The Greatest Psychological Experiment You Will Ever Conduct On Yourself

If you’re like me, you have no idea what day of the week it is. You stopped caring that your weekly grocery bill is double what it should be because at this point, you just need to get out of the friggin’ house. You’ve started contemplating what constitutes socially acceptable drinking behavior, and are quickly becoming concerned that you may have a serious drinking problem. In this very moment, you’re wearing sweatpants whilst ceremoniously shoving cheese dust covered carbs into your pie hole. Welcome to COVID-19 quarantine, day ??.

What I hoped would happen VS What's really happening

For all intensive purposes, this is not what I had in mind. Despite being laid off from work, I was actually looking forward to some quality time at home to cross off the litany of items on my to-do list. Week one was solid. With a positively buoyant can-do attitude, I upped my workout routine, cleaned up my diet, started studying for the exam I’ve been putting off for over a year, and then…stopped doing all of that. Slowly but surely, I went from saying “now’s the time” to “now’s the time for a nap.” Consequentially, my self care routine sucks, my mental flow is nearly obsolete, and most of my time is occupied by watching the days fly by without any extraordinary distinction. If I’m guilty of anything, it’s inconsistency. Just when I think I’ve got it all figured out, I treat myself to a little wine and time off, only to find myself throwing another empty bottle of red into the overfilled trashcan 3 days later. Nevertheless, I still try to pick myself up no matter how many times I let myself down. Today is one of those days, and I’ve welcomed it gladly with a certain sense of reflection and unbiased observation.

In this quarantine, our lives are essentially variable free

Meandering through the hours engaged in ceaseless dialogue with myself, I’ve stumbled upon a unique thought; my life is essentially variable free. What I mean is that all of the daily grievances, work place snafus, interpersonal dramas, and deadlines I once called the norm are no longer factors in my life. Because there is no outside stimulus, there is nothing influencing my actions, reactions, or mood other than what I create for myself. We don’t have control over the world at large, but we do have control over ourselves, and that’s pretty powerful stuff. To summarize the central theme of a book written by my main man Kafka, the only person we can never escape is ourselves. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that has never been more apparent, especially now that we are literally the only company we keep. Aside from writing a short story about a man who inexplicably wakes up having turned into a giant bug, Kafka also (in)famously suggested that we are our own personal versions of living hell (sounds like a fun guy, right?). While there may be some truth in the matter, who’s to say the corollary isn’t equally valid? If we’re our own hell, why can’t we also be our saving grace? If you’re stuck with yourself till the day you die, you might as well love the one you’re with. As it stands, me, myself, and I have quite the love/hate relationship.

Face to Face with Myself

The thing about being stuck at home with no distractions, work, or social life is that all of my flaws and hangups have never been more glaringly obvious. Sitting here at the kitchen counter halfway between breakfast, dessert breakfast, snack time, and lunch, I contemplate the ways I’d like to change myself for the better. I’m sick of being stuck with this version of me that puts things off, flakes on promises, and comes up short. I’m aware of the areas in which I struggle, but in the past I've explained it away with “I’m too busy.” As it stands, I’m currently not too busy. I’m home alone with all the time in the world. I ask myself why I do all of these things that aren’t improving my life or conducive to growth, and have no good answer. I’m ready for a change, and it’s high time I underwent some personal reconstruction to take a good hard look at my bad habits, questionable predilections, and less than savory patterns.

Self-help books and motivational podcasts not giving you what you need to change? Try a new tactic:

The Experiment

Social isolation might mean distancing from others, but that doesn’t mean distancing from yourself. In fact, this is an invitation to get to know ourselves better. We are living in the ideal environment to conduct the greatest psychological experiment on ourselves (like, ever), and it can all be done within the sterilized laboratory of your home in four simple steps.

Step 1: Isolate the variable

You’re the variable, and *surprise!* you’re isolated. Now that you can study yourself without any outside forces in play, we can get to the root cause of why you do things the way you do them.

Step 2: Devise a hypothesis

Devise a hypothesis in an “if, then” statement. For instance, you could say “if I exercise daily, eat a clean diet, and work on a fulfilling project X number of hours a day, then my productivity, mood, and self-esteem will increase.”

Step 3: Log your data

Keep an entry log of your tendencies, activities, and thoughts with abject honesty and impartiality so you can accurately assess the cause and effect of your emotional and behavioral reactions. Rate your overall feelings of happiness, contentment, and productivity 3x daily (morning, noon, and night) and take note of what actions create a positive trend in these areas of assessment.

Step 4: Implement the necessary changes

Once the experimental period (aka quarantine) is over, take inventory of the areas that could use some cleaning up, more attention, more respect, or need to be eradicated entirely. Now that you've studied yourself, you’ll come out of this knowing who you really are and all your individual strengths and weaknesses. You'll have all you need to maximize your potential, and hopefully, end up loving and understanding yourself a lot more in the process.