Challenge Accepted!

A few weeks ago, while washing the dishes, something illuminated me. I love a challenge. Sometimes it's as small as "Can I finish the dishes in the next fifteen minutes?" And sometimes, it's life's challenges themselves. Once I noticed that many things I do in life I add a little challenge to it, be it through a deadline, efficiency, or a better way overall, it might be the reason how to better cope with life's challenges we didn't ask for.

To extend my personal challenges, I also started asking people on social media for challenges to do. Here are the challenges I received:

1. Forgive yourself for something you did to someone and do something for them and yourself.

2. 1 minute of jumping jacks

3. Do 10 push-ups

4. Hike parts of the Appalachian Trail

5. Leave your house without a phone/don't touch it

6. Wake up at 10 am

7. Bake chocolate chip cookies

8. No challenge

9. Make Lasagna

10. Eat a delicious meal and play Uno

11. Do a metabolic sprint

12. Bake croissants

13. Listen to a Taylor Swift album

14. Hold a sleepover at your house

Originally, there wasn't any particular reason why I asked for challenges. Looking back, I learned so much. Out of those 14 challenges, I've done all of them but #4, #12, and #14. I'll be completing them by mid-June. The physical challenges have been integrated into new habits, and I added a few more. I also took myself to the woods and started practicing hourly meditations as often as possible during the week.

Why am I sharing my process for these challenges with you? Why even create challenges when we already have enough? The answers are simple: on one hand, to add some fun, which was my main takeaway from all the challenges I did. On the other hand, to tackle major challenges with greater ease and to move through them. Because no matter what, we can't escape life's challenges, and the better equipped we are with a flexible mind, the easier and more fun life can become.

I also realized that our daily lives (chores, deadlines, responsibilities) don't leave much room for fun. Most of the time, life is pretty serious. Maybe too serious. It almost seems as if we humans are not good at having fun, unless it's free time and intentional. It takes effort to make fun a part of our daily lives; otherwise, it won't happen.

And yet, is it possible to add some fun and a lighter way of looking at life and work? It doesn't have to go to the other extreme that life is only about having fun. I am just inviting you to recognize the shortness of our lives and the intensity it brings. So by adding some fun challenges into your day with our family, co-workers, and even strangers on the street, we might find out for ourselves that everyday life isn't that serious in the end.

So how about adding a fun challenge to make a chore intentionally fun? The challenge could include

• a time limit for attending to the undesirable task,

• rethinking how we can integrate the organization into the task at hand, or

• seeking another perspective on how to make boring tasks more efficient and engaging

I'm sure you'll come up with something that gets you through the boring, tedious, and hard moments in life. All it takes is some creativity and curiosity to move forward and remember that

the experience does not define us, but rather how we build strength as we move through it.

And if it means you are having fun at the same time, why not?

I now also invite you to give me a challenge if you'd like to join the fun. You can add a comment or send me an email at mindfulbeingllc@gmail.com, and I'll report back in August with the next post on what I learned and discovered.

Share your love and fun. Our human existence depends on it. 💕 #community #breathe #bepresent #compassion #love #laughter