Thirty Day Challenge: Day One

I'm on a challenge to get back to living my truth, five minutes at a time, for 30 days.  Join me!

My cleanse didn't quite work out as I had planned.  Because I hated it.  Well, okay, I hated the first juice of the day.  I don't really like savory juices --and this was all greens and some lemon.  I added the juice of two pears to get it down.  But then I had to take Jane to get a hair cut in the afternoon and afterward she was starving, so we went out to eat.  I decided that spending time with Jane was more important than finishing a juice cleanse. It's getting very hard to get any time with her these days. Will be doing the juice attempt again tomorrow, but will probably concoct my own juices!

As for the five minute Challenge:

• For the next 30 days, I'm going to do my own yoga practice every day.  I did a 45 minute Power Yoga practice.  I was feeling sort of weak (maybe because it was my first day completely off of caffeine) so I just did it until I was ready to stop.

• For the next 30 days, I'm going to find at least five minutes per day to sit in stillness, reconnecting with my breath and working on my meditation. Did this after yoga.  It was amazingly hard to sit still, even for five minutes.

• For the next 30 days, I'm going to play my guitar for at least five minutes every day. I made it a little longer than five minutes, but not much.  Still, it's more than I did yesterday!

• I'm going to write for at least five minutes every day for the next 30 days. Am doing this now! It is surprisingly hard to write right now. I've been a writer since I could hold a pencil, but I guess it's like  any skill.  You have to use it or you lose it. Or maybe something else is going on here, I don't know. Will think about this a bit more.

• I'm going to spend at least five minutes in spiritual study, every day for 30 days. I've been doing this on and off all day. That's been the best thing about today, actually.

So, today was also my first day off of caffeine again.  I tapered off of it until I was down to just 4oz. of coffee and then today was Quitsville.  Tapering was a much better solution that just going cold-turkey like I did last time.  I had a little headache but not THE HEADACHE OF DEATH. And instead of spending three days hating everyone on this planet, I only needed to do about three HOURS in that stage.  Then I lost the will to live briefly, and now I feel pretty normal.  Not like I need to scratch my skin from the inside, like last time.

So, all in all, progress was made!  It's never pretty, you know, to start wrenching yourself out of the ruts and back into alignment.  I was thinking a lot today about how it's a lot like planting a garden. It's a lot of freaking hard work to till up the soil and augment it with good growing material and then sprig tiny seeds into it.  But at some point, the seeds grow and they fulfill your vision of what you knew they could be.  More about that tomorrow.

Tell me how your first day went.  Or if this was just a planning day, tell me how that went.  or if you're just cheering the rest of us on this time around, do that.

love,

Barb