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Recapping A Few Challenges From Last Month (or Getting Ready Stop Going Easy On Myself)

Posted on December 4, 2018 | Comments Off on Recapping A Few Challenges From Last Month (or Getting Ready Stop Going Easy On Myself)

I usually would just be doing my monthly challenge recap in this post and then announce my next monthly challenge, but I’m going to do things a bit differently this time. I’m going to recap 2 challenges I had last month and that will lead into what my challenge will be for this month.

First, last month I challenged myself to work on getting back to feeling like myself. I knew that I was feeling a bit lost and not like myself and I wanted to find what I needed to do in order to feel that way again. It was another challenge that wasn’t easy to track so I looked at it as a goal for the month versus a challenge.

I’m almost embarrassed to admit that in the middle of the month I actually forgot what my challenge was. It wasn’t something I had to think about every day or had a reminder to do, so it was easy to forget about it. I tried to put a positive spin on it and say that I must be back to myself if I wasn’t focused on doing that anymore. And I do feel like I’m back to being me and I’m very happy about that. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that I really didn’t have to do much for this challenge and it really was kind of a wash.

I also had a challenge last month to participate in NaNoWriMo again and to get up to date on all my online dating stories. I hadn’t done a lot of work on the book since last year and I had a lot of stories to add. I started off on a great note with getting chapter names for all the new stories, writing a few of the stories down that I hadn’t done yet, and updating the few stories that have had changes or new updates. I knew that I wasn’t going to hit the word count goal for NaNoWriMo since my stories aren’t necessarily that long, but I wanted to work on the book until I was current on it.

But after that initial motivation and got a few things done, I did nothing else with it last month. I am glad that I wrote down the stories that I want to write because there were a few that I had forgotten about. I plan on writing more stories than I probably would actually have in a book so I have options. It’s better to have to edit a book and stories down than to need to find more to add because it’s too short. There’s no real good excuse for why I didn’t work on my book more other than I was lazy and just didn’t do it. I had the time between my customers at work on work on them and it wouldn’t have taken that much time. I just didn’t do it and I am a bit upset with myself that I just let that go and didn’t work on it like I planned to do.

From both the book and my monthly challenges being kind of a fail and I went easy on myself for not really doing much, I knew I needed to make a change. My monthly challenges used to be real challenges that pushed me and made me work toward a change in my life. I haven’t kept all of the monthly challenges as a part of my life, but many of them are still daily habits that I enjoy and know benefit me.

So technically my challenge for this month is another one that will be easy to slack on, but it will be better for me in the long run. My challenge this month is to plan my monthly challenges for 2019. I would love to have a list of at least 16 challenges so I have some options to use next year. I want to pick things that can be tracked and measured so I am held accountable to them. And I want to pick things that will truly challenge me and hopefully make me a better version of myself. I’m hoping I can find a good mix of physical challenges (like stretching and yoga), educational challenges (like how I’m working on learning French), and mental challenges (like my meditation challenge that I’m over 900 days into). I know having a mix will be the best thing for me and will help me not feel too overwhelmed.

I know that this month is another challenge I can slack on and not make an effort every day toward, but it’s the first step in making sure that I break this bad habit and have some amazing challenges in the new year!

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Struggling To Figure Out A Monthly Challenge (or Finding Myself Again)

Posted on November 1, 2018 | 1 comment

It’s almost the end of the year! I can’t believe that in 2 months it will be 2019! And with the start of November I am recapping a monthly challenge and sharing a new one. While this year as been the year of more abstract challenges, I feel like this might be the most abstract one and a bit tough to explain. But first, I want to share how my October challenge went.

I wanted to continue building on my challenge to not shop online by being much clearer on what I wanted to buy when I did shop online or in person. I did do some online shopping last month, but it was much more deliberate than it has been in the past. I did work on using my Amazon wish lists and just leaving things in my cart online to not shop until I had something I really needed. Then I would reevaluate what I was actually going to purchase. The only time this didn’t work was with ordering a bra online because I thought I added both of the ones I wanted and it only had 1 in the order. Since I really wanted both (I think the women reading this understand that when you find a bra that fits you want it in multiple colors to go under anything you might wear), I did 2 orders back to back to get everything ordered that I was hoping to have. It wasn’t impulsive or done for just convenience like I had in the past, which is a good sign.

For shopping in person, I got much better about making my lists. I usually would make a list on a sticky note before I went to the store and that helped a lot. I wasn’t forgetting things at the store like I sometimes do and I was cutting back on how often I had to go to the store. I did still have some impulsive buys when I saw things I wasn’t expecting (like the Wonder Woman sheet mask I saw at CVS when I was getting contact lens solution), but it was much less than before. I still took my time when shopping and wandered around the stores, but it was more of seeing what else is out there than trying to figure out what I wanted to get. I had already been doing shopping lists from time to time, but I’m glad I forced myself to do them more often and I plan on keeping this up.

Now for November’s challenge, I really struggled to figure out what I wanted to do. I had lots of little ideas, but none of them seemed to really connect to me or feel worthy of a monthly challenge. Some of them were things I was already planning on doing this month and that almost felt like a cheat since it wasn’t a new challenge. I probably was thinking about this since the beginning of October and by this week I still didn’t have an idea of what I would do.

But I was inspired by a phone call I had with my aunt the other day. We usually talk every week (we discuss the tv shows we both watch), but we had been having trouble connecting on the phone so we hadn’t talked in almost a month. We both have been dealing with lots of randomness so it wasn’t either of our faults that the phone call took forever to happen. And while we were talking we discussed what was happening in our lives. And I just kept saying some variation of how I just don’t feel like myself or like I’m back on track to normal life.

I don’t know exactly why I’m feeling like this, but I know that some of the smaller challenge ideas I had for this month are a part of that. I am struggling with money right now and it’s a huge stress on my mind. Worrying about money as often as I am right now isn’t what I’m used to. I do worry about money, but not like I am right now. My food has been off too, but that is due to lots of different factors that I’m trying to resolve. My sleep has been a bit of a struggle, but it’s slowly getting better and I’m closer to the amount of sleep I know I need to get. And some things are just piling up and I’m so far behind (like catching up on podcasts or reading) and I can’t figure out why this is happening or where my time is going.

So this month, I’m trying to find myself again. I don’t know where I went or what happened, but I need to fix this. It’s such an abstract challenge and I have no idea how I will measure if I am successful or not, but it’s exactly what I need to do right now. This is similar to many of the other abstract challenges I’ve done this month, but this time I’m not being specific on what I’m trying to accomplish. I just want this uneasy and unsettled feeling to go away and to feel like I know I can and should. And I want to do whatever it takes to make that happen and I’m not sure what it will involve.

I know some of the things I need to work on and what I can do to try to fix them, but I don’t know if those individual things will make me feel more like me again. It might take other things that I haven’t thought of that I will discover as the month goes on. And having this challenge as open and general as it is will allow me to do what I discover I need to do. And hopefully in a month when I recap this post I will be able to share that I am feeling much more like me (even if I’m not all the way there yet) and will know what changes I needed to make in my life to get there.

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Building Upon My Monthly Challenge (or Continuing To Work On Shopping)

Posted on October 2, 2018 | Comments Off on Building Upon My Monthly Challenge (or Continuing To Work On Shopping)

Last month, I said my monthly challenge was to not do any online shopping. I did allow myself some exceptions to the rule if necessary, and I’m happy to say that I only did that twice. Both times I shopped online this past month was on Amazon, but only one of those was for me. The first time was sending my friend some supplies they needed after getting home from inpatient treatment. I would have preferred to bring it in person, but I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do that soon enough. And the second time I did online shopping was for some household goods (batteries, paper goods, office supplies). And I did do price comparisons to make sure getting them online was the right choice.

Even though I didn’t completely eliminate online shopping, I feel like I did reduce it a lot. And it changed my shopping habits as well. For the stuff I ordered online for myself, I didn’t buy things right away when I needed them. None of the things I needed were urgent, so I just added them to my Amazon cart and saved them up until it was the end of the month. It was much more mindful than I have done online shopping before and I really did notice a difference in what I was considering buying when I knew that I wasn’t necessarily going to be getting it soon. While my shopping wasn’t out of control, I knew I needed to cut back and I’m happy that I was able to accomplish that in September.

I’m going to continue working on limiting my online shopping. I know it won’t be completely eliminated, but I can work on making sure that I’m not ordering things whenever I think of them. I think adding them to my cart and waiting a few weeks was the right choice. I do have other gifts for people I need to order online this month, but it’s really not the same as ordering for myself so I’m not as worried about it. And since they are gifts, I’m just getting that one thing and not seeing what else is something that can be bought.

And going off of that idea, I was inspired for this month’s challenge. I have become so much more mindful of my shopping online. Now I want to be more mindful of my in store shopping as well. And a majority of my in store shopping is for groceries and household things, so the easiest way I think I can be mindful is to always have a list.

I’m actually pretty good at making lists when I’m shopping for household things. I usually shop at CVS and I have been taking advantage of their coupons for a long time. But I have learned that I can combine the coupons you get when you shop along with coupons that various brands put out and with the overall discount coupons I get in the mail (like when you get 30% your shopping trip from CVS). I’m not a crazy coupon person, but it does make me happy when I see the percentage of savings on the bottom of the receipt and it is over 50%. It happens more often than not and it’s nice to know that things I am buying are cheaper than what others may be paying for them.

And I used to do grocery store lists and still occasionally do them. If I’m making something new or have food planned out, I make a list because I hate forgetting one thing that I really need. But I don’t always have a plan and do a lot of routine shopping. I know that I will eat certain things each week and I usually don’t even think about it as I pick up those things each week. But then I also know that there are plenty of times that I just get those things and don’t necessarily think about different meals or what my schedule will be like that will make my meals a bit weird.

I don’t necessarily want to make this about meal planning, although I do think that will be a bit of a side effect of doing this. But I do want to write down what I am going to buy even if it is just stuff I usually get each week. I want to think about what I’m going to do before getting into the store. I can’t guarantee that I will only get the things on the list because sometimes I see something that is new or inspires me. But at least it will give me a plan to try to follow.

In a perfect world, I will make the list for shopping for whatever I am getting before I leave my house. I do try to do that when I can, especially when I’m doing multiple errands back to back. I’ll make a list of each place I’m going to and what I will be getting at each store. I think writing it down really is the best for me because it does help me remember it. But if I’m out and going to do some shopping, I can just make a quick list on my phone. I do have some list apps, but it’s also easy enough to do it as a text or email to myself.

I’m also planning on using this for shopping for clothes and other goods too. When I need to go to a store to buy some new clothes or replace something, I also end up doing a lot of wandering around the store and seeing what else catches my attention. I’m doing much better not buying things that weren’t a part of the plan, but maybe making what I need to buy as a list will help me not waste the time wandering around. I still want to give myself the freedom to do window shopping and see what inspires me, but I want to also make those moments more mindful and for me to be aware that I am choosing to do that.

I’m so glad that I’m going to continue working on my shopping habits this month. I was pleasantly surprised by how last month went and how easy it ended up being. I only hope that this month goes the same way.

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No Shopping September (or At Least No Online Shopping)

Posted on September 4, 2018 | 1 comment

Another monthly challenge time! This feels almost late to write this post, but it’s only 4 days into the month so it’s not so bad. But this challenge is actually one I started before the month started, so it feels like I’ve been doing it a bit longer.

But first, a really quick recap on last month’s challenge. I don’t know what I was expecting to happen, but I really didn’t have to say no to things as often as I thought I might need to. I don’t know if my friends read the post and didn’t invite me out to things or it was just a slow month socially for everyone, but I never really felt guilty saying no because I never had to say no to anything significant. I didn’t make plans, but that’s different from turning down plans. But I did like allowing myself to have days at home watching tv or reading because I did need those.

And I plan on continuing to do the same from now on because I do feel in a better place mentally than I had before. Even after dealing with some setbacks, I bounced back from those faster than I expected and I think that’s because I did allow myself to be the priority. While I don’t like the idea of being selfish, I see the benefits of doing it and how it makes my time with other people better and more focused.

So this month’s challenge is something I started last week as soon as I thought of it. I am challenging myself to not do any online shopping for the month.

I am not as bad about online shopping as some people are, but it’s bad for me. I find it way too easy to order something online and not have to think about it. It’s not all about the instant gratification, although ordering something on Amazon and getting it a few hours later is pretty incredible. It’s also making me a bit lazy and allowing myself to not go out and do things because I can just order stuff online.

If I see something in an article or in social media, it’s so easy to click on the link and to see if it’s something I want and then to order it. I do try to not buy things too often, but even when I think about if I want something or not I still often get the thing. And I know I have spent money on things that I wanted and not that I needed. I do like to have nice things, but I also am not in a financial place where I should be thinking about what everyone else has. I need to focus on maybe being a bit more minimalistic and paring down on what I have. I have started doing that a bit with all the cleaning I’ve done lately, but I know I can do more.

If I do see something online that I really do think I want, I am going to work on using wish lists more often. This isn’t always an option for all online stores, but I know I don’t use it enough on Amazon. I will probably create a private wish list so I don’t have to worry about other people seeing what I have in there, but I should also work on adding things to my public one too since I can use that for anyone who is asking what I want for my birthday or Hanukkah.

And for online stores that don’t have wish lists, I can try to see how long you can keep something in your online cart before it is released. I don’t think most stores will be long enough, but I’m going to test some out to see if there are some I can use that way. And if I can’t, I can always email or text a link to myself to remember I was looking at it or add a bookmark for that website. There is almost nothing that I need to get right away and can’t wait for. And if I can wait, maybe I’ll realize I don’t need it or it will go on sale and if I need it I can spend less on it.

But there will be a few exceptions to this challenge. First, I’m not counting paying bills online or ordering refills of my prescriptions online. Online bill pay is not shopping so that’s not even one I considered to eliminate this month until a friend had asked me about it. And ordering prescriptions online is basically required with my insurance unless I wanted to go to the hospital one day to order my refill and then return a week later to get it because my medication isn’t usually in stock when I order it.

I’ve also had a few books for my Kindle that I was thinking of getting this month. Some of them I can wait on (or figure out if I really need to own them versus getting them from the library). But there’s one book that may be a part of a 7 week challenge with an online group (similar to The Artist’s Way). I can’t get it from the library because library books are only for 3 weeks and I would need it for 7. Also, it’s possibly something I would like to own. But I’m debating on if I’ll do the challenge now or another time. Also, some of my supplements I take are significantly cheaper online and if I need a refill of one I will order it online. It’s silly to buy a 30 day supply for the same price as a 60 day supply would be online. But I will be doing some price matching before ordering anything just to make sure there aren’t sales for stores I could go to.

And while I have tried to buy things online I knew I would need ahead of time, I do have a few gifts for birthdays/weddings/babies being born that will possibly need to be ordered in September that I will allow myself to order online if that is the cheapest way to do so. I think I have gotten everything ordered that I will need this month, but especially with the friends who are having babies I know that they might be born before October and I do want to get gifts for others on time. Maybe I shouldn’t consider gifts for other people shopping since it’s not for me, but I don’t want to make too many exceptions if I can help it. So this exception is only for gifts that need to be timely and can’t wait until October.

I don’t know how this challenge will go or if I will feel a huge difference. But when I realized that my online spending was not as controlled as I would like it to be I wanted to see what I could do to fix it now instead of waiting to see if it happens to get better on its own randomly. I know there are some friends who are doing no shopping at all challenges this month, but I’m not totally sure I can do that one. But I am going to try to spend less in stores in person as well since I don’t want to take my online shopping habits and just shift them to shopping in person.

It will be interesting to see how I feel after this month. Maybe I won’t feel like I need online shopping as much? I might discover things that will help me be a smarter online shopper so I don’t stress about overdoing it. But I have a feeling that whatever happens this month with this challenge that there will be a lesson to share when I recap this in October.

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Is This A Year Of Being Selfish? (or A Month Of Saying No)

Posted on August 1, 2018 | 1 comment

It’s so weird when I look back at my monthly challenges as they rack up throughout the year. This year and last year I didn’t really have challenges planned out the way I did the first time and many times I’m picking a challenge out at the last minute. And as I’ve been looking back at some of the challenges I’ve been doing this year, it seems like the common theme has been that I’ve been doing more selfish challenges. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as I’ve been realizing that I’ve been putting myself last quite a bit, but I do think I want to work on other types of challenges in the future. But this month won’t be the month to change.

First, a quick recap on last month’s challenge. I did not use my pressure mat every single day, but I did use it more often than not last month. I do want to get into a better habit of using it because I do feel the difference when I take the time to use it. I’m still looking at guides online for ideas of ways to use it and lay on it, but most of the time I just like laying on my back letting it work on my neck, shoulders, and back. It feels really good and I have enjoyed not having some of the back and neck pain I’ve been dealing with for a little while. I’m working on a system of when would be a good time each day to use it or maybe a plan for what days I will use it in different ways, but it’s a work in progress.

Last month’s challenge wasn’t my most successful one as far as consistency goes, but that’s what inspired this month’s challenge. About 2 1/2 years ago I read the book “Year Of Yes” by Shonda Rhimes and it was so inspiring! It made me realize how often I was saying no to opportunities that I really should have taken advantage of. I was scared for a variety of reasons to say yes to things and I knew that I needed to stop letting that hold me back. While I didn’t say yes to everything that came my way, I was saying yes much more often.

I’ve tried to keep doing that whenever possible and when I had to turn down an invitation or couldn’t do something I wanted to I felt so guilty about it. I hated to let someone down and even though I know that I wasn’t letting people down if I couldn’t attend something, it still was in my head that I was. It’s a tough habit to break but I’ve been working on this feeling for a while.

But then this year I’ve been doing some more things to put myself first and not feel like I have to say yes to everything. My first challenge this year was related to that with allowing myself to be selfish. But that didn’t connect with me as much as it should have and I have been back in the habit of saying yes more often that I probably would like to and feeling guilty when I say no. I am not trying to be totally selfish and that is something that I don’t think I could ever do, but I do want to feel ok saying no when I want to and not have the feelings of guilt.

The one aspect of my life where I have been more successful with this has been with dating. And I’m not taking about saying no if a guy is pressuring me to do something (if they try that they will regret it). I mean not going out with a guy just because they asked me out. I’ve realized that I have been having dates with more quality guys lately. There still have been some duds, but they are not as often as they were when I started back on the various apps. As someone else pointed out to me, I’ve been getting more selective and willing to block or unmatch with someone who I don’t want to talk to anymore. I don’t have any guilt over doing that and I’m more than happy to stop wasting my time with someone who I don’t want to meet.

Obviously it’s different to say no to something a friend is inviting you out to compared to blocking a guy online that you’ve never met and is starting to bother you. But it’s still the same idea and I need to take some of the lack of guilt and fear I have with guys and apply it to other parts of my life. I need to find the balance with putting myself first and still being a good friend to others and taking chances on things that I might not automatically think I should do or attend.

I think that the reason this has been so tough for me to do has been that I’ve worked hard on saying yes more often and now I’m out of the habit of saying no. And I’ve had a lot of fun saying yes to things when I originally felt like I should turn down. I also like having fun and random things to do because it gives me things to write about.

I’ve realize in the past month or so that I do need to be more selfish. I don’t think saying yes got me sick, but I think stressing about doing things might have made my cold thing last longer. I also think that feeling down had a lot to do with trying to force myself to do things I wasn’t sure about and the guilt I felt if I didn’t go. I have spent so many times making my monthly challenges about being selfish and reconnecting to myself, but I haven’t really been able to accomplish it the way I needed to.

So this month, I’m working on saying no more often. There will be a lot of fun things to do this month (it’s my birthday month!) so I’ll have lots of things I want to say yes to. But I also know there should be plenty of time to work on saying no or at least allowing myself time to debate if I want to say yes or not. I’m not sure if I’ll be successful in this challenge or not, but I am giving myself a much more measurable challenge and something that has action steps to it.

I’m not exactly sure what I am hoping this month will result in for me, but I’m excited to see how it goes and what happens. If nothing else, it will give me some more self-reflection and permission to focus on doing what I want to instead of what is offered to me.

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Still Being A Bit Selfish (or Using Some Pressure)

Posted on July 3, 2018 | 1 comment

I’ve been pretty reflective and internal with a lot of my monthly challenges lately. Clearly I feel like I need to work on my inside right now and I’m glad I’m allowing myself to do that. It does mean that my monthly challenges don’t have the most measurable results, but I can feel that they are making a difference in my life and that’s what’s important to me.

Last month I set my challenge to spend the month refocusing and reconnecting to myself. I had some big goals in mind for what I wanted to do while working on that and I knew that some of them are things I really wanted to do. But to be honest, while I did work on reconnecting to myself I didn’t get a lot of things done that I should have.

I did spend a decent amount of time giving myself permission to be lazy or anti-social. I spent some nights at home reading or watching TV instead of making plans. And I loved having those nights at home. I did a lot of reading which is something that I hadn’t been doing enough lately. I went through the library system online and found several e-books that I wanted to read so I built up my wish list and hold list online. I’m slowly getting those books and I know I’ll have a lot of books coming up that I have been wanting to read.

I wanted to work on cooking more and doing a clothing inventory. Neither of those really happened. The clothing inventory did a bit with doing a mental inventory and stopping myself when I thought I should buy something. I have started orders online for clothes so many times in the past month that I just abandoned because I realized I didn’t need them. I still need to go through things and see what I have and what I can get rid of, but it’s a work in progress. And the cooking thing just didn’t happen. I think part of it was due to me allowing myself to be lazy, but I also had been dealing with health things that just stopped my motivation for cooking. A lot of times this past month I was just eating really basic and plain things that didn’t need much effort. But I am hoping the cooking thing will kick back in for me again soon.

When I was trying to think of my challenge for this month, I had a few things in mind. But it was something I bought online that ended up inspiring me. While I was nauseous I was trying to figure out anything that could help me. I ended up ordering a few things that people said had helped them in the past, and one of those things was an acupressure mat.

Several people suggested acupuncture to me, but I’m a little unsure about it. I don’t love needles (even though that is getting better) and it’s not covered by my insurance. It might be something I try eventually, but not right now. But when I was looking at acupuncture to help nausea I came across using an acupressure mat to help. This particular mat was about $20 on Amazon and has almost 8,000 pressure points between the mat and the pillow. I got it right after my nausea ended, but I decided to experiment with it this past week.

There are a few different guides online on how to use it and what you can do for different types of pain. The most basic one was laying on your back with the pillow under your neck for back pain and to help you relax. So I decided to try that first and I set the mat and pillow on my bed since there was more room on there and it would be easier to get up if I needed to.

A lot of people lay on these mats without clothing on, but most of the guides recommended easing into that. I wore a tank top so there was some exposed skin, but it was minimal. It took a few tries of laying down before I felt like it was the right position, but once I found the right spot I just spent time reading while laying on it. It was a bit pokey from time to time, but nothing unbearable or that painful.

I was on it for about 10 minutes before I felt like I needed to get up. I don’t love laying flat on my back, so that will take some getting used to as well. And after I got up I didn’t feel much at first. But within minutes my back was starting to feel really warm and it felt like the muscle tension and stress in my back was melting off of me. I wish I could describe the feeling better, but it was almost like there was something sliding off my back and it was taking the tension with it.

While I knew this was what the mat was supposed to do, I was still pretty surprised by how quickly it worked and how simple it was. I’ve only had the mat since the end of last week, but I’ve spent time on it every evening before going to bed. And that is my challenge for this month. I want to work on building up my tolerance with the mat when it comes to how long I can lay on it as well as working toward not needing a tank top when using it. I can already feel the benefits I’ve had in the few days I’ve used it, so I can’t wait to see how good I feel after a month.

I also want to work on experimenting with other positions. I have used the pillow on my feet (I was on my back on my couch with my feet on top of the pillow). That didn’t feel as amazing as my back did, but it still felt good. And there are positions to help leg pain, hip issues, and plenty of other things. I need to work on seeing what works for me because I have a feeling this mat will be something I use regularly to help my body feel better.

While this is a more objective challenge that will be easy to confirm whether or not I did it, it still feels a bit internal and reflective to me. This is about making my body feel better and that’s something that only I can tell. Maybe if my body is feeling better I will have more energy to put toward things I want. I’m just excited to see what happens and what other things I may discover about myself after doing this.

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Continuing To Work On Myself (or More Reflective Challenges)

Posted on June 1, 2018 | 2 comments

I have to admit that the beginning of a month is pretty exciting for me. I used to hate it because that is when so many of my bills are due (and then my bank accounts look so low), but now I look forward to it because of my monthly challenges! It has been tough to pick challenges sometimes, but I do enjoy them and I feel like they have made me a much better person since I started doing them.

Last month my challenge was to do daily intentions/affirmations. I wasn’t exactly sure what to call them when I started the challenge and I still don’t know exactly what to call them now. But every morning I would write something down to set the tone for the day. Sometimes it was a reminder that I was going to get through something tough. Sometimes it was just saying that I will get over my cold soon. And there were other times where it was just a reminder that it was ok to feel what I was feeling or it was ok to do nothing.

Almost every single morning I remembered to write something down either before work or before my workout. There were only a few days that I forgot but it was always done within the first few hours of my day. And it really did help put me into a better mindset with a goal in mind. It was something to focus on from the start of my day as opposed to my gratitude list which is a reflection of how my day went. And it really was a positive change in my month even with how tough things were for me.

And considering how tough the last month was for me both mentally and physically, I’ve decided that my challenge for June is to work on getting back to my normal self. I’ve already started to work on this, but I really want to have a month of refocusing and reconnecting. I still feel a bit out of sorts with a few things and I want to take the time to work on fixing them. I just want to get into a better and more positive mindset and the best way to do that is to work on me.

I know this is another abstract challenge to have, but I think that because I’ve felt disconnected that it’s exactly what I need. I need to just have a month to work on figuring out what I want and what I need. It’s not something that is really measurable but it’s exactly what I need to do right now. I’ve been knocked down a bit lately and my self-esteem took a hit. I want to work on fixing that and seeing what things I can do to make sure that it doesn’t happen again or if it does I can come back quickly from it.

But I’ve got a big list of things that I want to work on that are a bit more concrete. I need to work on food and meal planning (even if I’m not eating breakfast). I want to do more cooking and that fits into the meal planning too. I have worked on cleaning my house but it’s also led me to realize how much more cleaning I need to do. I want to do an inventory of the clothes that I have right now. I totally forgot about a pair of yoga pants that I got last year and almost ordered another pair thinking I didn’t have one already. I don’t want to make that mistake even though I could always return clothes (I just know myself enough to know that I probably won’t). And there are some projects in my house that I’ve been meaning to do that I just need to get done.

All of my monthly challenges have been things to make me a better person, but I think this one is the most personal one I’ve done so far. It’s also the first one where I don’t necessarily have action steps for everything I want to do. I have my list of things that are more concrete, but for the mental things I really don’t know what I will do or what it will take to get me back to being me. But I am excited to see what happens and what new things about myself I learn as I work on this. I know that whatever ends up happening that it will be a positive change for me and that when I’m writing about this again in a month I will have only good things to share.

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Mileage And Motivation (or Another New Challenge)

Posted on May 1, 2018 | 1 comment

Yet again, the beginning of a month bring the end of one monthly challenge and the beginning of another. I have struggled in the past with coming up with some ideas for these challenges, but fortunately I found a good list online that I’ve been using for some inspiration, So hopefully my challenges keep being interesting (at least to me).

In April, my monthly challenge was doing a version of what Orangetheory was doing as a challenge. Orangetheory was doing a marathon challenge where they had different distances for what you should strive for based on if you are a power walker, running, biker, or strider. I knew I couldn’t really do the challenge officially since I would be using both the treadmill and bike, but I decided to track my mileage on my own.

For some classes, it was super easy to track. If we were on the treadmill (or bike) for half the class and then switched, I could just take one photo at the end of the cardio time and when I got home I put it in my planner. But if we were bouncing around a lot of had a run/row, things were a bit more complicated. There were plenty of times that I would come home and have 7 or 8 photos of distances that I would need to add up to figure out how much I did. I was worried that there may be times I would forget to take a photo, but that never happened. It was probably because I was too terrified to forget so every time I went to a workout I kept saying to myself over and over again “don’t forget to track the mileage”.

I felt pretty confident that even with having to switch between the treadmill and the bike that I could do the half marathon challenge on the treadmill. Over the month, I ended up doing 15.929 miles in the workouts I had using the treadmill. I was happy that I went beyond the half marathon and didn’t really have a goal to hit once I got past that. And on the bike, I did 30.1 miles. The bike challenge was to do 105 miles, but that was based on the idea of only using the bike during the month. Out of the 17 workouts I did last month, I did 4.5 workouts on the bike (the half one was when I did a warmup and the start of one block on the treadmill before switching to the bike for the rest of the workout). Considering how few workouts were on the bike, I was pretty happy with the distance I did!

Overall in April, I did 46.029 miles in my workouts. Since this was the first time I tracked mileage in workouts, I don’t have anything to judge this against. But I am thinking about maybe making this a regular thing so I can see how one month compares to another. I’m not totally sure that I’ll keep this up, but it’s an idea I’ve been playing with and I’m going to see how things work out for me.

After a good physical monthly challenge, I wanted to do another mental one for May. While I’m not very new-agey with many things, I do have affirmations I read every day. I mainly use an affirmation app that gives me a new affirmation each day and I like having that as a focus for the day. It’s good motivation for me especially when it’s exactly what I need to hear that day. I’ve been using this app for years and it works for me, but I want to take things a bit further this month.

I’m not sure if I’m considering these more affirmations or maybe they are intentions for the day, but my challenge is to write down what I want to focus on each morning. I want it to be my motivation for what I want to do and what I want my attitude to be about. It may be that I write down that I want to focus more, or to organize my space, or just to relax. I’m a bit open-ended with how this will be because I’m not exactly sure what will resonant the most with me. But I want to do this each morning to set some sort of focus before I get too distracted with the craziness of the day.

I’m planning on using the weekly pages in my planner to write these in. I currently use the evening section of the weekly page to write my gratitude list each evening, so I feel like it will be nice bookends for my day to write my intention/affirmation in the morning section and my gratitude list in the evening section.

I’m excited to have another challenge that should help me focus and remain positive. I’ve had a few things challenge me lately that have brought down my mood. And while I’m not expecting to be positive all the time, it will be nice to have something that at least puts a little bit of my focus on something positive in the morning while I get ready for my day.

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Monthly Challenge Check-In (or Doing My Own Version Of An OTF Challenge This Month)

Posted on April 3, 2018 | 2 comments

It’s time for me to end one monthly challenge and start another one! I’ll admit that last month’s challenge didn’t go the way I expected it to go at all, but I’m really excited about this month’s challenge.

Last month, I challenged myself to work on daily stretching. I knew I need to work on doing more stretching because my flexibility was getting worse lately. Also, I’m stuck sitting at a computer for so many hours a day and I need to make sure that doing that doesn’t start to affect my body. And there are so many different resources out there to help get more stretching into your life. So I figured this would be the perfect challenge for me.

Well, it really wasn’t. At least not in the way I really hoped it would. I had looked at several different guided stretching apps and picked out the one that seemed best for me and had the stretches I would want to work on. And I did that for the first few days of the month and it just wasn’t working for me. Some of the stretches were hurting me more than I thought and the flow of it just seemed off. There was nothing wrong with the app, it just wasn’t for me.

I tried looking at a few other apps and other guides online, but I never found anything else during the month that seemed to be what I needed or wanted. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t work on stretching all month. I did work on it, but I never found a good practice for me that I could keep going. I haven’t given up yet, but it’s something that I haven’t been able to successfully build into a habit that I have been able to do with so many other monthly challenges.

After having a not-so-great challenge last month, I wanted to do something that I was excited about this month. At Orangetheory, they are doing a marathon challenge for the month of April. The basic idea is to track your mileage during all your classes in the month and there are different distances you can try to get based on if you are a power walker, jogger, runner, biker, or strider.

I thought about doing this challenge officially through Orangetheory but realized that it probably wouldn’t be right for me. It should have been fine going to different studios since we are responsible for tracking our own mileage. But since I know that when I’m nauseous I don’t want to be walking on the treadmill I would be split between the power walker and bike marathon challenges and might not be able to accomplish either on its own. Also, I’m thinking about trying to do some minimal running again if my body feels up for it so I didn’t know how that would affect doing the power walker (13.1 miles) challenge.

So I’ve decided for my monthly challenge this month I will be doing my own marathon challenge and tracking. One of my blogger friends, David, does this every month on his blog so I’m kind of taking the idea from him too. I have no clue if I will get to 13.1 miles power walking and I’m pretty certain that I won’t be at 105 miles on the bike unless I only do the bike the entire month (which I am not planning on doing). But it will be interesting to see how many miles I do accomplish between the treadmill and bike this month.

I’ve set up my Ink+Volt monthly calendar for this month with tracking stickers. I put stickers for each day that I’m planning on working out so I can fill in what distance I get in class.

I’m going to be taking photos of the treadmill and bike during each class so I have it to fill in later. The only time I’m a little concerned is if we have a run/row day since I will need to remember to take a photo every time I switch over to the rower. But I think that should be easy enough to do and the worst case would be needing to ask the coach after class if I could look at the workout plan so I could see what distances I was supposed to do during the run/row to figure out how many rounds I did. But that’s not that bad of a worse case scenario.

I think this is going to be a fun challenge for me. I really don’t know how many miles I’ll get. I have an idea of what I can do based on past workouts and how many workouts I have this month, but I don’t know how many days will get up being bike days. And there are always other factors that come in to make my distances on the treadmill longer or shorter. No matter what, it will be interesting to see what the totals are at the end of the month.

While it would have been fun to do this officially at the studios I go to, I think doing it on my own is a good substitute considering my circumstances. And maybe this will help me stay more motivated when I’m on the bike because I will want to be getting as much distance as possible to make sure my total at the end of the month is impressive!

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Getting Back To Stretching (or My Body Is Telling Me What Monthly Challenge To Do)

Posted on March 1, 2018 | 1 comment

The first two months of 2018, I had some abstract monthly challenges. I’m so glad that I did those challenges because they have been so beneficial for me. But I’m getting back to more concrete challenges now. But first, a quick recap on last month’s challenge.

In February, I challenged myself to work on not saying “sorry” as often, especially when there is usually a better and more appropriate thing to say since I don’t need to apologize. I normally say sorry instead of excuse me, like when I’m trying to get past someone at a store or when I am trying to get someone’s attention. It’s a habit that I have been wanting to break but it’s difficult because I’ve been doing it for so long.

I don’t know if I haven’t had as many opportunities when I usually would say sorry or if I haven’t been saying it as much for a while, but I was surprised when I noticed how easily this change was. I wasn’t finding myself saying sorry and then thinking I should have said something else that often. Mainly, I thought about it at stores trying to get past someone and I was very conscious of trying to say excuse me instead.

I’m sure that this will be something I need to think about a lot in the future to make sure I don’t slip into the habit again. But it just surprised me that I didn’t really have that many times that I said sorry in the past month. It was weird. But I also thought that it could have to do with my challenge from January when I worked on being a bit selfish. I’ve been putting myself first when I can and I think that has just given me more confidence. So maybe having that confidence stopped my habit of saying sorry earlier than I thought.

Since I have been focused on mental and abstract challenges, I really wanted to get back to a physical one for March. There were a few ideas that I was thinking about, but one thing was sticking out for me. I’ve always been a very flexible person, but I’ve noticed that my flexibility has been getting worse lately. I’m still more flexible than many people, but there is a noticeable difference. Also, I’ve been waking up with more muscle pain than I’m used to.

This could be attributed to a few things. I have been working out a lot and haven’t been doing the yoga that I was doing previously. Or it could be due to me getting older and needing to take more care of my body. Either way, I want to gain flexibility back and to help keep my body healthy.

I thought of a few things of what I could do to help gain my flexibility. I debated about doing another yoga challenge but that didn’t feel right to me. And I looked at a few different fitness related challenges but those didn’t seem to be what I needed. And finally, I found the idea of doing a stretching challenge and that seemed perfect to me! Stretching would be a good thing for me to do no matter what as it can help get my body moving throughout the day. I don’t move a ton while I’m working (I walk from my bed to my desk and then I’m sitting down) so getting in a stretch either before or after I’m done working would really help.

I looked into a few stretching ideas, and I found an app that I’m going to try out. It has 9 different stretches that it guides you through and each stretch lasts 30 seconds. So it will only take about 5 minutes for me to do the full circuit and that’s not too bad. And if that app doesn’t seem to be right, there are a ton of other options for me to find stretching routines to use. No matter what, I want to get stretching into my daily routine because I know my body needs it.

I’m not expecting this stretching to necessarily get my flexibility back. There are some specific things with flexibility that I know I want to work on and I will be working on those separately. I used to be able to do the splits easily. I can still do them, but I have to work much harder at it. I also can still reach my toes when I stretch, but in the past I could get my hands beyond my feet. That would be nice to be able to do again too. But for this month, I really want to work on general flexibility first and then start looking into more specific things. And even if I don’t regain all my flexibility back, I know that I will be helping my body and it will be good to have a little extra movement in my day when I know that it’s lacking.

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