Always such good intentions huh? My idea to pick up a new positive habit every 30 days hasn’t quite happened. But! That doesn’t mean there haven’t been some great wins. And I’m all for celebrating every win as it comes along.

In fact, my 30 habit tracker is in my bedside journal, which is a journal with a twist. I only write good things. I want to fill it with good things! I want the first thing I do when I wake up to be thinking about good things to write in my journal. And ditto the last thing I do before I go to sleep.

One of my favourite things about myself (we should all have favourite things about ourselves, right?), is that I’m such a positive person. I like to think I’m fierce with a sunny disposition.

However, I digress.

My cover photo here is the month of October. It shows which days I worked out (WO) and which days I meditated (Med) in a sort of bullet journal fashion.

I’m not ready for a full on bullet journal, but I adore the concept. Maybe that’s my next 30 day challenge? To be disciplined enough to do a beautiful bullet journal page every day, like this, one of these or this. Stunning!

Back to me (as my friend Shona likes to say)! I think I did pretty well in my meditation and workout challenge, don’t you think?

I have so very, very much enjoyed my meditation practice. It has been simultaneously grounding and uplifting. I feel motivated. Optimistic. Cheerful about the future. It has helped to arm me for whatever the day throws at me (and I can be quite the emotional person at the best of times.

I highly recommend Gabby Bernstein’s The Universe has your Back, and especially this meditation. Here’s the chant I’ve been using on Spotify each morning.

My workout was a little more… varied. I tried to do a regular workout routine every morning (check it out in my previous blog post 30 days to a new you), just like my meditation. But it didn’t always workout. Sometimes I ran out of time, sometimes I just didn’t feel like it. And I forgave myself for giving in.

So instead, I included any gym session, workout routine or run in this, rather than just the morning routine I set out to do.

My first 10k win!

That said, I did just run my first 10k this weekend and I couldn’t be happier. I have never been a runner. It was always my worst form of exercise (and I’ve never been a huge fan of running in general).

I got round the course in 1hr 14 minutes, a shade over the 1hr 10 minutes that I was aiming for (which I blame on the unexpected kilometre we had to run on the beach, beautiful but oh so tough).

Winning!

So was this experiment a success? Absolutely! Do I workout and meditate every day? No. But I do both significantly more than I did before my challenge. And that makes me happy.

Anything that brings more joy into the world is a winner in my book.

Stay posted for my next habit forming challenges. Maybe I’ll try and eat a different flavour of ice cream each day, to reverse some of my running? Get that winter bod good and ready.

See you in a month! (Or so…)

If you enjoyed the blog (and made it this far!) you might like my post on why you need to take your own happiness seriously, my own learnings on the difference between pleasure and entertainment (and why it’s important), or you might even like to go right back to the beginning and have a look at my bucket list to understand where this all began.

Thanks for reading! x