Recapping My June (or Still Thinking Up New Monthly Challenges)

With June over now, I wanted to not only reflect back on my monthly challenge for June but what I’ve been able to do for the first half of the year. When I saw my therapist recently, he was really proud of the work that I had been doing and especially with my monthly challenges. I never expected that I would be able to keep every challenge up beyond the challenge month when I started.

But I’ve been keeping accurate food tracking since January, doing daily gratitude lists since February, not ordering delivery food since March, weighing myself every day that I’m home since April, looking to self-submit for acting jobs since May, and now meditating every day since June.

I’ll admit, the meditation thing was tough since I hadn’t really ever been able to do it for more than a few days in a row before. But because I’m an all or nothing person, it made sense to jump in right away without thinking about it too much.

I’ve been using an app called Breathe for meditation and I’ve been liking it a lot. You do check ins before meditating and it will recommend different meditations for you. Most of the free ones are under 10 minutes long, which is perfect for me. The ones I was doing the most were between 2-5 minutes.

It wasn’t easy to start and I’ve had to adjust things to make it better for myself. Because of all the hip issues, I get fidgety when sitting still. So I can’t sit while meditating most of the time. Instead, I lay down on my bed and try to find a comfortable way to lay down before I start the app. Also, I had set reminders for myself to meditate with the idea that I would try to do some in the morning and some at night. The morning meditations never worked for me this past month. I’ve been doing them right before bed each night and I’m actually really liking that. Maybe one day I’ll try to add in morning ones, but for now I’m happy with adding something new to my bedtime ritual because it helps to signal to my body that it’s time to fall asleep.

After so many months in a row of awesome monthly challenges, it’s getting harder and harder to pick a new one. I actually started thinking about my July challenge halfway through June because I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to figure out. I had planned out a couple of ideas and tried to pick something that I knew I’d be able to be successful with (for example, saying I’ll have a binge free month is not really achievable at this point and I don’t want to set myself up for failure). In the end, I think I thought of something great for this month.

For July, I’m challenging myself to read 10 pages of an eating disorder recovery book every day. I’ve actually had monthly goals in the past to read an eating disorder recovery book, and I’ve never been successful at finishing one. I get distracted or want to read a fun book so I’d take a break and never came back to the book I started. For me, I’m usually able to start a book and finish it without breaks, but I just can’t seem to do that with eating disorder recovery books.

So if I set up a plan to only have to read 10 pages a day, I’ll still get to do my fun reading but I should be able to finish an entire book this month. I used to do this with personal development books when I used to be in an MLM type of job, but when I stopped working with that company that habit was dropped. But I think this is a perfect time to bring that back to my life and I think it’s going to be a really positive thing for me.

I’m happy with this challenge I’ve set up for July, but knowing how hard it is to come up with new challenges each month I think I need to start thinking about my August challenge now!

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Recapping A Few Challenges From Last Month (or Getting Ready Stop Going Easy On Myself) Adjusting Monthly Challenges (or Books And Happiness) Thinking Of Changing Up My Monthly Challenge (or I Guess This Would Be A First) Getting More Productive (or More Monthly Challenges) Another Monthly Challenge Down (or July and August Challenges) Almost Through A Year Of Monthly Challenges (or Picking A Good Challenge For November)