Virtual Retreat - an Update

On Dec 20th I wrote a post about starting a one month virtual retreat to work on transforming my life. I successfully made it through a trip to visit my extended family during the Christmas holidays and want to comment on how the retreat is going so far:

Getting up early and doing daily journaling about your thoughts and plans: I haven't always made my goal of starting at 5am, but this has been a really helpful practice so far.

Disciplined eating: I managed to stick with eating three healthy meals a day and avoiding all between meal snacks. It was a big change in my habits, but I felt committed and have succeeded so far. The result - I actually lost weight during the holidays :-) I also found that it gets easier after the first few days. I'm considering making this a long term habit now.

Avoid TV - I had planned to allow myself a few exceptions (PBS shows such as Bill Moyers, etc), but I'm finding that following this rule in a more strict sense without exception is working out fine. I've extended it to commercial radio and shopping malls too.

I've also decided to work on eliminating harmful negative emotions to the extent that this is possible, starting with the emotion of anger. I certainly can't claim success at eliminating anger after a week of trying, but I did notice something interesting happening. It became very easy to have the detached part of my mind recognize when anger started. I could then start an internal dialogue about what triggered this emotion, why it is likely to be harmful, and how to look at the situation in a more realistic and helpful way. This would lead to the anger dissipating reasonably quickly, leaving a more honest and unclouded view of the situation. This is more than just anger management, it's actually controlling and eliminating anger. My initial experience strongly suggests that it's habit worth spending some effort cultivating.