My First 30 Day challenge- Giving up tea
Recently had been reading Steve Pavlina's blog "Personal Development for Smart People" and came across the post "30 Days To Success". Quite interesting and motivating. It inspired me to undertake one new challenge every month and form some good habits in the process.
What should be the first challenge ?
I have been trying for a long time to wake up early, but haven't been successful yet. So , I started giving thoughts to what is it that makes me lazy in the mornings(sometimes I would just keep lying even if I wake up). Finally I came to the conclusion that may be it is the caffeine that is not giving me good sleep at night leading to all the grogginess in the mornings. So, this became my first 30 day challenge- giving up my morning and afternoon tea.
How far am I in the challenge now?
I am now near to completion (23/30) of the challenge, I had started on 3rd April and the finishing line is 3rd May.I am very happy that I could achieve this challenge (though 30 days are not over yet, I am pretty confident by now that I will be able to make it).
The ordeal
I hadn't thought it would be quite big a challenge. I rarely had coffee , so dropping tea which has much lesser caffeine content didn't look so difficult.
Little did I know that I who prided myself as free of all addictions was a TEA ADDICT after all. The first 3-4 days were full of suffering. Mild headaches throughout the day was the hardest to deal. I used to start my work at office with the 10 AM tea, I could be alert and focused only after having a cup of tea . So for few days I could not just feel like my day has started. I still used to go to the cafeteria with my cup, but instead of tea used to fill it up with milk. I gave myself the liberty of replacing tea with chocolate milk (boost in milk), though initially my plan was to eliminate caffeine altogether.The second difference was I feel sleepy earlier than my usual time ,so now go to sleep earlier. Yes, I do sleep deep which was my motive behind this challenge. The breaks in sleep is still not eliminated though, I keep waking a number of times in night, but am able to fall asleep back quickly.
Lessons learnt from the challenge:
1. This has given a boost to my self-confidence which so far was crushed in the guilt that I never achieve any of my set goals for self improvement.
2. This has given me a feel that the discomfort involved in making a change to a habit is not long-lasting. It has a short life if we pursue it with strong will power.
3. This has shown me how good it feels once we are out of the discomfort phase and enter the phase where things start going on an autopilot and our brain seems to have accepted the habit.
4. This also gave me the awareness of how playful our mind is. In the initial days when I just began this challenge, my mind tried to lure me into giving up. The way it used to give me very nice reasons for quitting was really amusing. But just enjoying these inner conversations and not actually listening to them really helps when we are in discomfort phase of changing habits.
Though this challenge didn't help me with getting up early , it did help me gain more of self-control and feel the joy of being successful in achieving a goal. Whether or not to continue beyond the 30 days is something yet to be decided.
Update: Today marks the successful completion of my 1 month of no tea.
What should be the first challenge ?
I have been trying for a long time to wake up early, but haven't been successful yet. So , I started giving thoughts to what is it that makes me lazy in the mornings(sometimes I would just keep lying even if I wake up). Finally I came to the conclusion that may be it is the caffeine that is not giving me good sleep at night leading to all the grogginess in the mornings. So, this became my first 30 day challenge- giving up my morning and afternoon tea.
How far am I in the challenge now?
I am now near to completion (23/30) of the challenge, I had started on 3rd April and the finishing line is 3rd May.I am very happy that I could achieve this challenge (though 30 days are not over yet, I am pretty confident by now that I will be able to make it).
The ordeal
I hadn't thought it would be quite big a challenge. I rarely had coffee , so dropping tea which has much lesser caffeine content didn't look so difficult.
Little did I know that I who prided myself as free of all addictions was a TEA ADDICT after all. The first 3-4 days were full of suffering. Mild headaches throughout the day was the hardest to deal. I used to start my work at office with the 10 AM tea, I could be alert and focused only after having a cup of tea . So for few days I could not just feel like my day has started. I still used to go to the cafeteria with my cup, but instead of tea used to fill it up with milk. I gave myself the liberty of replacing tea with chocolate milk (boost in milk), though initially my plan was to eliminate caffeine altogether.The second difference was I feel sleepy earlier than my usual time ,so now go to sleep earlier. Yes, I do sleep deep which was my motive behind this challenge. The breaks in sleep is still not eliminated though, I keep waking a number of times in night, but am able to fall asleep back quickly.
Lessons learnt from the challenge:
1. This has given a boost to my self-confidence which so far was crushed in the guilt that I never achieve any of my set goals for self improvement.
2. This has given me a feel that the discomfort involved in making a change to a habit is not long-lasting. It has a short life if we pursue it with strong will power.
3. This has shown me how good it feels once we are out of the discomfort phase and enter the phase where things start going on an autopilot and our brain seems to have accepted the habit.
4. This also gave me the awareness of how playful our mind is. In the initial days when I just began this challenge, my mind tried to lure me into giving up. The way it used to give me very nice reasons for quitting was really amusing. But just enjoying these inner conversations and not actually listening to them really helps when we are in discomfort phase of changing habits.
Though this challenge didn't help me with getting up early , it did help me gain more of self-control and feel the joy of being successful in achieving a goal. Whether or not to continue beyond the 30 days is something yet to be decided.
Update: Today marks the successful completion of my 1 month of no tea.
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