So when I went to bed last night, I had this novel idea… it’s a new month of 30 days so why not do a challenge. I’ve only done one other challenge and that was a push-up challenge leading up to my wedding. It was fun until I got sick the week before my wedding and didn’t finish it.
It makes me think how many times I have I started something with every intention on completely but some way or another I fall short and end up stopping before I get to the finish line.
It’s not something I’m proud of, just something I’m aware of and something I’m willing to work towards.
About a year ago, I started writing. I believed I was bad at it and didn’t like doing it. I almost didn’t graduate high school because I failed in english and had to complete it in adult school. (A story for a different time) But early on after this experience I felt (and believed) that I was a horrible at all things english. Reading, writing and sometimes even talking. So I avoided it at all costs.
It was easier to not do it because why do something you think you suck at, right?
Well fast forward to today, and I still think I’m horrible at it BUT one major thing has changed. I have this weird, unexplainable belief that I am meant to write a book. No, it’s not because I’m good at it but because I’m actually NOT good at it.
You see, 9 years ago, after my divorce in 2009. I was in search for purpose. I was training at a local gym and I was a personal assistant to a Life Coach. I was struggling to make ends meet. And I knew in my gut, this can’t be it. A lot of my friends had found their calling and I felt left behind. I knew there was more to my life and often asked myself, why can’t I have a piece of the happy pie.
So with the help of my boss I started the road to self-development. It was hard to turn the mirror to myself and face my insecurities. For as long as I could remember, all I wanted to do was show off that I was flawless, just like all of my friends on Charger Girls. I wanted to be the perfect example of a woman who had it all… the career, the boyfriend, and the body. Can I tell you something… want and have are two very different realities but I was determined to have it.
In my time of self-discovery, there were things I loved about myself and things I was not proud of. I mean who wants to have a failed marriage by the age of 26. But the story I told myself was, HE (the ex) was to blame for the failure. A few months into working with a life coach and yup you guessed it, I learned I was just as guilty in the failed relationship. Don’t get me wrong, it was the hardest BEST decision I could have made and honestly I handled it sooooooo poorly BUT no regrets because I learned (and still feel like I’m learning) why I do/did the things I did.
Anyway, back to this whole writing challenge. 9 years ago, while I was taking notes on Tony Robbins and Wayne Dyer, I said to myself, I want to write a book to inspire people. Yup, the girl who failed her senior year of high school AP english wanted to write a book.
And I started. It was titled, My Book. (insert face palm here) Ok ok, that’s not the actual title but it is how it was saved on my laptop. I wrote a couple of times and when I stopped working with my boss, I also stopped working on my book.
It wasn’t until 2016 when I purchased a new computer and was transferring files that I found my infamous book. Just to give you a frame of reference, the average page has about 200-300 words… and if you say a book is 200 – 400 pages that would equate to about 55,000 – 100,000 words. Therefore, please join me while I laugh at my book with the word count being (and still is) 1,600 words.
You may ask, well why don’t you finish it… and well it’s complicated three-fold answer…
- First of all, I forgot I even wanted to write it. After leaving the personal assisting job, I was crazy busy with building my personal training business and dating my future husband. Life was happening faster than I’d like to admit, and I was in total reactive mode instead of creative mode. Time passed without me thinking twice about it. Fortunately, I got back on the self-discovery quest to find my purpose (again) and in doing so, I remembered my crazy audacious dream of writing a book. This dream of mine came back to me in Dec 2017, but still, I was scared to start. Why… well…
- I believe I am not qualified to write. Remember, I’m the girl who FAILED english. I have trouble speaking properly. Who am I to know when to put a comma or when to use a semi-colon. Who do I think I am? What proof do I have that I would even be good at it? What will it be about? All of these questions started coming up that seriously paralyzed me for 9 months. The biggest question bringing me to the third reason for not writing my book…
- What if I spend all this energy and time to write it and NO ONE reads it. This is by far my greatest fear. What if it turns out no one cares about my book. Gasp! Yup that’s a possibility. But part of my own self-discovery is that there is another side of the coin. So I asked myself the opposite question, what if someone (just one, maybe just you) finds some kind of joy or freedom from your story, would the time and effort be worth it? Absolutely, yes!
So instead of thinking big picture you got to write 100,000… we are here. A simple (in concept) 30 days of writing. I have no clue where it will lead me. And honestly, I have no idea what 30 days of consistently showing up to this computer and writing will end up producing BUT I’m willing to try.
And guess what, I woke up feeling like 30 days of writing is going to be time-consuming and hard. I didnt’ want to write, I almost walked away from my computer and said “I can’t do this, I have nothing to say” But what I have learned in my health coaching days, is that goals don’t care how you FEEL. And sometimes, the little step forward in me sitting down staring at a blank screen, turns into a feeling of “Maybe I can.”
Crazy to think that when I started this writing session, I had no idea what I would write or say but I sat here with believing that the only way you can get better at something, is by DOING it! And by doing it, I ended up with over 1200 words, say whaaat?!?! How freaking cool is that.
So here’s the reality, my hope for this challenge is not necessarily completing the 30 days (even though that would be AMAZING). I just know that I need to step outside my comfort zone and focus on taking it one day, one writing session, one word at a time and just DO IT.
My hope for you who I’m grateful for reading this are inspired to do something today that you think you’re incapable of doing… Start small if you have to but take a baby step. It may be the thing makes you nervous and maybe in the past you dug your heels in the sand on ‘not doing’ but your heart keeps showing it to you. There is a reason it keeps coming up, whatever it may be… Because I believe that there is more for all of us! And sometimes it’s a scary audacious goal that seems unattainable but if you take just one step, you will build the confidence to maybe take another, and before you know it, you got almost 1,400 words on a post and you say to yourself, “that was a whole lot easier than I thought it was going to be.”