Earlier this month, for purely selfish reasons*, I challenged my friend, Lillian Archer to commit to posting a new entry on her blog, once a week, for the remainder of August.
For myself, I committed to posting an extra entry once a week.
Lillian rose to the challenge admirably and I am happy to report that, loopholery aside, I too managed to keep up.
But what does it all mean? Why did I create this challenge? What did I get out of it?
What I got out of it – and here I’m going to remind myself to ask Lillian about her take on it – was insight into what I was capable of.
Now it might not seem like a real big thing to add one extra blog post a week. I mean I’m posting weekly as it is, how hard could it be to add one more post?
As it turned out, for me, it was more difficult in the execution than it appeared to be on the surface. For this last post, I had a few false starts, before I found something that I was happy with. I don’t ever want to post just for the sake of posting. I want to say something. Some weeks I am more successful than others.
It also brought into focus just how regimented my life is during the week. It is, perhaps, too regimented – something that was too close for me to recognize until I introduced this challenge.
Completing the challenge showed me that this was something that I could do. One of the outcomes I was hoping for was that this was going to become the start of a habit.
I think it might be. For myself, I’m going to try and keep up the pace and see how long I can keep going.
The last thing I got out of this challenge was the challenge itself. That’s one of the things I want you to take away from this.
Challenge yourself every so often. You’ll never know what you’re capable of if you don’t push yourself occasionally.
Who knows, after stretching yourself, you might not return to your original shape, but find that you’ve expanded into something bigger.
Time: 11:05am – ish
Music: Hammerfall – Riders of the Storm
*Yes, selfish. I follow her blog. You should too.