The Hug Your Fear and Try New Things Challenge ended last week. I took the time since then to reflect, unwind and deal with some personal issues. Here are 5 things that I learned over the past month.
1. Little things make a big impact
When I started the challenge, I assumed that I’d do more new things that were on a bigger scale. I ended up doing a bunch of little things and I’ve found that little actions can have a big impact, especially when you do them every day. It’s easy to discount the small steps that you take, but they are important and valuable.
2. I like to be creative and silly
I found another side of myself that I recognized from my youth and am glad to have back. This side of me likes to laugh and play and create art. This would be the brightest spot of this challenge as I feel like I’ve come back home to what’s important to me and now find myself making a focused effort to incorporate fun and creativity into my day to day existence.
3. Having people to support and join you in your journey makes a big difference
While I didn’t have as many people join me as I thought would, all it really took was just knowing that at least one person was aware and interested in what new things I was doing to help me push myself along to finish the challenge. There were several days that I did a new thing not because I wanted to, but because I didn’t want to have people wonder why I didn’t do anything. Note that this didn’t work all the time (see below). It was also nice to see the different types of new things that people chose to do as it helped me understand them more as a person and also to be inspired to choose different new things.
4. I can let go of perfection and do something to the best of my ability
There were a couple of days where I didn’t do a new thing. Instead of just quitting after a few days of missing the mark, I am happy that I was able to just pick myself up and finish out the challenge. This in itself was a new thing as in the past I might have just quit the whole thing because I wasn’t doing it “perfectly.”
5. I haven’t been actively hugging my fear as much as I’d like to
Doing this challenge made me realize how much I hadn’t been taking consistent efforts to hug fear in my own life. As much as I blog about doing so here, I realize that I’ve been holding back a lot in my life and am in need of taking some leaps and trying some new things that will really transform my life.
With that said, I’ve decided to take a break from actively blogging at Hug Your Fear to focus on my life. I’m not sure how long the break will be, but I feel that I need to refocus on certain areas of my life that are in need of some attention. The blog itself will stay up so you can always come back to read one of your favorite interviews for inspiration. Thank you again for reading and sharing and supporting me thus far. And if you also participated in the challenge, or feel inspired to do a challenge of your own, please share it in the comments or send me a message from the contact page.
My best to you all!
Varonica 🙂
In Case You Missed the Challenge, Here are the Previous Posts
Hug Your Fear and Try New Things March 2014 Challenge
4 New Things I Tried and the Lessons I Learned in the First Week of the Try New Things Challenge
Week 2 of the Try New Things Challenge and 4 More Lessons
Week 3 of Try New Things Challenge – Done is Better Than Perfect