I started blogging and had my first website created ten years ago!
This series is a sneak peek back into those days (and illustrations).
If you have ever struggled with completing 21-day or even 5-day challenges, you may find this blog post inspiring…
Because I struggled with it also and then managed to get over it, and here’s what I did and how I got all excited about it, and eventually just continued and have never stopped with challenging myself into taking small daily steps (doodling daily that is) to be happier.
The first 21-day challenge I completed was Deepak Chopra’s “Creating Abundance” in 2012. It was well before Mira was born.
I just read the notes I wrote during the Meditation Experience and there I clearly stated my need for expressing my creativity more. I didn’t draw a lot back then, I had just started to draw after a long pause. But I yearned to draw more. I knew who I was and what I wanted, but had no idea HOW I wanted it to be realized. I suspected that my heart just wasn’t open enough..
I feared I would hurt or intimidate others, I was afraid of my own power. It was during a time in my life when I was very well acquainted with my ego, it made its daily appearances with some nasty results.
In my notes I cried for resilience for getting through the 21-day challenge, because I knew that it would help me. I truly believed there was something wrong with me, that I lacked something essential to be fully me. I imagined I’d be something big, someone who inspired others to take steps forward in their life. But I was afraid of success, I thought I’d go really big and couldn’t take it. (Now I can say that that was a ridiculous belief, life throws at you only what you can handle at any time!)
On day 21 I reflected back and saw how much it had helped me. I was no longer afraid of where I was heading, but rather learnt to enjoy the journey. The journey was more important than the destination. And that’s how it is with the 21-day challenges too, completing them is not the thing, but enjoying every moment is!
This made it clear for me that challenging myself into these challenges wouldn’t just help me to know myself more deeply, but they’d also help me release blocks that keep me stuck.
So I continued taking all the 21-day challenges that intrigued me.
…And Then I Started Doodling…
This was the first doodle for my first daily doodling challenge in September 2014. It was set up by Molly Hahn from Buddha Doodles and lasted three weeks. She gave us prompts and I committed into doodling every day and posting them in my blog too.
After going through different 21-day abundance challenges from various people I ran into Kate Northrup in January 2015 and started doodling through her 21-day Money Love challenge. I got amazing feedback in her group on Facebook for my doodles, and I think that was just what I needed to keep going and start doodling.
And that’s when I committed into doodling every day for a year! How far I had come from fearing I’d not complete a challenge!
Also I drew through Ann Wilson’s 21-day Wealth Chef Challenge (see the doodle below).
You can see all my #moneylove related doodles on Pinterest.
I ended up doodling through seven of Deepak Chopra’s and Oprah Winfrey’s Meditation Experiences. It inspired me a lot to wait for what Mira had to say about the daily meditation, how she would illustrate what they wanted me to learn. It was an idea that resonated with me the most that day, something I needed to hear and learn with a doodle, and make a visual note of.
I also made up my own daily doodling challenges and for example doodled through our vacation. Here Mira is joining our journey to Lapland in the fall of 2015.
You can find these doodles on Pinterest too.
How to Stay Committed Then…
There first needed to be a yearning to become the best version of me, then that yearning made me find the right people who could help me become who I wanted to be.
I wanted to express myself more by drawing, and so it turned out to be that drawing through these 21-day challenges helped me to not only fulfill this desire, but to keep at it. It made me curious for more.
The right people who helped me then turned out to be those whose way of expressing their teachings was easily and effortlessly intrepreted into illustrations in my mind. Not all the teachers do that.
If you are struggling to keep up with 21-day challenges, but would really LOVE to complete at least one of them in your life, I dare you to make a decision to commit for just one day (if 21 days overwhelm you), and then refresh that commitment the next day. That has helped me the most.
And With the 365-Day Challenges…
Also with my 365-day challenges which I’ve now experienced five times (twice I’ve committed to doodling & posting my doodles daily for a year (2015 & 2018) and three times I’ve committed to go through A Course in Miracles Workbook lessons successfully (2014 & 2019-2020), which this last time I’ve also doodled one doodle for it every day) I have fooled my ego for the first couple of weeks to be doing a 21-day challenge and then just kept refreshing my commitment every day until I saw it was okay to say it out loud that I’m going to do it for the whole year.
It was about five weeks into it the first time, and last time I could already announce it the first week I was on it – It gets easier to stay committed!
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