Friday – And it’s time to look back at the week to reflect, evaluate and grow some!
There’s been a lot of different challenges this week – but the 4 major ones:
- A daily RAOFF challenge ( Random Act Of Fear Facing ) on my 10-minute walk to or from work.
Basically, take a small and quick fear facing action like striking up a conversation with a random person. Proving to myself that all these excuses we have to not practice fear facing are just lack of prioritizing and bad excuses. And FEAR, of course.
How did it go? Well, I did interact with one random person each day. And each time it brought me joy, laughter and proudness. How did that happen? Stockholm people aren’t directly very social and open to socializing with strangers.
Looking back at the interactions, I can see that this outcome is due to me going into them with easiness and good intentions. But perhaps more important – how I chose to react to the whole thing. I didn’t really care about the outcome. It was about daring to do it – a fun little practice and an opportunity to connect with people. Igniting conversations. If it turned out well, well that was a bonus. Actually, two of my interactions got me quite rejected when I think about it. But I still walked away with a great feeling within. A feeling of success!
This has turned out to be such an important mindset I’ve deeply adopted. I still feel fear and anxiety about doing things like these, but since there’s always a good outcome – there’s always a reward for pushing through! I not once bashed down on myself after the interactions. At least nothing that haunted me for more than a brief moment. I laughed and had fun with what just had happened, something that back in the days would have triggered overanalyzing, self-doubt and anxiety.
I recorded my small interactions, so if you’re curious – check out the video on Sunday.
Besides this little week challenge, I’ve continued last week’s challenge of going up 04.30 the latest, spending my two first hours before hitting the gym with planning and strategizing my life. This is like the best thing I’ve ever started doing. It reminds and prepares me to focus on what’s really the most important for me. I don’t start the day off in a reactive way. I take time to ask myself the REALLY important questions, and the follow-up question on how to take me there. Then it’s just a matter of executing that strategy.
“What do you want, and how will you get there?”
Yes, there’s a cost – you need to go to bed early. That has meant less eating and youtube time in the evening. For sure a nice time, but also filled with anxiety. Each evening coming home with an ambition to get some sh*t done, but the lack of willpower after a long workday always leaves me out-of-control eating in front of the computer. So I’m alright with losing out on that time, especially when the upside is a crazy productive time – which is just so much fun!
… And then there are two more challenges this week. But I’ll expand more on these in the Friday Live Stream over at my YouTube Channel later today at 16,30 ( before running off to the yearly Christmas company party ).
- Daring to challenge my relationship to eating is really interesting. Like, challenge myself to only eat at work like I did last week or this week when I wasn’t allowed to eat in front of the computer at home. This fundamentally changed my driving forces for what I wanted to do. Let’s just say that overtime has skyrocketed! Thinking and experimenting with your addictions – like food is to me – can give so much insight.
- Dealing with money loss – my system for translating loss to a debt you have to pay back to yourself. Assigning actions a value. Like a Random Act of Fear Facing could be worth 50 :- for instance. A tough workout push could be worth 15:-. Give you an extra push to do hard things, and it makes your loss worth it!
Have a great day, Fear Facer,
/Alex
