The Challenges Went Off The Rails

What happens when life doesn't go as planned...

Well, as you might have noticed my self-reliance and resilience challenges went off the rails over the past few months. And that’s ok. Life doesn’t always go as planned and you simply have to take a step back, re-prioritize and re-focus and then get back on track when ready.

That all being said I’ve been in the thick of a health scare and haven’t felt inspired to tackle my challenges or to write here until today. I’ve been battling my first MS flare in 9 years, my liver is struggling (a hepatologist at the Ottawa Hospital is trying to diagnose me with another autoimmune disease), I’m parenting twin toddlers while working full-time and it’s taken a lot out of me physically and mentally.

I started off the year strong completing my first 2 monthly resilience challenge goals of Cold Plunges and Wim Hof Breathing and then bam I started experiencing my first true MS attack since I was diagnosed in 2014. I also dealt with an impinged infra and supra in my shoulder in March so my plan of doing 10 pull-ups a day was brought to a cold stop mid-month. And I struggled to restart anything in April, or May or June LOL.

After taking time to heal and rest and relax, I’m feeling energetic again and ready to tackle these challenges. So I pulled up my Asana Home & Life board where I have my resilience and self-reliance challenges mapped out and I started re-scheduling things.

This month I’ll focus on reducing my phone time to 2 hours a day and then for the rest of the year, I’ve mapped it out so I will try and tackle 2 resilience challenges a month.

Reducing my phone time in July shouldn’t be that much of a challenge. Over the last 3 weeks, I’m averaging between 3 hours and 42 - 50 mins a week. Social media apps are the highest time suck at around 13 hours a week. So I’ve added a limit on my social media apps to only spend 15 mins a day on them. This is enough to post on my profiles, answer a few messages and then get off. The largest culprits are Instagram, Messages, CityTV and Netflix. The last two were from binge-watching a few shows while recovering from a liver biopsy last week.

The only two apps that I’ll not include in my overall calculations will be my podcast app and my audible app. If I’m listening to podcasts or books then I’m not zombie-scrolling on social media :)

I’d love to hear about your phone habits…

Now onto my self-reliance challenge, this one is going to take a bit more work. I’m behind on 2 challenges from earlier in the year so I’ll need to re-schedule those. I tried to tackle fire starting with my flint rod the other night when we had a bonfire but sucked at it so I’ll have to watch a few videos and then try again.

While I have successfully figured out how to brine meat, I have not tackled smoking yet. I have already shared the resources I’ve used to brine a roast and then cook one of the best roast I’ve ever had but I still need to figure out if I’m going to buy a smoker or if we’re going to tackle making one!

In May, we successfully moved our garden over from a shady area in our backyard to the bright sunlight and all my plants are in the ground and thriving so I’ll focus on that for my next post as that was my May self-reliance goal! Other than that I’ll tackle setting up a composting area in our backyard this month and continue to learn how to identify more plants. In August I’ll tackle 2 challenges and then we’re back to our regular schedule for one challenge a month in the fall & early winter.

What do you do when you fail at a goal? Do you get discouraged and give up or pick yourself back up and try again? Would love to hear in the comments.