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PART 1

Thank you so much for subscribing to The Experimentalist!

“The hottest newsletter in town.” - my bestie

It’ll be delivered direct to your inbox every Saturday.

(to make sure it doesn’t go walkabout in any other box then either VIP this email address or reply with your favourite cocktail)

In this email I’d like to give you a little background so you know why the chuff I’m sending you experiments!

WHAT ARE THE EXPERIMENTS?

They are easily actionable exercises designed to help you adopt an Experimental Mindset, which is a pressure-free way to ease into being more willing to try new things, learn and grow from mistakes or failures, and become more adaptable and open to new opportunities.

• Each newsletter will contain one experiment, which could be anywhere on the spectrum of “playful" to “face-your-demons” (I dare you). They could focus on your mind, your body, or your consciousness.
• The goal of each experiment will vary - they could be to practice playfulness, test your perception, enhance creativity, play with manifestation, shift your mindset, spread joy, activate awareness, cultivate curiosity etc.
• Some will be fun or a little weird, some might seem plain silly and maybe appear to be lame (whatevs), and others could be more challenging. But they all have a purpose.

In other words you might enjoy some more than others so please stick around!

Your participation is required. Because, frankly, (and I never use “frankly” in a sentence lightly) it’s almost pointless to read about an experiment and not actually try it out.

Don’t worry, The Experimentalist is deliberately short (unlike this and the other 2 emails I’ll be sending you to say “welcome”) and the experiments are easily actionable and are meant to be enjoyable although you might come across slightly trickier topics too.

I invite you to try them all.

WHY DO EXPERIMENTS?

The experiments are small shifts to ease you out of comfort zone territory.

Change is scary. Comfort zones aren’t comfy by accident.

They’re like that so that you stay there because that’s where certainty hangs out. Even if your current “certainty” isn’t that great and you’re dreaming of more.

Certainty equals safety. Our primal brains are wired to keep us alive and protect us from lions, tigers, and bears. These days those lions, tigers, and bears are usually metaphorical and might look like your mean boss or could just exist in your imagination because you’ve slipped out of the present moment and have started projecting a bunch of unhelpful worst-case scenario “what ifs” into the future.

Leaving your comfort zone is loaded with uncertainty (AKA the opposite of safety) and it can feel like a Big Scary Thing. So, you hesitate, you put it off, you tell yourself you don’t have time to dedicate to change, maybe you tell yourself you don’t deserve that life you dream of, or you should be happy with what you have, that you shouldn’t be greedy.

(and YES absolutely be grateful for every single thing you have but that does not mean you don’t get to ask for more!).

Maybe you even make the Big Scary Thing even bigger by overthinking it and convince yourself your current life is comfy enough and not worth risking.

Can you relate?

I know I can. Everything I’ve told you comes from my own experience, and those are all the lies, excuses, and stories I’ve told myself.

You see, those lies, excuses, and stories are the real lions, tigers, and bears that we should get away from.

So adopt an experimental mindset to make the Big Scary Thing less big and, well, less scary.

When you make things playful you take the pressure off. Experiments by nature have uncertain results. However, knowing it’s just an experiment means that if it doesn’t work out you simply learn from it, reset the experiment based on your findings, and try another one. Experiments also nurture curiosity, in fact, they demand it!

Curiosity, asking great questions, trying new stuff, taking action on ideas, being playful… these are all portals to Awesome New Things.

Your life is your laboratory.

Your life is just one big experiment where you’re playing at being a human person.

You can change your life when you see it is an experimental game where you try stuff out in order to unlock abundant possibility and release yourself from your limitations…

After all small shifts lead to big changes.

(as long as you follow each small shift with another one and keep shifting).

Now, I should mention that being playful doesn’t mean you’re not serious about your growth. I’m very playful but I take my work, my growth and your growth very seriously. You can be playfully serious or seriously playful. It’s just an experiment after all, right?

SO WHO IS BEHIND THE EXPERIMENTALIST?

That’ll be me, hello! I'm Polly, a certified coach, risk taker, pusher of comfort zones, courageous fear-friender, and of course, an experimentalist.

As I’m going to be downloading my mind into your inbox weekly I should introduce myself properly so I will do that tomorrow.

Grab some popcorn!

PART 2

Yesterday I promised you a proper introduction so here is my story…

Did you get the popcorn? Here goes:

I was born feet first under a full moon in the middle of the night during a thunderstorm. The trailers of the movie of my life include sky-diving over Las Vegas, climbing Mt Kilimanjaro, and learning to fly the trapeze. They also show a grieving child, a teenager furious at life, a young adult making poor choices, and a grown woman determined not to be a victim of her past. You also see a lot of dancing. Polly got moves!

The movie itself covers 61 countries, 2 dead parents, 4 careers, 5 broken hearts, 3 mountain summits, 1 near-death experience, and 3 risky experiments to escape comfort zones:

1. I left a career in graphic design to travel around the world for 8 months paying for it with credit (later I got a job that paid me to travel and I became the second-highest-rated tour leader in the company)
2. I left a career in the travel industry (where I was generating annual revenues of $1.6M as a product manager) to become a photographer because my hobby had gotten out of hand (and I've been an award-winning professional photographer and teacher* for 9 years and have taught over 250 people)
3. I left the country I grew up in after I outlived my father (who died when I was 7) in order to both honour his life (as it had been cut too short) and my own (as I'd kinda stopped living) so I had to do something big to shake things up so I gave up my home and went on a journey around Europe.

But the real journey has been an inner one.

I learned to deepen my self-awareness, release past trauma, get out of survival mode, befriend fear, alchemise limiting beliefs, and master my thoughts.

(Between us... this is an on-going process)

I am a human-in-progress, and a Jedi-in-training (as well as one heck of a dancer!)...

I'm currently training for additional certifications in Mindset Coaching, Hypnosis, EFT, Neural Energetic Wiring, Neural Energetic Encoding, so I can work with subconscious minds, which is where lasting change takes place.

I’m also training as a Reiki Master.

(Yoda's gonna be asking me for tips!)

My life has been and continues to be quite the adventure and I'm so grateful for every single part of it because every experience good or bad has taught me something about myself and has brought me here, NOW.

I understand on a deep level that my outer world is a mirror of my inner world (it's quantum physics after all!).

I am the writer, the director, and the star of the movie of my life. Me. Not my circumstances, not my past, not any other person. What does your script look like?

You know you can change it if you want to right?

And what an awesome experiment that would be!

Tomorrow in the last of this short welcome series of emails and I’m going to give you 3 experiments to practice every day to make your life at least 1% better.

Small shifts lead to big changes, right?

PART 3

Yesterday I told you my story and promised you 3 experiments to practice every day to make your life at least 1% better.

Here they are:

01 🍹 Breath Box

Practicing mindfulness can change your life. 

So take at least a few minutes each morning to be present IN the moment, in the NOW (there is technically and literally no other moment).

Focussing fully on your breath is a great way to do this. You need to breathe into your belly so it can be helpful to place your hand on your stomach to make sure it inflates.

• Inhale deeply to the count of 4.
• Hold to the count of 4.
• Slowly exhale to the count of 4.
• And hold to the count of 4.

Think of it as drawing a square with your breath. This method is commonly known as “Box Breathing”.

It will help relax you, centre you in the present, and calm your nervous system if you have any mind monkeys trash-talking you.

Repeat two more times…

Tell me you’re not feeling different afterwards and I will trash my desk.

02 🍹 Gratitude Bomb

Honestly, if there was ever a cheat code for life, it's gratitude.

Take a few moments each morning to write down at least 3 things you’re grateful for. They can be anything at all!

For example, it could be “I’m grateful I woke up this morning.”

(cos there’s gonna come a day when that won’t happen - only once though *wink).

This practice will set your mind up to stay tuned for all the good stuff for the rest of the day!

If you fall off the wagon and start to listen to the mind monkeys again just reset with another Breath Box and another Gratitude Bomb.

03 🍹 Mind Monkey Cage Fight

*no animals are harmed in this experiment

We've all had those mind monkeys right?!

Some of them can be mean and tell us lies about ourselves using our own voice. Things like “I can’t do this” or “Dumbass” or worse… I promise you these are lies.

Don’t get me wrong though if it’s something like parkour or capoeira (both skills I would totally ask Morpheus if I could download) then chances are you probably can’t do it which is fair enough (although you CAN learn it), but for the most part the mind monkeys are a bunch of liars.

So when you become aware of these lies you have to challenge them by asking yourself if they're really true. Is there actual hard evidence?

(Invite the mind monkeys into the cage and get ready to fight)

For example if you said “I can’t do this.” How true is it really? Yes, you might be scared. Yes, you may have some new skills to learn or practice or have an existing skill to hone. But those things do NOT mean you cannot do it. Drill down into the details.

Rinse and repeat with each new lie you tell yourself.

Well, give these experiments a spin. I’d love to hear how you go, so please reply and let me know!

In the meantime enjoy the weekly experiments in The Experimentalist (a MUCH shorter email than these have been!). Depending on when you signed up you may have already received one. So be sure to try it out. Remember it’s pointless just reading about stuff, you have to take action.

Your participation is required. Remember, small shifts lead to big changes.

Thank you for reading. I really appreciate you being here.

Polly

p.s You may hear from me from time to time outside of The Experimentalist if I have some news, an update, or an offer for you.

p.p.s. If you are stuck and would like some clarity on the direction of your life, or simply reassurance that you are heading the right way I have a FREE mini-course you can access: Path to Purpose (spoilers: it contains experiments!)

Please forward these links to anyone who you think might enjoy them:

Path to Purpose

The Experimentalist

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