30 Challenges Update

Awhile back I posted about starting the 30 Challenges to Enlightenment, beginning with 30 days of drinking only water.

That challenge ended a while ago at this point, but I never told you what happened. Maybe you thought it went so horribly that I was too embarrassed to talk about it anymore.

Well, the truth is…it was a great experience. I ended up losing a ton of weight without even trying (I wasn’t keeping up with my jump-rope workout), I felt energetic, focused, and overall very satisfied. I didn’t miss caffeine, but I did sometimes miss the rituals that went along with it: getting a coffee from Starbucks when I was at the mall with my wife, waking up in the morning and having an ice-cold Red Bull to start the day. Things like that. I missed whiskey in much the same way. Not the liquid itself, but the ritual of drinking it at night while reading a good book or watching a show with my wife.

The thing is, without those rituals as part of those activities, I was actually able to focus more on the activities themselves. Going out with my wife was no longer about getting coffee, it was about…going out with my wife. Reading a book in bed was really just reading a book in bed. Watching a show with my wife was really just that, and it was great.

The other thing I can report is that since ending that particular challenge, I have not returned to my old ways. I do drink things besides water from time to time, but not nearly with the frequency I used to. It really feels like the habit has been broken, the habit of reaching for tea or coffee or soda or whatever sounds good in the moment. I put more thought into what I drink now. I can tell you how many times I’ve had something other than water in the last two weeks, and I can tell you exactly what those things were.

The final thing I feel is worth commenting on is that, during the month I was only drinking water I feel like I was always thirsty. Not like I was dying of thirst, or parched, or had dry mouth or anything like that. It wasn’t thirsty for lack of liquid. How to describe it?

It was more like, water always sounded good. Every moment of the day I could definitely drink a big swig of water. If I had a water bottle in hand (and I often did), I would drink it down quickly. Let me explain it a different way:

When I finished the challenge and re-introduced other liquids into my repertoire, I stopped drinking as much  altogether. In other words, I feel like I drank more water during the challenge than I drink all things combined now. I’m not sure if there’s a scientific reason behind that, or if it was purely psychological. I will do some digging and see what I can uncover.

My point is, I’m less likely to drink anything now than I was during the challenge, for whatever that’s worth.

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Of course, 30 Challenges to Enlightenment isn’t over. The next challenge has already begun–again, with a caveat.

The next challenge is to get up and watch the sunrise every morning. Sounds great. The only problem is, I already get up before the sunrise anyway because I have a two year-old with an impeccable internal alarm clock.

So I decided to incorporate a different challenge into this month: yoga. For the past two weeks, I have been doing (or trying to do) yoga every morning during the sunrise. It’s not ideal yoga conditions, what with the aforementioned two year-old often crawling under me, asking for a snack, or yelling at me to stop because she wants to read a book. Regardless, it’s not the effectiveness of the yoga itself that is the goal, is developing the habit.

So far there have been three days that I’ve missed. Twice it was because I was deathly ill, so I gave myself a pass. The third day it was because I got up too late to do the workout and still make it to work on time, and that’s just an utter failure on my part.

But the important thing is to forgive yourself and get back on the horse, so I’m still doing the thing. I have done a total of 9 days so far, so I have 21 days to go. This challenge feels different than the last. It’s rewarding to get up and do an activity in the morning, and I find that I feel really calm and relaxed all morning which is nice. But unlike the water challenge, this isn’t something I think about all day long. I do it in the morning and go on with my day, which makes it feel a little less…challenging. I may end up incorporating another challenge on top of this one to keep things interesting.

We’ll see.

30 Challenges to Enlightenment

Several days ago I started what will hopefully one day be identifiable as a new phase of my life. At the very least I hope it’s a memorable chunk of time.

I’m doing the 30 Challenges to Enlightenment program from HighExistence.com.

What is it, exactly? I’m glad you asked. That’s what I was hoping to write about anyway.

The 30 Challenges to Enlightenment program is an epic undertaking, a mental quest if ever there was one. As the name implies, it consists of thirty challenges. They range from not drinking caffeine or alcohol, to meditating for 2 hours a day, to carrying around a notebook and sketching what you see. It runs the gamut of willpower and mindfulness. The ultimate goal is to achieve a sort of Zen-like mastery of your mind, body, and soul. No big deal.

The thing is, each challenge lasts for 30 days.

If you do them one at a time, in the order they are recommended, that’s 900 days of challenges.

In case you’re not quick with math, that’s almost two and a half years.

In other words, this program takes a while to get through.

It’s divided into six “quests,” which are comprised of five challenges, each of which lasts for 30 days. The way the program is designed, its recommended to start at the beginning, with the “Monkey Mind” quest. As you complete each challenge, you check off a row of boxes at the top of the quest. When all the boxes are checked, the quest is complete, and you move on to the next quest. (“Beginner Mind”)

I just got started, so I’m still only working on the very first challenge, called “High on Existence.” Basically, you abstain from caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, and “any other non-prescribed drug.”

Personally, I have some issues with that generalization. For one thing, it seems a bit arbitrary. We label things drugs because we decide they’re drugs; what we think of as a drug today may not be considered one tomorrow. Indeed, many things we call drugs today weren’t considered even harmful a hundred years ago. So lumping caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine together with “other” drugs seems like too-broad a brush to paint with.

And if you’re considering to be a drug anything that alters our mind, our mood, or our energy level, well…name one thing that we eat that doesn’t alter our physiology in some way. If we ingested something that doesn’t have an effect on us, then it’s completely useless to us. Our body is nothing but chemicals coming in and out, so trying to avoid things that won’t add or subtract anything from the equation is a fools errand.

Nevertheless, I accepted the challenge. Albeit with my own caveat: Instead of thinking of it as a way to avoid mind-altering substances, I am thinking of it more holistically. I’m considering it a health challenge. And as such, I’m not only avoiding those substances, but I’m also only drinking water.

No juice, no soda, no tea. Even caffeine-free versions are out of the question.

Nothing but good old wholesome H20, like nature intended.

I’ve long been a proponent of the benefits that simply drinking more water can impart. It can stave off fatigue, it promotes weight-loss, it just generally makes one feel better. Water is great for you, there’s no two ways about it.

But dammit, sometimes it just feels good to crack open can of something. It’s visceral. It’s more interesting.

And I’ll be the first to admit that first thing in the morning I would rather reach for a cold, effervescent Red Bull than a bottle of water (even though I know from experience that the latter is just as effective as the former).

No Red Bull for me, though. Not for another twenty or so days, anyway. We’ll see how I feel by the end of this first challenge. We’ll see if I have noticed any difference in my health, my mood, my weight.

Regardless of those things, though, the primary goal of these first five challenges (the “Monkey Mind”) is just to improve your willpower. It’s not about the things themselves as much as its about achieving them. At the end of this first challenge, I will have done a thing for 30 days. That counts for something, for sure, no matter why I’m doing it.

I wish myself luck.