My 30 days of yoga challenge
Soo... I’ve started (and by the time you are reading this, I also finished) a 30day yoga challenge. I have committed to doing at least 20 minutes of yoga every day for 30 days. PSA: since this article is a long one, there is a TL/DR version of my key takeaways down at the bottom. While I would love you to read the whole thing, I think those learnings are valid and might be helpful to you whether you like to read or not.
I have started my challenge on a Friday. In retrospect, I consider this to be an excellent move, and there are two reasons for it. First of all, I started straight away and did not postpone taking action until “tomorrow” or “Monday”. Secondly, I believe finding the time to get started is much easier on a relaxed day like Friday, rather than on Monday when kicking off the week. By the time Monday hit, I had 3 successful days of the challenge under my belt already.
Day 4 was still a challenge. First of all – I didn’t feel like it; having a proper workday seemed like the perfect excuse to rather go relax or do literally anything else instead of doing the challenge. Second of all, I picked a more challenging workout than the first three, and it was very humbling. Honestly, it was extremely tempting to just give up midway through. But guess what? It felt SO GOOD when I didn’t. The next couple of days were a little harder since I’ve been to the office, and by the time I got home and to yoga, I was tired, and I was HUNGRY. Here is where my new little helper kicked in: the 5-second rule. I knew I needed to go do it straight away after coming home because if I started overthinking, it would only have gotten harder later on, or I would have ended up skipping.
After the first week, I surprisingly did not feel like I’d passed any major milestone or mark. My muscles were starting to build up soreness, my legs were tired, but every time I somehow made it. I felt stronger day by day, despite the soreness and tiredness, and my soul was getting happy. Finally, it was during the second week when I’ve spotted a shift. Suddenly I felt like I was actually looking forward to doing this. Like it is not a task or a challenge anymore – that it is slowly becoming a very welcome part of my day.
And then... travel and life have happened. I was honestly shocked by how easy it is to get derailed. I honestly almost forgot to do my yoga sesh on the day I was traveling! And it really was not that I did not want to do it, that I was not in the mood, or looking for an excuse to skip it... However since I did not do it while still at home in the morning, I literally almost forgot this is a part of my day now. At the same time, the next day, it came back to “automatic”. While I admit that I did not always feel excited to do it, I did not forget about it again. The moral of the story? If you go through a change in your routines that you can anticipate (like travel), make an effort to set up a reminder. It will help you continue your practice under the new conditions and in the new environment, and it will help to create new cues and prompts to keep you going. It will be way easier than you thought, I promise.
But even with the best of planning, there are things in life that always catch you by surprise. Even with the best of intentions, you might end up slipping off the trail under certain circumstances; life just takes the lead. And so things have happened and I did end up skipping a few days. They were not consecutive, and while I did not cut the challenge short, it still made me question whether I should consider it completed or not. If you asked me how I finished the challenge, I could tell you two stories. In one, I would tell you how I overcame the difficulties of travel and change better than I expected and that I truly am happy with how I did. The second would be that I failed to maintain a flawless streak in the final stretch. Due to that, I have left the challenge behind as unsuccessful, and I will start it over to improve the score. The funny thing is – both of them are true. I did overcome many difficulties better than I had expected. But, at the same time, it still was not enough to maintain the perfect streak. When looking back at that, I have realized one thing: I did not choose the yoga challenge just for the challenge itself... I chose yoga to take better care of myself. And whichever perspective I take, beating myself up for doing my best but not reaching ‘perfection’ just doesn’t play with that well at all. My learning here is, when you struggle, just remember your why. It might not solve your struggle immediately, but it will point you to the answers you are seeking.
Also, the more I kept thinking about it, the more I realized that what made a genuine difference for me. It was the fact that I had an accountability buddy this time, and that is what I actually want to tell you more about. I have given up many similar challenges in the past. It is very easy and comfortable to take up new things and challenges in privacy. If you decide to give up at some point, nobody would know you even tried in the first place, right? You don’t have to come to terms with the feelings of shame, guilt, or defeat because you can simply act like it did not happen. No big deal, right? But it actually is! This is how you prime your brain to think it is unimportant to finish things you take up, so you basically train yourself to be the loser you don’t want to be seen as. And that is simply wrong - not because it matters whether people see you as one, but simply because you are not a loser in the first place. You’ve got this! You can achieve way more than you believe possible, and you should not believe everything you think. And this is where an accountability buddy comes in very, very handy. The best possible kind is the one that embarks on a similar journey as you do. That way, you know you are not only seen, you also know you are not alone in facing the struggles you encounter along the way.
Finally, with every challenge we decide to overcome, and with every habit we decide to create in our lives, we need to understand and accept that life does not always go according to plan, and that’s okay. That way, it is easier to remember that it is not a big deal to get off track from time to time, especially if we get back on it afterwards.
And if you were looking for the TL/DR version instead, here it is. These are the things that worked for me (also beyond what I specifically write about in the article):
- Starting small. Starting really small is okay – wins are wins, regardless of their size.
- Having a physical tracker to see the progress visualized helps.
- The 5 seconds rule. Whenever you feel a surge of inspiration, a calling, a fragment of will to get something done – you have approximately 5 seconds to take action before it is gone. This has been my lifesaver (and challenge saver) almost every day.
- Having an accountability buddy. This one alone made a huge difference for me.
- Life is not linear. Accept it, and roll with it.
- Progress over perfection; good enough is good enough. My new mantra is ‘Kindness, patience, surrender, flow’. In that particular order. I am working on the surrender piece currently, in case you were wondering. :)
And if you made it all the way to here - wohoo! :) Thank you for sticking through until the end with me. And if you have any personal tips for overcoming such challenges (which building a new habit always is), please share those in the comments – looking forward to hearing from you!
