Learning new things about myself by challenging myself

In life, there are always challenges. There are those that happen to us, like sudden big changes in life, and then there are those we deliberately choose to face, like a university degree or moving to another country. However, this time I'll choose to talk about my 2017 twelve monthly challenges.

In the beginning of the year, I took upon myself to see through 12 monthly challenges. Right now I'm running six days behind on my May gratitude challenge, which is kind of a big deal for me, as I've been able to keep up with the challenges more or less on the right days. But I'm still going on, still keeping myself busy.

Image: pixabay.com

In January I did a Notes from the Universe challenge that was very eye opening. I wrote letters to my future self, I lived and breathed my dreams every day and I do feel overall only good things came out of it.

In February I did a writing challenge. Some of the days I just wanted to brush off quickly and I allowed myself to do just that. This way I kept on going and found the gems along the way that spoke to me.

In March I did a flat abs challenge. I had troubles with my back the more I increased the repetition, but I did pull through and felt my shirts weren't as tight as they had been before. I regret not keeping up with this in the months to follow. I thought I would, but I was so happy about the days without physical obligations that I simply forgot them after a while.

My worst monthly challenge so far was the April decluttering challenge. I did in fact manage to clean the clutter quite a lot. I brought so much stuff out of the house and organized so many things, but keeping up with it all was just really tough on top of the daily life. It made me feel weak and submissive and I cut corners with this challenge whenever I felt like it.

Now I'm doing May gratitude challenge and I love it as much as I loved the January TUT challenge and the February writing challenge. Every day I'm challenged to think something typical in a broader context.

Image: pixabay.com

What these challenges have taught me so far is the following:

1) I can follow up on a challenge, even when it seems dull at times.

2) Surprisingly I'm more consistent on the physical daily challenges than on the mental ones. I usually stay way too much in my head for the mental ones, whereas the physical ones only need to get done.

3) You can teach yourself to think new and interesting things daily just by asking very simple questions.

4) It's sometimes really difficult to know when to give up and when to push through. I'd even say this is the core of the word "challenge". You gotta figure it out while you're at it.

5) I'm really grateful for all of these challenges teaching me new things about myself.

In June my monthly challenge will be yet another writing challenge and I'm very much looking forward to it. I only need to finish a week worth of May before jumping into those June pants!