I’ve Accepted Family Circle’s 31-Day Detox Challenge #Organizing

I see articles like the one in Family Circle: “A 31-Day Detox Challenge to Help You Declutter Your Home—and Your Mind” all the time. The problem is, my perfectionism generally gets in my way. If I don’t complete the “challenge,” whatever it might be, I feel like a failure. If I don’t start the challenge on the “right day, ” I’m a failure. But now that my brain is working in a more logical way, I realize I’ve been looking at these challenges all wrong. I am NOT a failure.

Here is a different way to look at these “challenges” so you don’t feel like a failure, either:

1. Will this challenge truly make your life better or have you accepted out of a sense of duty or guilt? We all have to do things we don’t want to do. Seriously, I don’t like to wash dishes, but it’s something that has to be done, whether I like it or not. There’s nothing wrong with learning a little discipline, the kind that comes from taking baby steps towards our goals. However, I think our motives are just as important as our actions. What are your goals? Will this “challenge” bring you closer to them?
2. Your timetable doesn’t necessarily have to mesh with the timetable the challenger had in mind. For example, if it takes you 62 days to do a 31-day challenge, does that make you a failure? Are you closer to your goal than you were when you started? Think about it. Anyone can invent one of these challenges. ANYONE! You’re not a sheep. Why do you assume that another person, someone you don’t know, has a better handle on YOUR schedule? If this is something that you find helpful, then keep plugging away at it. If you skip a day, who cares? Keep moving forward.
3. If you only do one task on a challenge, but you’re closer to your goals, you’ve won!
4. If you find that a challenge isn’t working for you, it’s okay to quit. Really. Remember, another imperfect human being decided on these tasks. I can guarantee that they don’t know everything. They don’t know you. And that’s okay.
5. Timers are your friend. You might be shocked how much you can accomplish in 5 minutes, or 15 minutes, or whatever. ANY minutes towards your goals are better than ZERO minutes. Baby steps!

Today seemed like a good day to start because…it’s today, not some imaginary day in the future. I set my alarm and cleaned up the junk mail that had accumulated on the table and on various surfaces. It was supposed to take me 15 minutes. It took me 5 minutes. I decided to work on my own tasks for the rest of my time. When the alarm went off, I didn’t feel like stopping. I was filled with a sense of accomplishment, not because I’d completed someone else’s to-do list, but because I’d started a small task with immediate results.

Do you have FIVE minutes to spare towards your goals? I know it doesn’t seem like much, but set an alarm and see what you can accomplish, What do you have to lose?

xo Juli

*Thank you, Jennifer Lifford, for providing the home content and Lynya Floyd, for providing the health content in the Family Circle article mentioned in this post. It’s given me a starting point and that’s good! Thank you also, Grace Lee, for your beautiful magazine illustrations.