I hit a milestone on Sunday, July 30th, 2017. It was my 30th birthday, my Golden Birthday. I am no longer a 20-something, searching for her way and her place. I'd like to think I'm moving towards a 30-something who makes her own way and her own place, who is no longer waiting for it to be given to or created for her.
But I'm definitely not where I imagined I'd be ten years ago.
I've been in a kind of denial about it since July. Now all of a sudden, it's the middle of the next April, 31 is now much closer than 30, and I feel stagnant. Like I'm holding myself back, but I don't know why anymore.
So I'm making a change
I've never been able to totally jump into the new years resolutions deal because, to me, my new year starts on my birthday. My next birthday is just over 100 days away, so I'm challenging myself to commit to putting myself first at least once every day for the next 100 days. It's a #100daychallenge for self-love and goal-conquering, and I'm calling it #100DaysOfSunshine to illustrate that my primary goal is to recapture and to nurture the aspects of my passion ambition that feed my Sunshine.
100 Days of Sunshine
Commitment
I picked out 3 Life Areas of Focus to prioritize my goals and to specify the Sunshine I want to nurture in my life. I chose Health, Creativity, and Hustle.
If you're joining me in the challenge, I recommend choosing 2-3 Life Areas of Focus. These areas should reflect one role in your life. If you're a student and you want to focus on your studies and academic performance, you can pick "Academics" as one; or if you're getting ready to graduate and you're looking at internships, entry-level positions, or grad school options, you might pick "Jobs" or "Grad School", or simply the career title you aspire to or the name of a company you want to work for, or a business you may want to start. The area should be specific enough that you're not trying to combine your mother-role goals with your home-improvement goals. The areas you choose can also be a general project that you're working on that can be broken down into tasks/projects over the next 100 days.
Next, within each of my chosen Life Areas of Focus I defined my Do it Daily Goals and my Whole 100 Days Goals. I decided to divide it up this way because I know that there are routines that I would like to develop within each of my Life Areas of Focus that will help me work towards growth on a daily basis, these are my Do it Daily Goals. Any other general goals or benchmarks that I want to conquer during this challenge are my Whole 100 Days Goals.
Two-fold Accountability Method
To hold myself accountable for being consistent in working towards these goals in my 100 day challenge, I created a simple tracker in my bullet journal. I made 3x3 boxes for each of the 100 days in my challenge and dated each one. So it's like a calendar but not divided spatially by the number days in a week or by month. To establish a visual division of the days, I outlined my start date and the 1st of each month in a deep purple, weekends in lavender, my upcoming vacation in mint, and weekdays in light grey.
The Method
First, I will shade in one column on the day boxed for each day when I work towards the goals in any life area. For example, if I work towards my Health goals, I will shade in the first column on the appropriate day. If I also work towards my Hustle goals but not my Creativity goal, then I would also shade in the third column of that day but not the second. If I work towards goals in all three of my Life Areas of Focus then that whole day's box will be shaded in. That's the goal!
Second, I will bring you along for the ride by posting about my progress on my social media, specifically my Instagram, Instagram Stories, and here on my Blog. It's a challenge about self-love and growth, so I have to challenge myself to grow outside of my comfort zone. That's the goal!
Join me on the 100 Days of Sunshine Challenge
Sign up for the PeriodicalSunshine (in the sidebar) and you'll receive a special link to my FREE 100 Days of Sunshine Commitment & Tracker PDF worksheets.
Follow me on social media and join in on the challenge to uncover and nurture your own personal sunshine! Let me know in the comments how you want to improve the most important area of your life.