Reset Your Life Day 26: Reflect, Comment and Connect

This post is Day 26 of the 31 Days to Reset Your Life Challenge. Learn more and sign up for the program here.

I really can’t believe we’re almost through with the challenge. This month has gone by so fast! So many women have been documenting their 31 Day Reset journey on their blogs, that I wanted to shout out a few today. These lovely ladies have done most of the exercises…and lived to tell the tale! :)

Today’s assignment requires you to reflect on your learning and share in your fellow participants’ progress over the past week or so. Being able to compare and contrast your experiences and offer encouragement to others can be extremely useful as you move forward in your personal development journey!

Reflect

  • What was the most important thing you learned about yourself this week?
  • What has been your favorite exercise so far? What did you like about it?
  • Which exercise did you struggle with the most and why?

Comment

Connect

When you’re done, please share your reflections with us in the comments!

Note: If you blogged about today’s assignment, please post the link in the comments so we can read it!
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15 comments

  1. What was the most important thing you learned about yourself this week? – I realized that I have limitations. I have been, up to this point, trying to do “everything” and to do it without help. On Days 23 and 24, I joined two support networks (one a professional association, and the other a local women’s network.)

    •What has been your favorite exercise so far? What did you like about it? The most useful exercise was Day 20 – “Plan Your Reset Project.” This was a wonderful exercise, as it forced me to actually plan out on paper, in a logical manner, what I need to do in order to accomplish the start-up of a part-time home-based business.

    •Which exercise did you struggle with the most and why? I had difficulty reasoning about the exercise “Purge Negative People from Your Life.” For me, this is only partially possible (which may be true for most persons), since there are family members and some persons in my faith group who I cannot avoid, and it would be “wrong” to do so. However, in regard to casual acquaintances, it is easy to limit one’s contact with those who are negative.

  2. As taken directly from my journal. I will try and edit as I go along(!)
    _______________

    The most important thing I learned didn’t come directly from the reset project, but if it weren’t for the reset project, I might not have been in a place to receive it.

    Basically, I need to stop thinking so much and just BE. Only when I stop thinking about how to appear perfect to all people all the time and just be who I am in that moment will I truly be free. And then I won’t need to “find myself” because I’ll be where I’ve been all along – right there in front of me!

    Thanks to Maria Forleo from richhappyandhot.com (and Rosetta, without whom I would not have heard of Maria Forleo!) for the realization (the “Be” and authentic stuff, not the over thinking part, that was all me!)

    My favourite exercise to do was task 23 because I had a bad night on Monday because I felt like nothing I was doing was bearing fruit and I was starting to feel like it was just ME and that somehow or other I repel people, even when they don’t know me, can’t see me, can’t hear me. I was starting to think of all the jobs I could do where the ability to repel people was a desirable trait(!) and I finally came up with keeping people away from dangerous areas! (work with me, I was in a funk!) They’d be all like “hey, these shark infested waters look like fun to swim in! What?! Nadine’s on the beach?! aaarrrggghhh!!!!!” So yeah, I guess you could say my confidence was at a low(!)

    but then the next day, I checked my email and my meet up group had 3 new members yay! 2 of them are coming to the first meet up, so here come 2shy on May 7th!!

    The tasks I struggled with were 19 and 24. I am STILL in the process of task 19, which is proving much harder than I thought. I thought I was in the right head space for it. i don’t know if I have real trouble letting go or if I’m lazy or both. Maybe I have unrealisitc expectations of how much I can do in a day. I should cut myself some slack and do, like, one area/space/surface/drawer a day. Maybe once I can do one thing it will spur me on to do the rest.

    Task 24 has its roots in the fear of rejection. The only time I give help is when I am asked to. As for asking for help, if I am ever in a situation where I need to ask for help, I will either find a way around it or just not do it. The only times I ask for help is if I absolutley, unavoidably need it.

    But do you know what I just realized? OFFERING help is actually empowering. Think about it. If the only time you ever give help is when you are asked for it, you feel obligated to give it (assuming there is not a good reason you can’t) so as not to appear mean and selfish. Now, sometimes you might be more than happy to help, but other times you might feel kind of bitter and resentful about it.

    Now, if you are the type of person who offers help when they can, you are doing it on YOUR terms (eg because you have the time, or there is something you’re not using, or hell, just because you like the person, dammit!) So you are giving help in a way that doesn’t make you feel resentful and it is coming from a genuine place. (even if the person doesn’t want help, you offered it). This way, you can feel OK about saying no when asked because you know that you are not a selfish person and if you could help, you would.

    Then you don’t have the feeling of resentment or being taken advantage of. At least that is what I associate with “helping”. It also irradicates feelings of guilt about saying no. Can you tell my family is fun to live with?!

    There is always a danger of a particular person or people getting so used to your offered help that they think they can take advantage. The beauty of this way is that you have the freedom to say no without the guilt. And guilt is what these people will always use. But, as the bible says, let your yes be yes and your no be no. If necessary point out to the person that they are being manipulative. Most people who use manipulation think the person they are manipulating is too stupid to know what they are doing.
    _____

    So that was my week as it was then. Reading it back, my approach to offering help seems somewhat selfish, but you would have to know my family and their powers of guilt and manipulation in getting what they want. Add to that, whenever I need help, alot of the time its tumbleweed. So yeah, not too many posisitve experiences surrounding help for me. But I am learning and trying.

    In terms of the just “be” stuff, I have majorly learned that a big part of that involves making myself vulnerable to the consequences of my actions.

    With my meet up group, I have had to be wide open with the vulnerabilty, something I have not done in 20 years. It was damn frightening, but because of the nature of the group, if the “leader” can’t do it, how do I expect anyone else to? Plus I started to atrophy from isolating myself all the time for the sake of self preservation. In the end I ended up with a version of me that just wasn’t worth preserving.

    So yeah, I am all about the vulnerability.
    That’s me.

  4. The thing I learnt about myself is that I use my lowered mobility as an excuse to complain about most things.
    I loved the Purging exercise. I reduced my faceboo form 131 friends to 36; most of them where ‘friends’ I’ve not spoken to since I left school, and the rest had no postivity to offer. as I unfriended them I must say it felt really good :)
    Spicing up my love life I’d say I struggled with, as I need to work on getting ME to a place I’m comfortable and happy with before I factor in a partner, the realisation of this was the hardest for me.

  5. I know I’m late but I’m just now REALLY reading this so thanks for shouting out my blog/journal thingy lol I feel so special :)

  6. The hardest exercise was ditching tv. I actually felt a little nervous without it. I realized that I’m so use to having noise on while I’m doing stuff – its almost as if I wanted to be distracted. But diving from task to task helped a little bit. (Can’t lie I did turn the tv on in the evening – I justified it by saying that since I was preparing for bed I wasn’t really distracting myself from being productive.) But I plan on incorporating ‘no tv weeks’ in the new year. i promise to only watch tv on the weekend.

    I enjoyed my ‘plan your reset goals’ exercise. actually sitting down and figuring out EXACTLY what I wanted and how I would accomplish seemed a little frightening at first but actually got easier as I went along. I realize that I really do have everything I need its just a matter of asking for help really.

  7. I spent last night and this morning, reviewing my process to see where I had last left off. I caught up as much as I could and blog about it here – http://ow.ly/3vcBx

    I know Dec. 31 will come and I won’t be 100% completed but I am ok with that. I am going to keep working at it. Getting rid of my clutter is the best exercise for me. I am determined to get as much out before the New Year. This blizzard we were just hit with is slowing down my progress on that. I know I am going to struggle with the ditching tv for 24 hours.

  8. Thank you so much for the shout out, Rosetta! I felt like 73 different types of special because of it! I haven’t been posting my daily entries because some of them have been personal to me, but I decided to go ahead and do this because I don’t know who is reading my thoughts. Someone very well could be going through the same things that I am.

  9. What was the most important thing you learned about yourself this week?
    = This week has taught me that I have to be more careful of what I put out in the universe. I sometimes say things that I shouldn’t and I can’t take them back. I can apologize, but I can’t erase that moment.
    What has been your favorite exercise so far? What did you like about it?
    = Surprisingly, it was ditching TV. I found plenty to do in those 24 hours and I didn’t even miss it.
    Which exercise did you struggle with the most and why?
    = The spicing up my love life activity has been very difficult for me. Just keep me in your thoughts and prayers please ladies. : ) Thanks.

  10. My favorite activity was actually finding a therapist and planning my reset project! The most difficult was ditching negative people and ditching tv (especially since I am on christmas break from teaching). The one I struggle with most is asking for helping..still working on it :-)

  11. This week I learned that my complaining definitely gets in the way of my happiness sometimes. Also I discovered that I’m not so into being in a relationship; I have totally embraced my singlehood. It bothers some of my friends that I’m single more than it bothers me LOL It will all fall into place.

    My favorite exercise this week was the plan your reset project exercise. I felt like this exercise just put me one more step closer to achieving my dreams because it made me think it through and compose a plan.

    This may sound silly, but I struggled most with the ditching TV for 24 hours exercise not because I have to watch every single show on TV, but because basketball was on.

  12. Thanks for mentioning my blog :)

    What was the most important thing you learned about yourself this week?
    I struggle sometimes connecting and asking people for help. I’m so used to being self-sufficient and then complaining that others don’t do this or that, when if I just asked for help to start there would be no real issue.

    What has been your favorite exercise so far? What did you like about it?
    Favorite exercise was planning my reset project. I’m a planner so to have something written out and coming up with an idea is always fun and easy for me.

    Which exercise did you struggle with the most and why?
    Purging negative people is always hard. I often want to hold on to people because I’ve known them forever. But it makes life so much better being free of negative people.

    http://wp.me/pBR3E-AZ

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