I ate my lunch outside, on a park bench under the trees. I looked out across the water, watched the clouds, and paid attention to the patterns and shades of colour of the pigeons stalking me for scraps. I noticed my breathing relax. It was the nicest 20 minutes of my day.

My empty tank light came on at the end of day 17. I am dealing with a lot of different things at the moment, almost all of them are not in my power to control, but I have some influence on how well the other people involved travel their journey. This is a heavy load, and I am happy to do it. What I realised on day 17 was that instead of leaning into taking care of myself, I was adding to the work by giving myself activities to complete when my energy was actually pretty low for that. The willingness was strong, but the tank was empty, and I was doing the wrong things to fill the tank. So, I paused the learning/refreshing of activities like this challenge and deliberately gave myself a week or so to bed down the practices I had been learning up to day 17. I’ve spent the time journaling, my sleep routine is back on track, I’ve set up good habits to transition from one task/process/situation to another, and dedicated time to building rest into my day. And I struggled with feeling guilty that I was not doing “enough” or had failed at the 30 day challenge - for about 4 days. I am delighted that when I came back to day 18 - there was a lovely reminder to do exactly what I had done! FILLED THE TANK! And now continuing the road trip 😊🤣

@Bronty Folker that’s amazing! I’m so happy for you! And your success is inspiring 😊

I spent a lot of time reflecting on why I decided to do this challenge and realised my intentions have become more focused over the past couple weeks. Still the same at the core, just more focused and refined. It’s made it easier to commit to the growing and changes.

I thought the day 14 meditation would set me up well for something like the activity for day 15. Nope. Well, yes, but nope. That part of me that’s responsible for self talk and self appreciation does not yet know how to do her job with a supportive framework… that was terribly difficult. I did not say one word out loud. I did say a few in my head to try and shift from dismissive and critical to acceptance. I noticed I had a physical reaction. My heart raced, my breathing was shallower and I was bright red - so embarrassed, and yes, even a little ashamed. Luckily I’m not afraid of hard work, since we now all know where I need to do some! 😶

I got home from work really late on day 12, so I included this challenge with day 13. I ate my breakfast and savoured each mouthful, paying full attention. It calmed my mind and created space to journal and mind dump.