An overview of the three changes that I made to my environment that resulted in the improvement of my health. This slide show includes the reasons why I made those changes and the impact those changes had on me.

1. Changing my environment
to improve my health
The three changes I made and the effects that I saw.

2. My Goal
My goal was to change my environment in THREE
simple ways that helped me achieve my goal of
living healthier. While I consider myself to be very
healthy already, I wanted to make a concerted
effort to experiment with different methods and
guides.
I decided to break my changes into three areas:
physical health, mental/emotional health and
spiritual health.
Here is what I did. Contact information is at the
end.

3. Physical Health Change
Problem: Even though I run and go to the gym
regularly, there are days in which I am so busy that I
miss my scheduled workout regiment. I also wanted to
experiment with short, habitual exercises.
Solution: I bought a pull up bar and
placed it in one of my doorways in
my dorm. Next to the pull up bar I
placed a piece of paper and pencil
to allow myself to record the
number of pull ups I did in a day.

4. Physical Health Result
Since making the change, I have begun doing
over 20 pushups a day. I usually do 3 in a set.
4 days ago, I could do five, wide spread pull
ups comfortably. Now, I am at a comfortable
six.
I do not complete a set every time I walk
through the doorway. There are many times I
rush into my room to grab a book and run out.
But for every other time, I do complete a set.

5. Mental/Emotional Health
Change
I am a Computer Science major, so my life is filled
with computers, gadgets, code and 20 hour long
projects which result in late nights and lots of stress.
One thing that has always soothed me is music,
and not just hearing music, but playing.
I have been playing the guitar since I
was eight years old, but I have always
left my guitars in their cases under my
bed. My change was to leave my
acoustic guitar on a stand in the corner
of my room so that I would see it and
play it more regularly.

6. Mental/Emotional Health
Result
By placing my guitar out in the open, I
manipulated both the ability for the target
behavior (play guitar more regularly) to occur as
well as the trigger (call to action to a behavior).
Whenever I saw my guitar, I sat down and played
for 10 minutes.
I found myself playing for a total of 30 minutes
each day, usually at the beginning and end of the
day. This significantly helped reduced stress and
allowed me to sleep easier each night.

7. Spiritual Health Change
My Christian faith is the foundation on which
I build the rest of my life. Unfortunately, it is
easy to get caught up in the chaotic and
busy life style of being a college student and
not spend adequate time slowing down in
prayerful meditation and reading my Bible.
To assist me in remembering, and because I
use my calendar for everything, I scheduled
in 30 minutes each day to remind me to slow
down. I also placed my Bible next to my bed
so that it was easy to grab in the morning.

8. Spiritual Health Result
After I made the changes, I became
much more diligent with my spiritual
morning habits. I got the point where I
didn’t always need the reminder.
The new placement of my Bible
made the ability (Behavior =
Motivation + Ability + Trigger) of my
target behavior easier, while the
calendar entry constituted as the
trigger. No matter what motivation I
had (tired or excited), I followed
through.

9. Conclusion
By simply altering the ability to complete my target
behaviors and restructuring the trigger, I was able
to easily complete the behaviors each day. While
some people may be turned away by the
routinized methods that I implemented, I found
that routine and structure make my days more
productive and efficient. This ultimately results in
me being happier and content.

10. Contact Info
I am Jason van der Merwe, a Computer Science
Major at Stanford University. Feel free to contact
me using the email address below!
Jason.merwe@gmail.com
Also feel free to leave comments on this slideshow.