For June my daily challenge was to do a 10 minute Non-Sleep Deep Rest session each day and to put it bluntly, it was an epic fail! The month didn’t get off to a great start with me not having even attempted a session by the 5th day of the month. I then did two sessions in the next week. I attempted to do a session on the Saturday of that week but I just couldn’t make myself do it.
I am normally pretty good at pushing through feelings like this but I felt like I was doing so many little extra things at the moment that even this 10 minute activity felt too much and even thinking about doing it was weighing heavily on me. At the moment I am back running consistently and feeling good after having an incredibly injury-interrupted year last year. But to keep me running well I am having to do a lot of extras around my running:
- Rehab exercises – minimum of three times a week
- Yoga/stretching – three times a week
- Strength training – minimum twice a week
And while the 10 minute Non-Sleep Deep Rest session is not actually exercise, it was definitely an activity that falls into the health and fitness category. I have single goals for business, personal and health and fitness and I felt that I was allocating too much time to the health and fitness component. But more importantly it really just felt like one more thing in this category I had to squish into my day, something to tick off my list and I couldn’t mentally do it. So at the end of the second week of the month, I made the decision to just let it go. I decided it was better to make a quick conscious decision to have failed this and move on. Holding on to this activity just for the sake of it would have just caused me more stress and taken up mental energy that I needed to allocate elsewhere.
There are times when I need to tilt more towards one goal than another and now is not the time to be tilting towards health and fitness. Now is actually a time I need to be tilting more toward my business goal and needs to be so for the rest of the year. It doesn’t mean that I won’t still work on my health and fitness goal – you can see by the extra activities I do around my running, I am still allocating plenty of time to it. But for these monthly challenges going forward I will be choosing activities that work more towards my business or personal goal.
So for July, I have started a daily challenge of 10 ideas in 10 minutes. This is a brainstorming technique I have used in the past and have found it super helpful for getting unstuck. I am feeling a little stuck in a few places both personally and professionally and even just a few days in I have found this process to help move me forward in a few places.
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
June performance – As noted above my challenge for June was to do a 10 minute Non-Sleep Deep Rest session each day and I completely failed at this. For July my daily challenge is to do a 10 minute brainstorming idea. You can see my previous daily challenges here:
- January – to play every day
- February – take a short video every day
- March – pray the rosary every day
- April – Yoga With Kassandra’s – Flexible Body, Flexible Mind – 30 Day Challenge
- May – create a new design in Canva every day
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
June performance – This habit has been a slow burn but I really feel like I making some solid gains overall. I share in the next section below some of the gains I am making and the key thing is I am having to think less about being curious and it feels like it is coming more naturally which is great. I still have room for improvement though 🙂 7.5/10.
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
June performance – I didn’t work on a specific task this month from the list below but took time to consume some of the new content that is coming into my feeds and listening/watching items I wouldn’t usually do. I also keep track of the info I am consuming in the Friday emails I send out to paid subscribers. Each week I share some things I think readers will like and this year I have been including something I usually wouldn’t read/listen to. A recent example of this was the podcast – Robert Kennedy, Jnr – The Joe Rogan Experience. It was a long podcast (3 hours) and I listened to it in shorter bursts over a number of days. There were so many statements from this podcast that if I had time I would fact check but that wasn’t the biggest takeaway for me from it. The biggest takeaway was that I think Robert Kennedy Jnr really believes in everything he says and he is coming from a place of wanting to make the lives of people better. Prior to this podcast, I would have written him off as someone with fringe ideas and a conspiracy theorist. As I noted, I do not believe everything he said but I think his intentions are good and he does have some solid ideas on how he could make America better, including not going to war so much.
For me, this reaction to the podcast shows real growth in the habit I am trying to cultivate of being more curious and less judgemental. I went into listening to the podcast curious as to what he would do if President and I feel that really worked in helping me to be less judgemental and appreciating the positive changes he would like to make.
Tasks for the Year
- 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.
- May – 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!