All this is Crazy!!

Special report As I swept through Kent and Calais on a Eurostar last week, the financial markets again threw some entertainment my way in the shape of the SocGen debacle.

My last Reg piece explained that the credit crunch was partly fuelled by VBA and that is what appears to have happened again.

However, Eurostar trains don’t have Wi-Fi, and my only access to the world was a BlackBerry. So getting Kerviel’s number took hours, by which time he had gone to ground. He has my mobile number if he wants a chat…

Nevertheless, in various Paris bars over the weekend, fragments of the story grew in the telling. There were a few common threads, but the consensus was not surprise that this had happened – just that it happened to SocGen, which has an enviable reputation throughout the market as a “smart” bank.

Absolutely no trader or quant has said to me “couldn’t happen at my bank”. A couple of sharp risk managers correctly speculated that the numbers involved would grow, and that because he had compromised the systems no honest final number would be available soon. Since it appears that it was an external source who complained about the problem, not SG risk management, this seems highly credible.

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Today was good overall. No problems to report aside from continued dry skin and itchiness.

Now that the trial has officially ended, it almost feels almost like a graduation. This has definitely been the most challenging 30-day trial I’ve done to date, but I can’t say I’m sad to see it end. I’m looking forward to eating something — anything — other than fruit tomorrow. I feel like I’ve eaten enough bananas to last a year!

As a side effect of logging this experiment, apparently I also did a 30-day trial of blogging every single day. Consequently, my web traffic hit a new high. Lucky for me my webhost recently announced they’ve permanently upgraded all the accounts — for free. Now I’ve got a juicy 2TB/month of bandwidth available (previously 1.5TB). Incidentally, ServInt has been a fantastic web host, and I highly recommend them if your site has outgrown a basic shared hosting account. StevePavlina.com has always been hosted by them, over 3 years now… and a while before that with my games business. That’s probably the longest I’ve ever stayed with a single host.

Urine pH

I ran several pH tests on my urine throughout the day with some pH strips. The results varied with each test, but they always ranged between 7.4 and 8.0. A pH of 7.0 is neutral, greater than 7.0 is alkaline, and less than 7.0 is acidic. I didn’t bother to do any pH tests before this trial, so I can’t tell if there’s been a long-term change, but at least for today it’s definitely on the alkaline side.

I read that most non-vegetarians have acidic urine, which supposedly increases the risk of kidney stones as well as a few other maladies. Of course you can also run into problems if your urine is too alkaline.

If you want to test your own urine, you should be able to find some pH strips at a local drug/vitamin store. They’re fairly inexpensive.

Blood Pressure

Today’s blood pressure reading was the lowest of the whole trial: 110/65.

Weight Loss

My weight dropped 0.4 pounds to 178.0. Net weight loss is 8.0 pounds in 29 days. I’ll do a final weigh-in tomorrow morning before breakfast to get the official 30-day result.

Breakfast

1. green smoothie: 4 bananas (662g), spinach (102g), 1 cup water
2. blueberries (264g)
3. blackberries (114g)

812 calories, 4g fat, 204g carb, 14g protein

Morning Snack

1 small watermelon (908g)

272 calories, 1g fat, 69g carb, 6g protein

Lunch

1. salad: mixed greens (158g), cucumber (76g), grape tomatoes (120g), avocado (38g), lime juice (22g)
2. fresh juice made from carrots, apple, Asian pear, celery, lime (24 fl oz)

387 calories, 7g fat, 81g carb, 8g protein

Afternoon Snack

green smoothie: 4 bananas (494g), spinach (106g), 1 cup water

464 calories, 2g fat, 117g carb, 8g protein

Dinner

1. green smoothie: 4 bananas (416g), spinach (112g), 1 cup water
2. 5 clementines (386g)

577 calories, 2g fat, 146g carb, 11g protein

Evening Snack

3 clementines (240g)

113 calories, 0.4g fat, 29g carb, 2g protein

Daily Summary

2626 calories, 17g fat, 644g carb, 49g protein

585mg sodium, 82g fiber, 382g sugar

5% of calories from fat, 7% from protein, 88% from carbs

Whew!

I’ll write up a final postmortem/summary of this experiment with my final thoughts. Be patient, since it may take more than a day before it’s ready to post. I have quite a lot of info to review. In retrospect it feels a little strange having a complete food record of everything I ate for the past 30 days posted on the Internet. Quite a number of people emailed me to say they’ve been eating more fruit since I started — the photos made them start craving it.

Tomorrow should be an interesting day, since I do intend to eat cooked food once again. I’m not sure what I’ll eat yet. Last time I came off a raw food diet, cooked food tasted dead and lifeless to me the first day, but it didn’t make me sick or tired or cause any noticeable problems. I’ll have to remind myself to eat much less food. I imagine that scarfing down eight pounds of cooked food in a day would be a bit much.

I’m really looking forward to writing about something that has nothing whatsoever to do with food.

Discuss this post in the forums.

© 2008 by Steve Pavlina. If you find these ideas helpful, please leave a donation for Steve so you can enjoy the spirit of giving too.

Today was good overall, although I ate a couple ounces of walnuts this morning and then got really drowsy a few hours later. A short nap restored me completely. Walnuts didn’t have that kind of effect on me before this trial.

For a change of scenery, this morning I went to the Strip to do some writing. I typically enjoy writing in public places where lots of people are roaming about, but this time I found it very distracting and left early. It felt uncomfortable for some reason. I’m not really sure why. I brought lots of fruit with me, but I only ate a couple of bananas and an apple during this time.

At lunch time I came really close to quitting and eating some cooked food. With only 36 hours left in the trial, I didn’t expect any major revelations to happen that would influence me to continue beyond day 30. I figured the only reason to continue at this point is just the satisfaction of finishing the whole 30 days instead of stopping at 28-1/2. I gave it some thought and decided to finish off the full 30 for one particular reason: Completing the final day and a half will be good exercise for my self-discipline muscles.

Every time you successfully complete a 30-day trial, even if the final result is that you choose not to continue beyond that point, it builds your discipline and makes it easier to take on more challenging trials. If I attempted this trial ten years ago, there’s no way I’d have made it this far. My willpower would have been too weak to push through the resistance.

The fact that I’ve finished 29 days and still feel a lot of daily resistance tells me this particular diet isn’t right for me, at least not right now. Whenever I’ve made permanent habit changes, such as going vegan and vegetarian, the resistance was all but gone after the first week. After 30 days of those trials, I knew I’d found something that would stick.

Dry Skin

Here’s a photo showing some of the fingers on my right hand that are still swollen at the joints and plagued with dry, cracked skin. There’s a cut on my middle finger that keeps splitting open and bleeding a little. It appeared about 2 weeks ago when the skin cracked from excessive dryness, and it just isn’t healing properly. You may also notice a small horizontal cut on the joint of my ring finger that is very slow to heal as well. The fingers on my left hand don’t look much better.

I’m still experiencing a lot of itchiness too all over my body too. Hopefully my skin will return to normal after this trial.

I didn’t have any skin problems during my early raw food trials, all of which had a significantly higher fat intake, so this problem appears unique to the low-fat version of this diet.

Hunger

During the past few days, I’ve been feeling much hungrier. I used to eat about 2,000 calories/day before this trial. Now I’m pushing 2,500-3,000, and I still feel hungry often. I’m not pushing myself to eat a certain number of calories — I just eat based on appetite. If I pushed myself to eat more, I could easily surpass 3,500 calories/day.

Having to eat so much food has gotten pretty annoying. Eating is basically my second career. Even if there were some impressive long-term health benefits, having to sacrifice more time to food prep and eating doesn’t seem like a great trade based on my experience thus far. I’d rather eat smaller, less frequent meals and get more work done.

Weight Loss

My weight went up 0.4 pounds to 178.4. Net weight loss is 7.6 pounds in 28 days. I weighed this same amount 10 days ago, so it certainly appears the weight loss has stalled.

Breakfast

1. green smoothie: 4 bananas (448g), spinach (80g), 1 cup water
2. celery (60g)

426 calories, 2g fat, 107g carb, 8g protein

Morning Snack

1. 5 bananas (670g)
2. Fuji apple (212g)
3. 2 oz walnuts (56g)

1073 calories, 39g fat, 190g carb, 16g protein

Lunch

1 small watermelon (876g)

263 calories, 1g fat, 66g carb, 5g protein

Afternoon Snack

green smoothie: 4 bananas (476g), spinach (102g), 1 cup water

447 calories, 2g fat, 112g carb, 8g protein

Dinner

1. green smoothie: 4 bananas (396g), spinach (104g), 1 cup water
2. blueberries (272g)
3. blackberries (182g)

610 calories, 4g fat, 151g carb, 12g protein

Evening Snack

okra (76g)

24 calories, 0g fat, 5g carb, 2g protein

Daily Summary

2841 calories, 48g fat, 632g carb, 51g protein

317mg sodium, 90g fiber, 360g sugar

14% of calories from fat, 6% from protein, 80% from carbs

I had an interesting conversation with Erin about an idea for a different kind of dietary trial — eating all my favorite foods, regardless of nutritional considerations. In other words I’d eat like I was in a lucid dream and could conjure up whatever foods I wanted. For me this would be some variation of the vegan diet, since I don’t look upon non-vegan items as food anyway, not even in my dreams. I’m curious what would happen if I stopped looking to food as a source of health and aimed to simply create health from within, regardless of what I ate.

One pattern I’ve seen again and again in successful long-term raw foodists is that they don’t have to force themselves to eat raw. They eat raw because their favorite foods happen to be raw, so they’re simply eating what they like best. That’s exactly what happened when I went vegetarian and then vegan — I dropped the foods I wasn’t particularly attached to anyway and started eating more of the foods I liked better. But that didn’t happen with this raw trial; in this case I stopped eating a lot of foods I liked and began eating more foods I wasn’t as fond of, ostensibly in the quest for better health. Now I wonder what will happen if I test the opposite extreme.

Discuss this post in the forums.

© 2008 by Steve Pavlina. If you find these ideas helpful, please leave a donation for Steve so you can enjoy the spirit of giving too.

With respect to goals, projects, and other to-do items, it’s easy to get stuck too long in the thinking and planning phase. You can sit around writing and rewriting your goals, delving into your subconscious mind, working through emotional blocks, summoning the power of Thor… whatever. But if you don’t eventually get into action, you’re wasting your time.

How can you get into a sustainable mode of direct action without feeling like you have to torture yourself to get moving? What can you do to cross the barrier between merely thinking about what you want and actually making it happen with your own two hands?

Here’s a simple technique I use. This has worked very well for me when I’ve applied it. It usually takes only 5-10 minutes.

Thought waves

Imagine your thoughts as energy waves that radiate out into the cosmos and then reflect back to you. If your thoughts are chaotic, the waves will interfere with each other, so you probably won’t even notice them. But if you put a lot of energy into a single coherent thought, the reflected wave will be strong enough that you’ll feel it in your body. At this point you can actually “surf” the wave. When you’re surfing your own reflected thought waves, you’re in a state of direct action, but it feels effortless. Instead of pushing yourself to act, you’re riding a wave of energy that is actually pushing you.

It isn’t difficult to create a strong thought wave and then ride it. You do this all the time whenever a powerful thought takes hold of you. For example, when you become really angry, it can be harder to stop yourself than to ride that anger into action. Or when you get a song stuck in your head, you may have a hard time preventing yourself from singing it out loud.

You can also create these thought waves consciously and deliberately. Then you can ride their energy to complete many tasks very quickly. You’ll enjoy it too.

How to create and ride thought waves

Sit quietly in a place where you won’t be distracted. Take a few deep breaths to clear your mind. Now identify whatever goal you’d like to work on. Maybe it’s something simple like organizing your workspace or writing a school paper. Or it could be something more complicated like creating a web site for a new online business, moving to a new city, or doubling your income. All you need is a clear, specific, measurable goal, but you don’t need a plan of action at this point.

Now just sit and think about what you want. Imagine this goal becoming real. Let yourself daydream, but try to stay conscious as you do it. Explore the goal in your mind. Think about it actually happening, but don’t physically try to do anything yourself yet.

For example, if your goal is to switch to a new career, then imagine yourself in that new career right now. Think about what it would be like to actually do that kind of work. Picture yourself doing the work and enjoying it. See the people you’re working with, and hold imaginary conversations with them.

Usually within 5-10 minutes, these positive thoughts build up so much energy in my body that I’m itching to do something. At first it feels good just to think about the goal, but eventually I start to feel a tension to get into motion. I can feel the thought energy reflecting back to me. Now it’s time to pull out the virtual surfboard and catch the wave.

This is essentially a process of arousal. If you think about sex for a little while, your body will physically respond. Blood will flow to different body parts, for example. If you hold those thoughts long enough, you’ll start feeling a compulsion to act on those feelings. Maybe you’ll have to take care of yourself or go jump your partner.

You can create a similar type of arousal when fantasizing about your goals. Within a few minutes, you should be noticing different physical sensations in your body – IF your goal is attractive enough to you. Extra blood may even flow to your brain and muscles, preparing you for action.

Once you start feeling that positive tension in your body, stop and ask yourself this question:

What can I do right now to make this goal a reality?

As you ask this question, hold the expectation that the answer will be something simple that can be done in 30 minutes or less.

Whatever reasonable answer pops into your head, accept it and act on it immediately. At this point you should find it very easy to take action — it would be harder to procrastinate. Do you procrastinate on sex when you’re physically aroused?

Now you’ve caught the energy wave. The next trick is to ride it as far as you can before it eventually dissipates.

Get that simple task done as quickly as you can. Sometimes you’ll flow effortlessly into another task. But if you don’t know what to do next, that’s no problem. Just stop again and ask yourself:

What can I do right now to make this goal a reality?

Accept whatever idea comes to you next, and get it done. Keep repeating this question and taking action for as long as you can. I’ll usually go about 2-4 hours without a break, sometimes much longer. In this state I can quickly plow through many different tasks. It feels good too.

It may take a little practice to build up the energy in your body and then release it gradually. Your ability to use this technique will surely improve over time.

I often use this process when writing new articles. I focus on the goal, swirl it around in my mind, and build up the energy for a few minutes. Then when I can’t remain still any longer, I ride the resulting wave and let my fingers start typing.

Give this simple technique a try, and allow your own thought waves to drive you into action.

Discuss this post in the forums.

© 2007 by Steve Pavlina. If you find these ideas helpful, please leave a donation for Steve so you can enjoy the spirit of giving too.

It’s coming so we all better get saving. I know it my seem wrong of me but I know when this happens there is going to be people out there that can’t afford their homes and thats where I will become rich.

CHEAP HOUSES – DEMAND FOR RENT

Recent headlines in the financial press have been focusing on an area of the financial world that rarely gets to see the light of day, let alone the front pages – the government bond market.

Although things have stabilised somewhat now, the yield on a 10-year gilt (UK government bond) last week hit a seven-year high of nearly 5.5%, while in the US, the yield on a 10-year Treasury (US government bond) also shot up.

As Henderson Global Investors put it, the drop in gilt prices (prices fall as yields rise), was “a significant correction for these normally stable investments”.

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