My 2 year old decided to stop sleeping over the summer and I found myself endlessly scrolling through various social media outlets in my sleepless nights. I stumbled upon something called the Rice Experiment and my interest was peaked. As a Life Coach for New Moms, I am an avid believer of positive affirmations, specifically when spoken aloud, so I thought this would be a good experiment for me to try myself.
In a nutshell, to conduct this experiment you are supposed to have newly cooked rice and two jars (although some have a third jar). My first jar was labeled ‘love’ and my second ‘hate’ (and those who use three jars have a third labeled something along the lines of ‘ignore’).
For thirty days, I was to talk lovingly to my ‘love’ jar and not so much to my ‘hate’ jar. The first few days of this experiment was more awkward than I ever imagined. It just felt so strange to talk aloud to rice! I also found myself not exactly sure what words to say to the rice. Do I compliment it on its looks? Do I tell it that it’s strong? Do I talk about how it is too good for mold? On the flip side, it was also strange to be mean to the other rice! I felt bad calling it bad names or ignoring it when I went to ‘hang out with’ the other jar. This poor rice did nothing to me, yet I was calling it names and leaving it behind. It got me thinking about when people are rude to other people, and it’s an unfortunate shame that kindness isn’t more of a permanent staple in this world.
After only a few days, the ‘hate’ jar started growing mold yet the ‘love’ jar remained clean as a whistle. It was pretty astonishing even to one who is a big believer of positive thoughts and words. The engineer inside of me couldn’t understand it, but it felt really cool to keep going. Talking to that ‘love’ jar was as easy as pie by now.
At the halfway mark, there was still no mold on the ‘love’ jar and things were going great. That next day, however, tiny specs of mold started to form and I think one of the biggest lessons learned for me came as a result of that day.
I found myself somewhat disappointed. I knew it wasn’t the rice’s fault – the environment I provided for it was bound to cause mold at some point – but I couldn’t help but feel somewhat let down. From that day on, it became harder and harder to talk lovingly to the ‘love’ jar. I did it, because that is what the experiment called for, but it no longer felt genuine (as genuine as talking to rice could be in the first place). I was doing it as a chore because it was the ‘right’ thing to do, but I certainly did not mean what I was saying. After a few days of this, it then hit me just exactly how important of a lesson learned I was experiencing first-hand. This rice needed me the most; it needed encouragement and love and positive thoughts more than it ever had before this moment – yet I was doing the exact opposite. This is a direct parallel to us during hardships. If we are trying to lose weight or learn a new skill or work towards a promotion, or whatever it may be for us…if we start to slip or fail or encounter obstacles, it is sadly so easy for us to give into that failure. We usually accept things as is and don’t try to turn them around. If we gained weight that week, we go and find a pint of ice cream to drown our sorrows in. If we can’t figure out how to get to the next level of learning how to play the guitar, we give up practicing all together and tell ourselves we aren’t good at it and it must not be meant to be. It is sad to realize this – and even worse that it took a jar of rice for me to see it so clearly – but the good news is you are hear reading this so you will not self-sabotage yourself through another one of life’s journeys!
Mold or no mold, I really learned a lot from participating in this experiment:
- It can be embarrassing at first to compliment one’s self – especially aloud – but once you break past the initial awkward feeling, it comes more easily.
- A lot of us avoid positive affirmations because it is just so out of the ordinary for us. We may be embarrassed, scared, or ___ (fill in the blank). We need to trust the process and know that once we get over that initial hump, not only does it become second nature, but the benefits are priceless.
- Being rude to others (or rice) is just so disheartening; let’s all join together and spread more kindness in this world please!
- You need love and support (from yourself most importantly!) most of all when you are at your lowest. Work through the negative feelings and be there for yourself in times of hopelessness and despair.
So to summarize, there was good news and bad news here. The bad news is eventually both jars had mold so the thirty day experiment didn’t end how one may have expected or hoped. The good news, however, is that a lot of learning and self-awareness came out of this for me – and now in turn my clients and also hopefully you reading this! Also something cool that happened during these thirty days was that I was so used to talking aloud so lovingly to this jar of rice that it got me talking to myself in the mirror more. For some reason it didn’t seem as silly anymore since I was already doing it to rice and my mood benefited from this immensely. Related to this is the new mom naked body challenge where moms whose bodies now look different post-children are to look at themselves naked in the mirror everyday for thirty days and think (and say!) positive comments about their strong, beautiful, and miracle new mom bods. This is supposed to help with self-love and acceptance which a lot of new moms struggle with in their new mom days…maybe that will be my next experiment!
