What Did you challenge your self with today?

With Challenge comes change – Tony Horton

Do you challenge yourself every day? If you do you are growing as a person both physically and mentally. Congrats to you! Your probably in the top 90% You should be acheieving great things! Those who challenge themselves daily and track there progress see the most gain in their lives. So can you look back on today, yesterday, the week, the month or the year and say you progressed? The sad truth for most people is, probably not. Most people don’t challenge themselves purposely every day. Same thing day in and day out. What a sad way to live

They think life itself is a challenge enough so they just try and make it by. They don’t purposely go out to push themselves. So without challenge they see no change.

I find one way, no matter what it is, each day in fitness or my life to challenge myself. Every day. Just one thing. We aren’t looking for massive differences in behavior here. We are looking for small compounded efforts to slowly move us forward to our goals. Just once small tiny thing. It could be anything. Since this is a fitness blog, I generally find one fitness aspect per day to challenge myself with, but I also look for my own life challenges as well. Let’s look back over my last week.

On Sunday I did my regular P90x3 workout “complex upper” with a 36 pound weighted vest on. It was crazy hard. But I deliberately challenged myself to do it. I love this workout so I do it a couple times a month. But instead I made it way harder. What a workout and challenge.

On Saturday on my run, I usually run for around 20 minutes on a certain route. Instead I took a small detour and added 10 minutes to it. No marathon here, but its more then I usually do. That will now be my new running route. That small change will add over 1 hour of extra running time to my routine over a couple weeks and help my progress as I am a terrible runner lol.

On Friday I decided to read for an extra hour than my normal 45 minutes I dedicate to reading each day. This was a great decision as I got some excellent information that correlated perfectly with some issues that came up at work the day before. I was able to solve the issue and move on.

On Thursday I decided to eat an extra desert because I felt I deserve it (ok, bad example but you have to enjoy some rewards too!) Everything in moderation right?

On Wednesday I tried 3 moves I haven’t done before in Calisthenics, I failed but learned and will try again tomorrow. I will eventually get them. If you didn’t fail or fall you weren’t trying hard enough to learn and eventually progress.

On Tuesday I noticed I wasn’t progressing on my flexibility recently as I have terrible mobility in certain areas of my body.  so I added 3 new stretches to my routine and on Monday. I was sore the next day from a stretch! That shows just challenging myself and changing it up helped push me differently then normal.

On Monday I decided I was going to try and have less calories each day for a week and see if I can get to my goal of “shredded” condition. Overall I am eating less now and more aware of my eating habits and meal sizes and frequency as I am tracking the food each day for a week. I learned a lot about how much I was really eating when I thought I was having some good portion control.

As you can see none of these things are giant herculean efforts requiring all my time and energy. Just one small thing a day to challenge your own personal status quo.

As Jim Rohn once said “what is simple to do, is also simple not to do.” So most people don’t challenge themselves every day. The day slips by, the week, the month and the year and little to know progress towards their goals takes place. There is no progression. It’s a blurr. How do I remember these little things? I track them. I track how I challenge myself daily. I log everything to track my success. I push myself to look for the challenge in my current routine. Before I start the day i brain storm how and when i can present my self with something to help challenge me.

Another great quote by Eleanor Roosevelt is “Do one thing a day that scares you” Its a great way to always be thinking about your progress.

I challenge you today, to add challenge to your life to stimulate change. Just one tiny thing is all it takes once a day.