First Monthly Challenge Of 2018 (or Time To Be A Bit Selfish)

With the new year I’ve also got a new Volt Planner! They did some minor redesign work on the planner and I love how it looks! It’s so clean with lots of room to write things and decorate. But the redesign didn’t change a lot of the important stuff like the monthly challenges. So since it’s the beginning of a month it’s time for a new monthly challenge!

First, a quick recap on December’s challenge. I set that challenge to be to work on my handwriting. And for the first half of the month, that went really well! I got some new nice pens to use and found lots of free printable handwriting guides to use. I think my handwriting did get a bit better and I learned some new style ideas with writing. But for the second half of the month, I just didn’t work on it. There wasn’t really a good reason, I just didn’t. But I still worked on making my handwriting nice when I was writing anything. So I still want to work on this and I know I will. But I don’t know if it will be something I work on every day.

For my first challenge of this year, I really wanted to think about something that connected to my goals for the year and word of the year. I kept coming back to an idea for a challenge but then rejected it because it didn’t seem right. I felt a bit embarrassed that it would be my challenge and wouldn’t want to share it. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this should be my challenge. I shouldn’t be fearful about what others think and that’s kind of exactly what this month’s challenge is all about.

This month, my challenge is to allow myself to be a bit selfish.

I know this sounds a bit weird, but I’ll explain myself. This does not mean that I’m only going to think of myself. I’m still going to consider others and be selfless more often than not. But I’m not going to be scared to be selfish and do what I know is the best thing for me even if someone else thinks that something else is better for me.

A perfect example of this was this past weekend. My brother and sister-in-law were going to be in LA visiting friends and wanted to know if I wanted to meet them for lunch. I of course said yes and was very excited to see them. But the day I was supposed to meet them, I was dealing with horrible nausea and pain because of my hormones. This was the worst I had ever felt and none of the medications I have were taking the edge off. But I was thinking I should still go to lunch because I told them that I would and I didn’t want to disappoint them. I knew I wouldn’t be able to eat and I would probably be in a lot of pain, but somehow I was more worried about bailing on plans than my health.

But then I realized how crazy that sounded. My brother and sister-in-law would totally understand if I couldn’t see them. It would have been so much better for me to stay home and try to take care of myself than to push myself and maybe make things worse for me. It felt like a selfish choice because I was putting myself first, but I knew I needed to do it. And it was fine. I texted them to let them know what was happening, they totally understood, and we figured we’d see each other another time. It wasn’t a big deal at all and they weren’t mad or upset with me. It’s silly how worried I was about it when it was fine.

After that, I realized that allowing myself to be a bit selfish is exactly what I need to challenge myself to do. I am very much a people pleaser and sometimes I do that to the point that it makes me unhappy. I want to focus on my happiness and sometimes that does mean being a bit selfish. If someone invites me to a party and I really feel like staying home, then I should stay home instead of going to a party and being miserable. If I want to prioritize myself, then I shouldn’t feel guilty about it.

It seems so weird to make being selfish a challenge for the month, but at the same time it seems so perfect. There really isn’t a good way for me to judge if I’m successful in this challenge or not compared to some challenges in the past, but I think that I just want to give myself permission to be selfish and not feel bad about it. I know that if I’m selfish and feel bad that I can think about it and realize that most likely I’m not hurting anyone with my decision. And taking away that guilty feeling would be the biggest win in this challenge that I can think of.

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Monthly Challenge Update Time (or One More For 2017) Is This A Year Of Being Selfish? (or A Month Of Saying No) Getting Back To Stretching (or My Body Is Telling Me What Monthly Challenge To Do) Almost Through A Year Of Monthly Challenges (or Picking A Good Challenge For November) My August Challenge (or Being Selfish To Be Happy) Monthly Challenge Check-In (or Doing My Own Version Of An OTF Challenge This Month)