Week 11 - 75D/The End
Welp, it’s over. Ish.
Technically with my 5 day addition because of our Albuquerque trip, the official last day of this challenge for me is September 18th which is this Sunday. So this will be my last recap for the whole process. I’m going to do a separate post specifically regarding my time away from Instagram, but in this post I plan to share my overall thoughts on what these past 80 days have looked like and also share my main takeaways.
This past week, I eased back into walking more but am still getting over my cold so the congestion is real. At least the temps have been lower so the mornings and the evenings are much more bearable.
I was also crazy busy this week now that the Fall semester is back up and running at church. I’m a part of 5 groups this year and I think I might have bitten off a bit more than I can chew, but I’m running with it for now and we will see how it goes.
I also got a haircut and a massage this week while Paul finished up the final touches on prepping our new outdoor patio for concrete which is hopefully happening next week!
MAIN TAKEAWAYS FROM THE 75 DIFFICULT PROGRAM
Doing challenges as a couple is not always the best idea
Initially Paul and I started this together but since I changed a few things about it to suit my needs, he and I had a disconnect almost from the beginning. We also tend to let each other off the hook more than we lean towards holding each other accountable because neither one of us want’s to be “that guy”. Because of that, I ended up doing the majority of this challenge on my own so I felt lest motivated to do it, especially towards the end.
75 days is a lot longer than it seems
When I first encountered this I thought, 75 days? That’s not that long. I can do anything for 75 days. But when you step back and realize that’s two and a half months….and when you really start to think about just how much happens in two and a half months…it really is a very long time to do something (or 5 things) every single day without a break.
But, I also understand that is really the main purpose of the program. Doing something for 75 consecutive days in a row (no matter what it is) is just plain hard in and of itself. And if your motivation is lacking…see next point…it’s almost impossible.
You need to have a very strong why when you are going to do something like this
This is ultimately why I think I failed at perfectly completing this challenge, I didn’t have a strong enough reason or fully thought out purpose behind why I wanted to complete this. I wanted to spend some time off Instagram and I wanted to get in the habit of daily writing, but other than that I didn’t have a strong, underlying motivator to keep me going. Plus I wasn’t sharing about any of this anywhere so I didn’t have that accountability either.
In times past, when I have done something really difficult (triathlon, walking 60 miles, 10k etc..) I had a stronger motivator…the race itself…to keep me going. I knew that if I didn’t train almost daily that when the day of the triathlon came I would suffer, so it kept me going. If I was working towards being able to complete something at the end of this, it might have been different, but since I don’t have that, it felt less important to keep going. Stopping completely or letting myself off the hook here and there resulted in no consequence so it' was easier to justify.
We can do hard things
Even though I technically “failed”, and I put that in air quotes because I still learned and grew as a result of participating in this challenge, I’m here to tell you that we can do hard things. In our world today, we don’t really have to do much that’s hard. We have houses and air conditioning, can get our groceries brought to us and can watch any movie at the click of a button while we eat microwaved food that took 5 minutes to make. We have it pretty easy in the grand scheme of things.
Sure we encounter super difficult relational challenges and as a society we are lonelier than ever, but when it comes to physically and mentally challenging things, we just don’t do them very often any more.
But we can.
I like challenges like this, because I think we need these reminders from time to time. We can do more. We can challenge ourselves and learn from our failures and our successes. We often hide behind not wanting to be embarrassed or laughed at, we stay busy, busy, busy so we have an excuse. We can do hard things. I know because I have done really hard things before and I will for sure have do do hard things in the future. Challenging yourself from time to time builds endurance for those times when you are unprepared for the challenges that come your way.
Overall, I’m glad this 80 days happened. I have a richer life because of it and to me, that makes it all worth it.
Curious about my insights from my time away from insta? Here is where I break down my thoughts on that!
