Hell Week: Seven Days to Be Your Best Self

In Norway, there’s an interesting program called "Hell Week" which helps military officers receive the training they need to do their jobs. It allows each participant to get a taste for life, to understand the importance of simple things, and to ultimately transform the way they look at every single moment in just seven days.

In our mission to never stop looking for ways to achieve personal development, we at Bright Side decided to share the rules of Hell Week with you. Take a look — they might even help you develop some vital new skills.

1. Get up at 5 am, and go to bed at 10 pm.
2. Stay focused, committed, and good natured all week, and work hard.
3. Stick to the plan.
4. Be positive, decisive, energetic, and active.
5. Forget about TV. And during working hours, no social networking or social calls are allowed.
6. Include physical work in your life.
7. Eat healthily all week: no fast food, no sweet things.

"Overcome bad habits today rather than tomorrow." People have been saying this as far back as Confucius. And indeed, achieving personal growth in the first instance involves working on your habits. This begins on the first day of Hell Week and involves doing three things:

1. Compile a list of your good and bad habits.
2. Determine which habits you want to take further and which ones you want to get rid of.
3. Think about the qualities you lack and what you need to do to attain them.

The tasks of the second day of the week involve developing your powers of concentration and establishing the right attitude to things. These can have an important influence on the final result you achieve in whatever you’re trying to do.

• Attitude. Your feelings influence the final result of what you’re trying to do, so devote some time to instilling the right attitude within yourself. In order to find it, ask yourself the most pertinent questions that relate to what you’re doing. For example, if your work is selling flowers, you might ask yourself “How well do I know all the different kinds of flowers?“ ”What’s the correct way to care for every one of them?" “How can I improve my clients’ experience?”
• Concentration. Focus on only one thing at a time, and forget about anything else. In this way, you’ll be able to apply all your efforts and do things quickly and to a higher standard.

Wednesday is dedicated to time management, planning, and setting priorities and goals. Remember that you always have enough time, and you just need to use it effectively. Good planning will allow you to establish the relative importance of various tasks and thereby set your priorities.

• You need to establish a plan for the day, the week, and the following month based on what is truly important to you.

Thursday may well turn out to be the most difficult day of Hell Week, but it will give you priceless life experience. This is the day when you will have to come face to face with your main fears and not sleep all night.

• Only you know what your fears are, so it’s only you who can ever know how to cope with them. Admit you’re in love, accept it’s time for that difficult conversation, or overcome your fear of heights. Deciding how to do these things is, of course, your responsibility.
• Live this day in an unusual way. Move around only by running, or spend the whole day on a bike — it can be anything. The main thing is that it has to be unusual.
• You’ll also have to renounce sleep and stay up working all night. You need to prepare carefully for this with a concrete plan of what you need to do.

Work is important, but resting is equally important. Friday is a day of conscious relaxation.

• After a night without sleep, take a hot shower and eat a healthy tasty breakfast. Then decide what you’re going to do.
• Do something that you’ve long wanted to do. This might be something at home or a trip to somewhere special. Just do it in a responsible way.

Saturday is that day when your head should be filled with exclusively positive thoughts. You need to spend this day working on creating a wholly positive dialogue in your head. This task will show you how much your way of thinking influences what happens to you.

• The main thing is to think positively and to block out any negative thoughts. Think about your positive qualities, your achievements, and your future successes.
• Try to control your internal dialogue with yourself. Ask yourself the right questions, and pick the right words.

This is the final day of Hell Week, and it’s also the most important day. It is the day when you need to make your conclusions and think over your thoughts, impressions, and the satisfaction you received from the work you’ve done.

• Think about the conclusions you’ve reached during the week, and perhaps write them down. What new things did you learn to do? What did you realize or find out? What were the difficulties you encountered along the way? What is truly important to you?
• Think about all the little things you deprived yourself of during Hell Week. Now they’ll mean more to you. You’ll start to appreciate, notice, feel, and accept the nuances of life like never before.
• Finally, reward yourself with a present — any present that you want. You deserve it.

Source Erik Bertrand Larssen, "Hell Week: Seven Days to Be Your Best Self"