Do you follow me on Instagram? If you do, you likely noticed some interesting pictures lately of my kitties’ paws. This past month I wanted to do a fun little challenge for 30 days, although I realized after I started that March has 31 days not 30…go figure.
So why do a 30 day challenge? Simple…I wanted to take time everyday to notice the little things in my life. All too often we are running from place to place, going to bed late only to get up early, constantly adding “to-do” items on our ever growing to-do list and never really taking a moment to notice the little things in our life. We start to take things for granted and while I don’t mean to be a downer…sometimes those things won’t always be around. Life is about learning to juggle the conflicting priorities and I felt like I needed to push my reset button. I am known to consistently over extend myself and take on too many things. The end result typically has me in tears to my husband while we figure out how everything that needs to get done, gets done. I’ve started to realize that sometimes the things I make priorities in my life aren’t meant to be priorities and instead I take things for granted when I shouldn’t…typically my poor husband is the one to get the raw end of the deal in those types of situations. But as life only gets more complex we need to realize to take a moment and notice the little things around us.
So how did my 30 day challenge go? Well I am proud to say that I completed it…all 31 days! But the real question is what did I learn from my 30 day challenge? Well, I learned…
- Prince loves to sit on the bed in the morning, while the most beautiful sunrise will come streaming in on him as he dangles his little paws over the bed post.
- Chip loves to sit next to his toys that he will typically brings to me in the late afternoon, and then drop them in the bedroom doorway.
- Prince is much more adventurous with where he will go and always wants to be near me; when he’s not sleeping.
- Chip is much more adventurous with how he stands or curls up or sleeps, in respect to the position of his paws.
I know…I imagine you are saying to yourself “Great, but I really don’t care about this lady’s cats.” So let me go just a bit farther, and tell you this… My big light bulb moment…I learned, that spending 5 extra minutes on just myself, laughing with my husband and playing with my cats, didn’t cause the world to come to an end…I didn’t miss any big deadlines, or miss any big meetings…instead, I would push forward and say that I gained happiness and joy for taking some time out of my day to make myself the priority. So from this crazy little 30 day challenge of taking pictures of my cats’ paws I came away realizing that taking just 5 – 10 minutes a day for just yourself will bring with it great personal reward.
So, what’s next? Another 30 day challenge? More cat photos? Honestly…I’m not really sure. Maybe I’ll take the day to think about where to go next.
In the meantime…have you done a 30 day challenge? Of any kind? What did you learn from it? If you haven’t done one…try it out…let me know what you plan on doing and I would love for you to reach back out to me after your 30 days and let me know what happened!
And lastly…before you go…take a peek at my 31 days of kitty paws.
(Also, don’t forget to follow me on Instagram @kate_fredrick to see what might be next for me…)