 days no matter what. It can be a 30 day trial to go vegetarian, or a 30 day trial to work out every day or whatever it is you want to try out. The theory being that if you try something out for 30 days, you will learn something at the end of that period of time and then you can make a better informed decision as to what you want to do.

In theory, the 30 day trial is a good idea, because that is roughly about the maximum amount of time we can squeeze out of our willpower to push ourselves to do something.

In April 2006, I did a trial where I eliminated pop, meat and eggs out of my diet. The trial lasted until May 1st. For 30 days I had a near-perfect record of sticking to my new diet.

In June 2006, I kicked off the month with another 30 day trial, this time working out every single day for 30 day straight on my Bowflex. It wasn’t easy sticking to a workout routine every single day, but I managed to get through it for the entire 30 days.

What do both of these trials have in common? After 30 days, I went back to doing exactly what I was doing before the trials! It was like right after day 30 was over, it was party time and time to get back to the old habits. Why?

The reason is because 30 day trials don’t work. Well…meaning… they work in the sense that you get to try something for 30 days, but then you go back to doing what you were doing before. So what I mean is that they don’t work as a way to make long lasting change.

Why don’t they work? There are a lot of reasons. Let’s start with how 30 day trials affect your ego.

30 Day Trials attempt to trick your ego into agreeing to do something it doesn’t want to do for a short period of time, like 30 days, so that you don’t have to deal with all the issues and questions and beliefs that have to be dealt with before doing the trial. For example, you could start a 30 day trial tomorrow to be a vegan, without doing any kind of research or thinking it through. You just declare that starting tomorrow you’re going to be vegan, and that’s it.

You can tell your wife, your kids, your friends, and anyone else to piss off for that period of time and everything is fine. They don’t give you much flack, because they *know* that after 30 days you’ll be back to doing what you normally do and they’re happy with that. There is a HUGE difference in telling those around you that you’re deciding never to eat meat again, compared to not eating meat for 30 days.

Also, issues like what to do with the leftover meat in your freezer, what to do during the holidays when you go over to your in-laws for turkey dinner or what you’re going to do when you have to go to a restaurant are not really a priority. You can just stay away from restaurants for 30 days, leave the stuff in the freezer until after the 30 day trial is over, and don’t start any vegetarian trials right before Thanksgiving.

This “ease of start” is one of the biggest flaws of 30 day trials. They are simply doomed from the beginning because you didn’t really think them through all the way, you haven’t really prepared yourself for the decision, and you simply haven’t even DECIDED to do anything yet. You’re just TRYING something for 30 days.

In the wise words of Yoda “Do or Do Not, There is no Try”.

If you want to make a big change in something in your life like making a diet change, or starting an exercise program, or starting a new career path, start off with doing your research, think about it, prepare for it, organize yourself, communicate with your loved ones, create a support network, make changes to your environment, work on your beliefs, set some goals, and ultimately realize that you have to DECIDE and COMMIT. This is not a trial, this is your LIFE. If you DECIDE that it is time to start taking care of your body by exercising it on a regular basis, then DO IT. Don’t waffle and hide your indecision behind some 30 day trial you haven’t adequately prepared for.

Imagine if someone told you that they are going to TRY running for president for 30 days, what would you think about this presidential candidate?

Imagine if your spouse told you that they would like to TRY being married to you for 30 days, what would you think about that?

Imagine if you told your spouse you wanted to TRY having kids for 30 days, or that you want to TRY learning guitar for 30 days or that you want to TRY becoming a martial artist for 30 days, or that you want to TRY being sober for 30 days.

What do all these have in common? Their weakness is non-commitment. That is the root of the issue. You either DECIDE or COMMIT or you don’t. If you haven’t made the decision to commit yet to a chosen path, there is nothing wrong with that. Maybe you’re still doing research, maybe you’re still working out the details, maybe you’re just not ready yet for whatever reason. However, don’t delude yourself into thinking that by “trying” something out you’ve made a decision. You haven’t. You’ve just postponed it for 30 days.

If you want to become a vegetarian, and you’ve done your research and organized yourself and setup your environment, and got rid of all the meat in your freezer and the last thing you’re still worried about is whether you’re going to be able to find some recipe’s you’ll enjoy eating then cook some vegetarian meals for yourself over a weekend and see what you can come up with. Go to the store, buy the ingredients to cook 8-10 different things and try them all out to see what you like. Condense your “30 Day Trial” into a weekend and on Sunday night make your DECISION and COMMIT if you’re ready.

If you want to work out, but just haven’t found the right gym then shop around, do your research and prepare. Try out a few gyms over a weekend. If you plan it right, you can probably go visit every gym in your neighborhood in one day or two and see which one you like the best. Then DECIDE.

Here’s another reason why I feel that 30 Day Trials are doomed from the start.

In his book “Psycho-Cybernetics”, Dr. Maxwell Maltz who was originally a plastic surgeon noticed that it took at least 21 days for amputees to cease feeling phantom sensations in amputated limbs. Brain circuits produce neuroconnections and neuropathways only after being bombared with new data for at least 21-30 days IN A ROW. Meaning, if you miss a day, you have to start all over.

His research along with other studies done on forming habits, shows that the average person takes at least 21-30 days to form a new habit in life. During this period of 30 days, it takes every ounce of willpower to get yourself to do something because you are in effect working AGAINST your brain and against your already established habits. If you don’t believe me, try opening the door with your left hand (if you’re right handed, use your right if you’re left-handed) for one day and see how annoying it is to have to think about turning the handle every time you’re going to turn it.

So, basically, during the first 21-30 days, you’re not only fighting the new way of doing things, you’re also fighting an already established habit. This makes the process really difficult at first. However, somewhere between days 21-30 a switch is flicked in your brain and the brain now prefers to follow the newly established pattern rather than the old pattern, as long as you stick to the new pattern.

At first glance, this would seem that the theory of a 30 day trial would actually be beneficial, because now that you’ve done something for 30 days you formed a new habit, and now it should be easy to stick with your new path, right?

Well, not exactly. YES, you have now most likely formed a new habit so you are no longer fighting your own brain. It is now become quite routine for you to follow your path. However, what happens on day 31 of your trial?

You’re now looking back, reflecting on your past 30 days. The pain of forming a new habit is fresh in your mind, in fact you haven’t even probably experienced the ease of sticking to your new habit yet, because it’s only been a few days since your brain has flicked the switch. You’re now sitting there on the 30th day, happy with your ability to stick with it for 30 days, but now everything comes back.

Your undecided and uncommitted self is back. The meat in the freezer is still there waiting to be eaten; you don’t have the heart to throw it away. A family get-together is coming up and there will be your favorite meat dish. Either that, or your 30 day trial at the gym expired and they now want you to sign a 3 year contract. So what’s the problem?

Well, the problem is that you’re not even prepared to make the decision yet - just like you weren’t prepared 30 days ago. You wanted the RESULTS you hoped to get from the 30 day trial, but you didn’t want to do all the groundwork, the prep-work to make an actual decision and commit.

You were hoping that maybe if you got some good RESULTS after 30 days, the results would be enough to fuel you to make the decision, to commit to this way of living for the rest of your life. Sounds like a good theory, but it doesn’t work.

Why? Because, in almost anything worthwhile doing in your life, you won’t get results in 30 days. In fact, the first 30 days in almost anything, produce the least amount of results.

Go take a look at John Stone’s progress after he committed to getting in shape back in 2003. Click on this link and look at what John looked like on January 6, 2003 compared to February 6, 2003, and then compared that to what he looked like on June 6, 2003. Here’s the link: http://www.johnstonefitness.com/all/front/m.php

See what I’m saying? Imagine if John was doing a 30 Day Trial only. After 1 month of working out, building a new habit, stumbling through his exercise routine, getting frustrated with learning a new diet and getting used to the physical conditioning his body wasn’t used to, what did he look like? After 30 days, he looked almost the same! Yes he lost a bit of fat around the waist, but hardly anything to get excited about.

Imagine if John was sitting there after 30 days thinking to himself – “Should I stick to this? It seems really hard!” He would have quit! Just like I did, and most likely just like you will if you’re doing a “TRIAL”.

What did John do instead? He DECIDED and COMMITTED to making a life change and he didn’t give himself the option to quit until he saw results. It took 6 months before he saw the results he wanted, but things probably got a lot easier after the first 30 days because he had formed the proper habits by then.

To summarize, one of the biggest reasons 30 Day Trials set you up for failure is because they give you an unrealistic sense of what to expect in terms of effort vs results during the 30 day period of time. It simply isn’t enough time to get the full benefits of the results in your life. Essentially, during the first 30 days you are putting forth the MOST EFFORT and getting the LEAST RESULT from it, therefore at the end of the trial you have a completely skewed perspective on what it takes to stick with your decision.

What does this have to do with making money doing what you love? Everything.

Stop thinking short-term. If, for example, you wanted to start blogging for a living, don’t even bother starting if you’re just going to try it out for 30 days. Take the time to do the research to find your passion in life, and start a blog you could commit to working on for at least 2-5 years. Don’t expect stellar results in the first 30 days.

No matter what it is that you decide to pursue as a way to make money doing what you love, start thinking in longer term commitments. It doesn’t mean it has to be for the rest of your life, but think at least 2-5 years. Instead of starting a new business every month and then quitting with disappointment, find your purpose and passion and commit long term. Give yourself 2-5 years to work on something that will change your life.

Even if you look at Steve Pavlina, his blog launched on October 1st, 2004 and by April 2005 (7 months later), he was only making about $4/day. That’s only about $120/month blogging full time for 7 months. If he personally used the 30 Day Trial philosophy for running his blog, he probably would have given up long before he ever got to month seven. He didn’t though, he stuck to it, because he was COMMITTED to blogging, he wasn’t just “trying it out”, and by Nov 2006 his blog was making about $30,000/month. It took two years, but it was sure worth it.

The challenge is that it’s easy to commit to things like that AFTER you see success. I don’t think many Bloggers would have a problem making a commitment to blogging if they were guaranteed a $30,000/month salary after two years. The challenge is that there are no guarantees, and after working on your blog for a few months and seeing trivial results, it’s easy to extrapolate results linearly into the future and that’s a pretty bleak picture.

SOLUTION:

I don’t want to take away a strategy from your arsenal like the 30 Day Trial, without offering a solution to replace it. Here’s what I suggest. Instead of starting a 30 day trial, why not sit down, and really take the time to find your purpose and passion in life. My free eBook ‘The Passion Project’ can help you out with that. Once you find your purpose and passion in life, why not commit to taking the necessary steps to live that purpose and passion in your life, every day for the next 2-5 years. If you find that blogging is your passion, then start a blog that you commit to working on in small daily steps for the next 2-5 years. Since you’ll be doing something you ENJOY and are PASSIONATE about, it won’t be a chore to stick with it long term.

Instead of setting some lame, uncommitted, unplanned, unrealistic, short-term New Years resolution that you know you’ll give up after a few days, weeks, or after your 30 day trial is over, why not do something different this year. Why not actually set some time aside to sit down, think things through, and really ask yourself what you want from your life. What’s important to you. What changes are you going to COMMIT to making this year for the long term.

Are you ready to make this the year you become an Inspired Money Maker? Are you willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish that, even if it takes a long term, multi-year committment to really see the big results you want out of your life?

Or are you just going to keep distracting yourself with some half-baked New Years Resolution that you know has no chance of surviving past February?

It’s your choice. It’s your life. Just remember. This is not a trial. This IS your life.