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A challenge worth accepting

I recently finished up an eight week challenge called the Whole Life Challenge. It was recommended to me by someone I have a whole lot of respect for and at a good time in my life for a new experience. For those two reasons, I decided to give it a whirl.

The purpose of the program is to challenge yourself to improve on several key aspects of your life: nutrition, fitness, water intake, sleep, lifestyle, mobility, and reflection. The reason the challenge is eight weeks is because new habits can be formed with a greater level of success in that amount of time. There are goals to meet, and each week a new mobility and a new lifestyle challenge is issued. For me, the fitness, water, mobility, and reflection components were the easiest to comply with. My sleep goal was the most difficult. It is so easy to replace sleep with something else off my never ending to-do list.

The part I enjoyed the most was the lifestyle challenge component. There was a new lifestyle challenge each of the eight weeks. Lifestyle challenges included daily activities like meditating, organizing work or personal space, practicing something, reading, refraining from using social media for a week (the hardest one for me), random acts of kindness, listing in your daily reflection things you are grateful for, and clearly transitioning from one part of your day to the next.

It surprised me that I enjoyed the lifestyle challenges the most. Although this program ended in early November, it took me until now, a month later, to realize the reasons why the lifestyle challenges were my favorite. First, the lifestyle challenges gave me permission to take time for myself, and second, they reminded me that change really is easier than we often think.

For so many of us, our lives revolve around responding to the needs of others. We meet deadlines at work that are set by others, we answer to the needs of our family and friends. We give of ourselves to others day in and day out, carving out time for ourselves only when it is time to sleep, and from what the challenge showed me, I don’t carve out nearly enough time for that.

When I took the time to complete the lifestyle challenges, just 10 minutes a day, it was no surprise that my world didn’t come crashing down. I have always known it wouldn’t if I took more time for myself yet I still feel such a compulsion to put everything else before myself.

Through the challenge, I chose to participate in the various lifestyle challenges and I ended up feeling better. I had a better mindset when helping others with their needs as long as mine were being met as well. Many of the lifestyle challenges were things I enjoy doing anyway, but I hadn’t given myself permission to do them in a very long time.

The challenge was only eight weeks long. That may seem like a long time to stick to a challenge, and at first I thought it would be much too long. But eight weeks of the more than 4,000 weeks I will hopefully live is really not a lot of time.

Everything is about perspective. I am not one who is opposed to change, but I find that I am much (emphasis on that word) better at leading change in a leadership position for an organization than I am in my personal life for myself. But only eight weeks later, after practicing these challenges, I am still holding on to carving out that time for myself, among other positive habits I adopted. Things can change and it isn’t all that difficult, daunting, or time consuming.

I certainly will be participating in another Whole Life Challenge. In fact the next one starts on Jan. 21 and I am looking forward to it. Trying something new can be well worth your time and energy. Giving it eight weeks of effort is not as hard as it sounds. It’s one day at a time — and even without perfection, the end result can still be of great value.

Jackie Krawczak is president/CEO of the Alpena Area Chamber of Commerce. Her column runs bi-weekly on Thursdays. Follow Jackie on Twitter @jkrawczak.

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