100-Day Challenge: Building Those Neural Pathways to New Habits!

Change is difficult.

As I have said before real change is difficult; superficial change is a lot easier. Real change literally asks us to build new neural pathways in the brain... until something that "feels foreign" starts to feel second nature.

It's easy enough — on paper — but quite a challenge to functionally execute.

And so, we have all these different challenges... ostensible as tools to help us build these "habits" we need to build, in order to take on a new behavior and keep going with it.

Recently, I came across a "100DayChallenge." Although originally a sports and fitness challenge, it seems people have been adapting it to fit other aspects of life, like creativity, eating habits, learning and so forth.

Regardless, the idea here is that 100 days is more than enough to create a new habit in even the most stubborn of minds.

Anyway, I got to thinking about this 100-day challenge in the context of doing something to significantly further my @alchemystones art project.

It's one of those things... I'm quite good at creating the art, but not very good at promoting, marketing and selling it. So how about setting myself a "100-day marketing challenge" in which I try to build myself a habit of doing something promotional, every day.

As that bit if earlier reading made clear, the challenge isn't just about sports and fitness anymore.

I briefly consider applying it to my blogging, but I already have a pretty good blogging routine going. That's one of the ways in which we humans "misuse" challenges: overlay something we're already doing on a challenge template and pretend we are accomplishing something.

I guess I feel drawn to this particular challenge because I have participated in 30-day challenges before, and they haven't effectively done that much to change a habit, or ingrain a new one. I guess I'm just a slow learner.

But maybe 100 days of forcing myself to do something I really don't enjoy very much — self-promotion — would succeed in creating those new neural pathways needed to make it a permanent habit. Or at least something close to it.

Of course, I have a bit of an impetus here, in as much as I was invited to be interviewed on a substantially large podcast next week, and that would certainly provide a good "front marker" for changing a habit... and perhaps taking a real step towards something I always hoped to do: turn my creativity into (at least) a part-time job and income.

Sometimes you need an external break in order to trigger internal change in the way you approach things!

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great weekend!

Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer comments, even if it sometimes takes a few days!

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Created at 2024-02-17 01:29 PST
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