100 days

I stumbled onto this video last week. It’s about a lady who taught herself to dance in 100 days. It’s amazing!

The “Dance In A Year” Video Becomes A Platform For Anyone To Learn A Skill In 100 Days

It made me really wonder what is possible if you just dedicate yourself for 100 days – that’s just 3 months!

This year I have tried a bunch of new things. They were not new resolutions 🙂 Some started just before 2017 and some started a few weeks ago. Here is the list of things I’m doing differently and how I’m doing on them.

• 5am wakeup – for the first month I did this religiously to get into a habit. Now I do it most mornings, but on those mornings I got less sleep I allow myself another hour of sleep. It’s been about 2 months and I now wake up up at about 4:58 naturally, just before my alarm goes off.

 

• Upon waking up – immediately drink 500ml of water. This took some getting used to. I’m not a huge water fan, I’d rather have a coffee. Anyway – I can now feel the difference within 10 minutes of waking up if I forget my water. I feel dehydrated and dry. I look forward to my morning water now 🙂

 

• Meditate every morning. Part of waking up at 5am is that I have alot of me time, as the rest of the house is still fast asleep. I started out with Headspace, and now use Simple Habit as it has more variety. I do this every morning. I started out with 5 minute meditations and have now moved on to 10 minutes. It calms me down and sets my day off to a great start.

 

• Journal – I write in my journal every morning. For the first month I answered a different question everyday, but then I realised that I’d like to use journaling to set focus to my day. So I now jot down: 3 things I’m grateful for (usually related to the previous day), 3 things I want to get done today and my top 4 goals for the year. The top 4 goals keep me focused on the long term and doing things to support those visions.

 

• Read – I started by reading a chapter everyday – but I wasn’t enjoying this. So I tried blinkist and that didn’t work either. Next  I tried audible to listen to books, and that failed too. Finally I gave up on this one 🙂

 

• Write a note – every morning I write a note to my wife. Sometimes I draw a picture and a note. It’s just one or two sentences letting her know what I love and appreciate about her or what I am feeling in the moment. She loves her notes!

 

• Stretching – I do neck stretches every morning to prevent migraines. I also have two exercises from my chiropractor that I do on alternating days. One to strengthen my neck and shoulder muscles and one for a glute injury.

 

• Exercise – I go to a personal trainer twice a week (for over a year now). This is my therapy. I have added running 2-3 times a week on the other days as long as my glute isn’t bugging me.

 

• Dog walk everyday. This was going really well until one of our dogs had an op and couldn’t walk for 4 weeks. So now we walk them about twice a week. I’m hoping this increases as our dog gets better.

 

• Be kind to me. I used to beat myself up if i didn’t do one of my habits (as above). Now if I skip a thing – I immediately forgive myself and get back to it the next day. I listen to my body and rest it when it needs to rest.

 

• Intermittent fasting. Only eating between 10am and 6pm at night. I found this pretty easy to do and stuck with it until the change below 🙂

 

• No meat. This one surprised me – my wife decided we should be vegan. After some deep thinking I thought lets try it. Its been 3-4 weeks and i think it will stick. It’s not a religion. When we eat out we usually opt for vegetarian options – much easier to find in restaurants and at friends, and when home we aim for full vegan. The first week was tough – but now I’m enjoying it. Although I’m no longer doing the intermittent fasting I try to only have breakfast after 8am, and I still try and eat dinner before 6pm.

 

• Coaching – I want to improve my coaching skills. So Karen and I set up many different coaching calls to practice and then we give each other feedback afterwards. I’ve done around 5 and I can feel a difference. It’s also inspired us to find our own coach and to actively do more of this in our business. (If you would like to experience a deep, powerful coaching session – drop us an email!).

WOW. So when I write it down like this I’m amazed at everything I have tried and stuck to in the last 2 months. I’m around 30 days away from the 100 day mark. It’s a lot. It didn’t feel like a burden or difficult or forced. I guess if you WANT to try something, it’s different to something being forced on you.

So what can you do for 100 days? What do you want to master? Because you can!