Put your hands up if you're one of those people who lives for a challenge? Hmm...yeah...sometimes....maybe....as my insides area really pulling my thoughts towards"yes - if you drag me kicking and screaming out of the comforts of my home, the world I know, my routine, my normality, the things that I know I can already do, and if you hold my hand the entire way!".
The truth is - most people don't like to challenge themselves. Why is this? Challenging yourself is hard. It's called a challenge for a reason. If you want to rise to the challenge, take it on by 'the horns', then it is no easy feat. The thing is though - being able to challenge yourself is such an important and vital component of our own personal development in all walks of life.
Challenges are there for us to grow. Be it in our hearts, our thoughts, our career experiences, our fitness levels and or our social skills - we don't grow without pushing ourselves that little bit further when we feel we have hit a plateau.
This morning, I took myself out of my routine (and trust me, anyone who knows me knows that i am the biggest creature of habit in the world - my week is usually planned by the mornings and types of physical activities well as their pre-planned location, usually the exact same breakfast of oats, chia seeds, yogurt, berries and seed mix, my coffee is always the same and usually devoured late morning, my bed time usually falls around the same time, if I don't eat at certain ties of the day my inner grump 'Ash the Hangry' takes hold, I usually need to know in advance of social outings or my control-freak mind gets a little anxious.......you could say routine is my middle name....which I get it, makes me sound like an 80 year old woman!!))....'lived a little on the edge' and drove down to the beach after a sleep in (wow - I know, hold on to your hats did she say a sleep in beyond the usual 6.30am wake up and 'charge' time?!!) for a run along a NEW trail instead of my planned gym sash.
At the start of the run, I was a little bit wary. It certainly took some time to 'get into the groove' of the run.
The sand was soft, making each step feel like I was moving forward at the rate of a snail on a side-walk. I cursed - LOUDLY - and managed to scare a poor, unassuming woman who was walking towards me (all be-it, she popped around the corner like a burglar in hiding from the police!) - F#@ing sand, I can't f***n move anywhere...agh bloo** H#*l!!!! I was tempted to give up, particularly when the soft sand tuned into a long, slow up-hill ...which somehow made the sand fall from underneath my runners as if I were scampering around on quick sand! I kept going (except for the sneaky 5 step walk at the disheartening start of the bottom of the hill!! SHH!), until finally the sand started to get some traction and things started to look up! A couple of very invited down hills even started to appear!
Before long, I was at the half way point. It was hear that everything changed. I had reached the highest point of the run, run through the soft and was on my way back to the start.
What did happen when I reached this point, was as if my mind found a new lease in life. All of the negative thoughts became positive. All of the anxiety and worry about my future that I'd been having over the past couple of weeks (thinking about my new career change and I suppose creating 'acceptable answers' to respond to people when they queried my change for this year), and my mind became in a complete sense of flow.
It's amazing how closely the mind and body are linked together. It is something that yogi's have known for hundreds of years and something that many people are yet to find out - but let me tell you, when the body and mind are in alignment and working together in harmony to reach a common goal - it is majestic!
My thoughts turned creative, empowering and intense problem solver-like; I felt as if in the last 20 minutes I had been more productive than I had been in the last 2 months!
I had been able to pre-write a blog in my mind, come up with some new aspects and projects to add into my business (as well as how to go about doing it), reason with my own mind as to why I was thinking the way I was and how to go about changing my concerns into helpful and experiential services for myself and others I come in contact with in my career plans, I know who I had to contact or communicate with to support my changes and I had even almost designed the look of the website and coaching programs I was going to create.
My body became a continuation of my mind and I no longer had to think about what i was doing - it was as if I was a black panther on the hunt for it's prey in a state of agility, power, strength and weightlessness. The hills were no longer painful but were stamping into my mind the notion that I could rise to my own challenges.
I remembered back to when I was a teenager. I was away on a trip to the beach with my best friend and the house they had rented for the summer was at the bottom of a 2 kilometre asphalt hill. It was one of the biggest hills I had ever seen. Each day, my friends Mum would say "I'm going to run up that hill one day". By the end of the three week trip, we were on our last night and my friend's Mum told all of us to throw on our shoes and 'let's go for a run'. Obviously, dragging a couple of teenage girls up a hill wasn't exactly what we had planned for the early evening (especially when Dawson's Creek was about to start in 15 minutes!), but we all laced up our shoes, put on our singlets and shorts and head out the front door - quietly wetting our pants and trying to 'rev ourselves up' at the same time. We started the climb....incredibly slowly, but surely we jogged at a pace probably slower than a walk. After 20 minutes, we were 20 meters from the top. All of a sudden, with a lot of encouragement to each other - WE MADE IT!!!!
This run symbolised a lot to my friends Mum. It wasn't long after the divorce with her husband (obviously taxing on any person, but with 4 children I could only imagine the intensity of the experience). I am sure that this hill became a symbol of her ability to be able to get through the difficult time. From that time - she had managed to return to study, get back into her career, find herself a beautiful new house, even began seeing another man.
The point is - by challenging yourself, you tell your mind that things are ok. Your mind is given the okay to believe that it can achieve the goals, dreams and wants your inner-most desires are after. It lets us know that even though life has plenty of hurdles, barriers, cross roads (and to some - incredibly ginormous mountain ranges!) and unknown paths - we have the ability to over-come them.
How can you get this notion to relate to your own life? Easy - and it is something that each and every one of us NEEDS to do on a regular basis to remind ourselves that things will be okay. Sometimes the challenge may only be small. Sometimes the challenge will become intensity difficult - but it is often these that become huge turning points in our lives and we are able to bound forward refreshed and energetic to get the the place we want or need to be in life.
The challenge can be in any part of your life - fitness (I preach this to everyone, as connecting the body and mind together are so powerful and reflect into many other aspects of our lives - it's the perfect starting point!), health, career, family, relationships or spirituality. It can be small (and usually by taking small steps, you set yourself up into the level of growing confidence needed to beat the highest of your challenges down the track) or large. It can be short term (Now) or long term (Weeks, Months or Years).
So when you find yourself in a state of nervousness, of feeling unfulfilled, dissatisfied, uncertain, anxious or just plain depressed - set yourself a goal. Take yourself out the door and have a good crack at knocking it in the face!! The changes are indescribable and until you try it for yourself, you won't quite understand the power of a challenge.
Believe me - it is life changing and it is one of the most valuable things you can do for yourself!
Xxx
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