This month my monthly challenge was to participate in Yoga With Kassandra’s – Flexible Body, Flexible Mind – 30 Day Challenge. It involved a 10 minute yoga exercise for the body and then a short exercise each day for the mind and I absolutely loved it. I did miss two days in the first two weeks but other than that I did it every day and I can highly recommend doing this challenge. It is short enough that you can make time for it in your daily routine but the impact it has is enough to really put some positive energy and make your body feel better.
The incremental benefits we can receive from doing small things daily are so often overlooked. You might look at these yoga classes and think “it is only 10 minutes what could it do? I need to find an hour a few times a week to get to a yoga class to get real benefits.” But it simply isn’t the case. It might be optimal to do longer yoga sessions but if those sessions never happen then there are no actual benefits to be received. With the choices that I am making with running and strength training, I can’t fit in 3 x 1 hour yoga sessions into my week. The reality of life is that when we are saying yes to one thing, we are saying no to another. But I can do 10 minutes a day of yoga and get benefits from doing it even if it is not optimal.
So often we are looking for some hack to get us more time in our day, help us feel better, eat better or look better. And there are some great hacks out there but the real magic of self-improvement comes from daily routines. It comes from making smart choices about what we add to them and accepting that to be effective our routines don’t have to be perfect but they have to be consistent.
My mind and body definitely felt better from the consistency of this daily practice. I thought I would list a few of my favourite sessions for you if you weren’t sure about a daily challenge for the month and wanted to test the waters. These were some of my favourite in terms of the Flexible Body part of the challenge:
- DAY 13: GIVE – 10 min Morning Yoga Stretch – Flexible Body Yoga Challenge – I often choose yoga sessions to help stretch the legs after running and can neglect other areas! This session was great as it included twists which make my back and overall posture feel so much better.
- DAY 20: ACKNOWLEDGE – 10 min Morning Yoga Stretch – Flexible Body Yoga Challenge – it includes poses such as turtle, deer, seated twist, and half shoelace which are great for my legs.
- DAY 23: REFRAME – 10 min Morning Yoga Stretch – Flexible Body Yoga Challenge – I love how my body feels after ragdoll and extended side angle poses!
And these were some of my favourite in terms of the Flexible Mind part of the challenge:
- Day 3 – FLEXIBLE MIND Yoga Challenge – SILENCE – the daily challenge was to spend three hours without any technology to cultivate internal silence. I was driving around for Adapt Drinks at this time and I would usually listen to podcasts but I actually loved the quiet. I also came up with lots of ideas in this time too!
- Day 16 – FLEXIBLE MIND Yoga Challenge – SPACE – this mind challenge was to create space through the practice of Yoga Nidra. This is one of my favourite yoga nidra meditations if you are new to yoga nidra I can highly recommend it as part of your nighttime routine.
- Day 20 – FLEXIBLE MIND Yoga Challenge – ACKNOWLEDGE – the challenge for the mind in this session was to acknowledge and send gratitude messages to 5 people in your life. Often we keep our thoughts of gratitude to ourselves. It felt great to share them openly.
You can see my previous monthly challenges here:
- January – to play every day
- February – take a short video every day
- March – pray the rosary every day
Create a monthly experiment
Connection to goal – Embrace life with curiosity and experimentation to gain greater connection –
I love my routines and they provide an excellent base from which I can achieve a great deal. My love of routines can mean that I can take a very well-worn path. This year I want to mix it up more. Add more play, challenge myself and try new things while bringing along others as I go.
Quote to connect to – “The true method of knowledge is experiment.” – William Blake
April performance – As noted above I loved my daily challenge for April – Yoga With Kassandra’s – Flexible Body, Flexible Mind – 30 Day Challenge and I would highly recommend everyone give it a go.
My daily challenge for May will be to create a new design in Canva everyday. I really want to get better at creating content in Canva but haven’t improved because I don’t spend time on it. Each day I want to create a completed piece of content. The content may not necessarily be something I will use – that isn’t the point of this challenge. The point is to create better designs and become quicker at creating them
Practice switching from judgement to curiosity
Connection to goal – Embrace life with curiosity and experimentation to gain greater connection – Having strong opinions on issues means that when I hear a dissenting view I can move to judgement and not make an attempt to understand the opposing viewpoint – it stifles open communication.
When I hear/read/view something that triggers me, I want to be curious not judgemental about it and really listen and understand the thinking behind the differing view and have truly open communication with others. Communication is key to connection.
Quote to connect to – “Listen with curiosity. Speak with honesty. Act with integrity. The greatest problem with communication is we don’t listen to understand.” – Roy T. Bennett
April performance – I felt that my thoughts were much better this month. I found myself being less quick to jump to judgement straight away on topics I disagree with or things that brought emotions to the surface.
I really do feel that the task below is having a great impact on decreasing my judgement. Getting outside my information bubble and hearing different opinions seems to be increasing my tolerance of diverging views which I think is a good thing. I still have some way to go though 🙂 6.5/10.
Consume a diverse low information diet
Connection to goal – Embrace life with curiosity and experimentation to gain greater connection – When consuming information from many sources now, algorithms are feeding us what it thinks we want to see based on what we have already seen, listened to or read. It takes a concerted effort to diversify the information we are consuming.
We are becoming an increasingly polarised society on so many issues and it is causing deep division. If we only ever look at one side of the story our divisions will only grow bigger.
Quote to connect to – “We need diversity of thought in the world to face the new challenges.” – Tim Berners-Lee
April performance – I didn’t complete any of the tasks listed below this month but I did listen /watch/read a number of things that I wouldn’t usually do to diversify the information I consumed. Here are a few examples:
Podcast – Chris Williamson: The Shocking New Research On Why Men And Women Are No Longer Compatible! – The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett – this title really annoys me as it is so clickbaity but the actual podcast is very good. It is where I learnt about the concept of choosing your regrets which has really stuck with me. This is something I wouldn’t have usually listened to because I would have just scrolled past this headline. I am glad I didn’t.
Article – Australia has an immigration problem, and it’s tearing the country apart – while I don’t agree with this article and I think it completely oversimplified the housing crisis in Australia, it did give me an understanding as to why some Australians would have such a negative attitude towards immigration and accepting more refugees.
Podcast – Robert F. Kennedy Jr. | The Man Who Could Be President – The James Altucher Show – This interview was actually recorded in July 2019 but the podcast notes state “following a divisive turn in the conversation regarding vaccines, the show decided against airing this interview”. Now that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has announced his plans to run for President in the 2024 election they decided to release it.
I did enjoy hearing some of Kennedy’s stories about his famous family members and I was surprised to find myself agreeing with him on some issues like renewable energy and the pitfalls of a capitalist society. But the end of the interview does veer off into some theories that I would want to research and fact-check more before believing.
- February – Completely overhaul my Feedly feed – completed. It took me about 90 minutes to overhaul the feed. It was interesting to see so many blogs that now no longer publish new articles. I completely deleted entire folders of feeds. Over time my interests have changed but by keeping so many feeds in my account, there was too much info coming in so I wasn’t really seeing the ones I wanted to. I would have halved the number of feeds that I had in my account which is great.
- Edit, add and cull the email newsletters I am subscribed to
- Review accounts I follow on Instagram
- Review podcast subscriptions
- March – Review Youtube subscriptions – this month I worked on adding diversity to my Youtube subscriptions and deleting anything I am no longer interested in. I unsubscribed from over 50 channels. There is so much quality content on Youtube now that I am tempted to pay for the premium version!