Karina Eaton

This first week of challenges, surprisingly enough, really did challenge me. As excited as I was to start this journey, I wasn't prepared for how out of my comfort zone it would take me. With this being the first week, and myself being a busy person, I wanted to start myself off easily and not push myself too out of my comfort zone quite yet for my daily challenges. My daily challenges this week involved going for a daily 10 minute walk, and spending 15 minutes a day practicing mindfulness. What I didn't realize when picking these daily challenges, was how hard they were going to be. 

Going for a daily walk is something that seems so simple, yet has such a positive influence on my mental health. Growing up, my family always was adventurous, pushing us to be outside and hiking and exploring any chance we got. With this influence, the outdoors is still important to me today, so much so that just forcing myself to be outside can boost my attitude tremendously. Despite knowing this about myself, forcing myself to be outside every day is not something I have done in the past. I have always wanted to implement a daily walk into my lifestyle, particularly lately with the stress of school, but I have never had the discipline to do it. With this challenge, I made sure to really take myself outside each day. Now my daily walks were different each time. Sometimes they were with company, sometimes they were alone. But with each walk, I found myself happier than when I was alone inside my house. I really enjoyed the time to think and really be by myself when walking alone. What surprised me a lot was how little I really am alone with my thoughts. Both my daily walks and my mindfulness practice showed me this. 

My mindfulness practices were much, much more difficult for me. While daily walks were something I enjoyed, practicing my mindfulness was something I didn't really look forward to. When first starting my mindfulness practices, I didn't know where to begin so I started off by reading through some of the resources shared through the challenge website. My first day I followed a guided meditation that was about five minutes that I had found on one of the resources. This allowed me to better understand the mindfulness as a practice and I continued to use this mindfulness tool to start my mindfulness practices each day. Because I used this tool and because I was still unsure of how to fully practice mindfulness, my sessions were normally only 5 minutes instead of the 15 I had pledged. I realized that 15 minutes of mindfulness is quite a long time. (It was a longer pledge than my walks!) However, despite the fact that my mindfulness practices were shorter than I pledged, they still opened my eyes tremendously. Taking just five minutes out of my day each day allowed me to focus on my breathing, and the parts of my body that really needed attention. I chose to do my mindfulness practices before bed this week as my practice thus far has mainly been about focusing on my breathing. Up until recently I have always been a heavy sleeper. I would fall asleep in seconds and would sleep through the night with no problem. Within the past few months, I have had trouble falling asleep and have woken up multiple times in the middle of the night. Choosing to focus on my breathing before bed each night this week has allowed me to calm myself and recenter my mind and body into a place of self love and focus. I chose to do this before bed to really end my day on a positive note no matter how it had turned out. To leave all negative aspects outside my bedroom and allow a safe and positive space for me to sleep. 

Figuring out my mindfulness practice was daunting at first but with the help of the online resources and the guided meditation, I was able to ease myself into the practice. While the five minute guided meditation was helpful for this week, I am excited to look into other ways to practice mindfulness that may better suit me. The guided meditation was simple and a good start, but spoke few words. I would love to find a guided meditation that prompted me more and pushed me to look deeper into myself. 

Not only did I look to resources for my mindfulness practices, but I looked to the resources for my one-time challenge. I decided to really push myself with my one-time challenge by choosing something that I knew would be challenging but I also knew would be great for me and the future I am building. My one-time challenge was to identify what my 3-5 top core values are in my life. This too was daunting at first since I didn't even quite understand what a core value was. So to better understand and get some inspiration, I read the second resource attached to the challenge. This resource gave examples of core values and prompted me to write down which ones I felt aligned with myself. It then asked me to identify which ones were most important to me and to write actions that went along with them. This made me realize that my core values shouldn't just be values that are important to me in life and are in the back of my mind. Picking these values and really honing in on them is important to actually apply the things that I value in my life, to my day-to-day practices. I am grateful to say that I have narrowed down my choices and am hoping to truly focus in on them more. 

This however is going to be difficult for me. It is so easy for I think everyone to actively practice aligning their actions to their core values. While it was relatively easy for me to figure out which core values were most important to me, it is going to be a lot harder for the future to really make sure that I am aligning my actions to my core values. Through the resource that guided me, I was able to identify some specific actions that I am going to try to implement in my life in order to align my core values. What is difficult though, is that these aren't every-day or measurable actions, but simple, life actions. 
I am also worried about implementing mindfulness into my every day life as I said. Since it is so hard for me, I am worried I will give up on it. 
The daily walks, while extremely enjoyable, are something I'm worried I won't do every day. With my busy schedule, I can see myself not having time for daily walks, particularly in cold weather like we face now. With that being said, I think walking at least a few times a week would do the same trick for me and would still be extremely beneficial for me to keep in practice, and I think this is in fact feasible. 

I'm excited to see what this next week has to offer.