5 Things I Learned in the 100 Day Challenge of 2012
Today is the final day – Day 100 – in the 100 Day Challenge and I thought I would share some of the things that I learned during the challenge this year. 100 days is a very long time to commit to something new and if you are paying attention, the process can open your eyes to your strengths and your weaknesses and all interesting attributes in between! My challenge was to write everyday and here is what I noticed:
- Creative writing takes time – you can’t just dash off amazing stuff the minute you sit down to write. I needed to make more time for my challenge and not expect to have beautiful words and stories pouring out of me without, at least, warming up! Did you make time for your challenge? Do you leave some space in your days so that you can deal with unexpected challenges?
- Sometimes you have to adjust your expectations. Expecting myself to do creative writing every single day was not realistic with the rest of my schedule. The added pressure I put on myself had me dreading the challenge instead of enjoying it so I gave myself the option of a variety of different writing. Did you adjust your challenge this year? Do you allow yourself the option of adjusting when things in your life get too hard or do you just put your head down and push through?
- Giving yourself permission to adjust when things are too hard can actually make you more productive. Once I let myself change the kind of writing I was doing, I noticed that I started to write poems as well as stories and that my newsletter topics flowed easily as well as emails and some of my marketing materials. Do you get too rigid in your thinking or approach?
- Challenges can be scary. Well, not the challenge per se but what the challenge can bring out in you. This challenge brought out all the scary inner critics that like to show up when I am trying something new. All my doubts about being enough reared their ugly little heads …”are you really going to write that?”….”that sounds stupid”….”who would ever read that”…”ha, that’s not the way a story should be written”…. Setting out on a challenge is a great way to make the inner critic surface and there were days when it was more of a challenge to deal with the critic than to do the writing! Have you ever encountered one of these critics? Do you listen to them and let them stop you or do you kick them to the curb?
- Being gentle with yourself makes you stronger. There were days that I missed doing my daily challenge. Completely went out of my mind and I didn’t even think about it until the next day. The first few times it happened, I wasn’t so kind to myself, especially because I knew that all of you were “watching.” My drive to do the challenge perfectly even had me being untruthful with myself. I caught myself trying to rationalize that answering an email counted as my writing for the day! But being hard on myself didn’t make the challenge easier or help me stay on track – it made it harder. That’s when I realized that I needed to regroup and try a little compassion. I started to acknowledge what I did accomplish and all the times I did do my challenge everyday and I gradually came to realize that the more compassionate I was with myself, the better I got at sticking with the challenge every day. Did you beat yourself down because you missed a few days or because you started the challenge but didn’t keep it up? Do you give yourself a hard time in other areas of your life thinking that will motivate you to do better?
Participating in the 100 Day Challenge takes courage, perseverance and gentleness. Sometimes you have to make adjustments and lots of times you need support. It’s not easy to do on your own so I want to say thank you to all of you who participated, who watched from the sidelines, who commented and who cheered us on…I am grateful for such an open, supportive and joyful community. I will be celebrating the end of the challenge with all of this in mind. I encourage you to celebrate too – whether you did 10 days, 50 days or 100 days please make sure to acknowledge what you did because you are AWESOME and are worthy of acknowledgement!
Joyfully,
Deb