Life is boring.
Well–no, not really. Life is actually really complex and wonderful, but it’s pretty easy to look at your regular routine and say, “my life is boring.” We often fall into a rut that can be difficult to climb out of. We do what is easy and we do what is the norm.
However, if you want to escape the norm and make a slight (and very simple change) I encourage you to do one thing (well, technically 15): challenge yourself.
If you can challenge yourself in small ways, you can change yourself in big ways. The following are 15 very minor challenges that while they appear small, they could have a significant ripple effect.
1. Leave a chocolate bar next to your bed. Wait for a month to go by before you eat it.
2. When you arrive at somebody’s house, do not text them. Get out of the car and knock on the door (like the cavemen used to do).
3. Strike up a conversation with a stranger in public.
4. Go 5 days without watching TV.
5. Pull a piece of clothing out of your closet that you really like…now give it away to charity.
6. Next time you drive somewhere, do it in total silence. Radio, music, and phone calls are not allowed. You have to sit alone with just you and your thoughts.
7. Have a conversation with yourself in public (yeah, out loud, where people can hear you). They’ll think you’re crazy and it will embarrass you. Oddly though, if you can intentionally embarrass yourself in public, you can learn to love yourself when you unintentionally feel shame.
8. Count the amount of times in the day you say the word, “I.”
9. Take the stairs for a full week.
10. Leave your phone at home one day–just unplug and see how it goes.
11. Order take-out: leave a tip that’s bigger than the entire cost of the meal (or at least significantly more than 15%).
12. Drink 2 liters of water a day for a week (warning: it’ll make you pee a lot). Take notice of how it makes you feel and how soft your hands suddenly are.
13. The amount of lies the average person tells in a day is insane. It’s hard to pin down an exact number, but researchers say, in a ten minute conversation, the average person lies three times (most are harmless white-lies). Try going a full day without lying.
14. Go a full day without using your credit card once (it’s harder than it sounds).
15. The next time you have an irrational fear, force yourself to overcome it (for me personally, this is picking up bugs and putting them outside).
[Featured Image Credit: Aikawa Ke via Flickr]