Hug Your Fear and Try New Things March 2014 Challenge

I don’t know about you, but January and February have felt a bit slow. Where I live it’s winter and cold and snowy and I’ve been listening to the natural urge to stay inside and hibernate more often than not. I could use a little system shake up and maybe you could too (even if it’s warm where you are) which is why I’ve decided to dedicate the month of March to a fun challenge.

The challenge itself is fairly simple:

Do one new thing every day for the entire month of March.

And I’m inviting you to join me.

In case the invitation is not enough to get you to come along on this “new things” journey, here are some reasons why doing this challenge might be helpful:

• If you’ve been feeling stuck, doing new things can prime the pump for bringing more new things into your life and get you out of the stuck cycle and into a movement cycle.

 

• Doing a new thing every day can help you build up your fear hugging confidence as it’s only when we take action that we find that we are more than capable of overcoming fear.

 

• Doing a challenge with others can make it more likely that you’ll see it through until the end.

 

• And last but not least, it will be fun! The new things that you choose don’t have to be so serious and you can throw in lots of fun things that you’ve been wanting to do, but haven’t.

 

If you choose to do this challenge with me, here are some more details about what I’m planning on doing and also some things to keep in mind.

 

Things to Keep in Mind:

• The new things you choose to do can be small, medium or large. You can count simple things like trying a new food or taking a new route to work or school.

 

• Ideally, several of the new things you choose should bring up some fear in you (I wouldn’t be doing my job as the creator of a blog called Hug Your Fear if I didn’t encourage that!). You don’t have to be terrified every day of March, but wouldn’t it be rewarding to look back and see that you did at least one thing during the month that you were once terrified to try?

 

Before the Challenge:

• Create a one sentence intention stating why you are doing the challenge or what you hope to get out of it. This can help focus your attention and also answer the “Why am I doing this?” question that may arise as the days of March pass by.

 

• Choose or buy a notebook to record your new things and your thoughts, feelings and insights during the process. You can also record things in your phone, computer or other device if that better suits you. The main goal is documentation, so whatever way this works for you do it. You can even use a camera.

 

• Brainstorm several new things you want to try and write them down. I’ll let you decide how many you list, but I suggest just enough to get you going, but not so much that every single day is planned out. The planner in you may feel like having each day planned out would be less stressful, but just think about the times when you’ve benefited from the unexpected. Leave room for that.

 

• It also might be helpful to get some sort of support and accountability up front to help you stick with the challenge in the form of another person or group of people. You can definitely do the challenge and keep things to yourself, but having this kind of support can be very helpful and make the challenge more fun. I will be posting on the Facebook page each day so that you can add what you did there and get support that way. If that’s too public, you can invite someone you know offline to do the challenge and share with them each day or if you don’t know of someone but want that personal touch, you can email me each day and I will cheer you on (This is a serious offer. Don’t be shy).

 

During the Challenge:

• Each day, answer at least these questions privately and/or publically (on the Facebook page if you’d like)
  • What new thing did you do?

• How did you feel before/during/after doing it?

• What did you learn?

 

• If you miss a day, don’t worry about it. This is supposed to be mostly fun (mostly because you might feel other not-so-fun things at times, like fear or anxiety, but don’t worry you can handle it). Just start anew on the next day.

 

• If you want to share any pictures of you trying new things on Facebook or Instagram, feel free to do so and use the hashtag #hugnewthings so that we can find it. I will post pictures here and there on my Instagram page (@VaronicaLou).

 

• I will be blogging about my experience on a weekly basis throughout the month. If you have a blog and you feel moved to write about your experience doing this challenge that would be awesome! Feel free to link back to this post.

 

After the Challenge:

• At the end of the challenge, spend some time in reflection about what you learned through the process and what you’d like to do with what you learned going forward.

 

And that’s it! That’s the Hug Your Fear and Try New Things Challenge for March 2014. After reading to this point, I hope that you will join me on March 1st (and tell your friends, family, coworkers, classmates, basically anyone else who might be interested, the more the merrier).

If you have any questions, concerns, or comments, please leave a comment or send me an email. I’ll be checking in closer to March 1st on Facebook (if you haven’t already liked the page, do so here). If you aren’t on Facebook, bookmark this page to see the public posts and sign up for the email list by entering your name and email in the form to the top right (or below if you’re on a mobile device).

I’d like to say a special thank you to Hug Your Fear interviewee, Brother Hue Chuyen, who so wisely suggested that I do this sort of challenge during a recent chat. I’m glad he suggested it and that it felt like the right time to do it.

Let’s hug our fears together!