14-Day Challenge Debrief- Meral- AEP 9

From how I see it, a habit takes a minimum of 21 days to master. When we form a habit, there is a chemical dopamine that is released to the brain, adding on to a sense of accomplishment and strength in one’s abilities. It doesn’t only increase our belief in oneself, but also enables us to perform the best of our abilities. Looking back into the duration of the 14-day challenge and all that I’ve achieved throughout, I believe I did fairly well as I managed to mostly score myself with 9’s and 10’s by the end of each day. Although, I have to admit, there is room for improvement.

For my pre-challenge, my main plan was to lessen the time I spend watching YouTube after school. Honestly I wasn’t expecting to completely fulfill this one but surprisingly most days I didn’t even visit YouTube and gradually forgot about it or there were a few days in which I watched for less than an hour, usually later on in the day to give myself a rest upon arriving home from long days filled with classes. Additionally the one specific task for a day was a good way to identify my priorities and track my progress.

My healthy diet challenge was to replace chocolates with a plate of salad. Now that I think about it, I might’ve chosen the easy way out with this one because I don’t eat chocolates as often as another unhealthy habit, which would be coffee. Although my sleeping schedule wasn’t horrible during this two week time period, I still needed my daily cup of coffee to function. So perhaps choosing water over coffee would’ve been a good improvement. Good news though, I am currently drinking less coffee and staying hydrated with water, upon breaking my fast of course :>. 

From the rest, this task was my least consistent one since I would sometimes forget to make myself a salad plate (but I would still eat it from the dinner table anyway). I did consume as little chocolate as much as possible but somehow I was offered a lot at the time right when I was trying to avoid it. As I’ve mentioned previously, my sleep schedule wasn’t completely horrible during the 14-days, so for the most part, I successfully got sufficient hours of sleep. 

Next up, the exercise snacks were quite helpful in fueling me to stay active, with designated times best suited for me (3:30 pm, 5:15 pm, 7:00 pm). For the first few days, I thought exercise snacks meant actual healthy snacks and I only realized later that it’s actual exercise where I had to get up/ stop whatever I was doing at the given time, for a quick exercise. It’s quite funny cause my mom was questioning why I was eating snacks as part of the challenge and that’s when I realized… Anyway I walked a lot for the remaining days I had to make up for it. 

Last but not least was the acts of kindness for each day. This challenge made me realize how a small kind act to someone can switch up their day to a better one. These little acts of kindness are quite significant. Whether that be spreading positivity, giving a helping hand, sharing, or looking after my pets, it definitely was a great reminder to me. Not to mention, this included the acts of kindness to myself such as allotting time to nurture my hobbies and interests, which I looked forward to as it sparks out joy.

Ultimately, the 14-day challenge was an eye opener as it enabled me to set out and accomplish some short term goals. As a person who makes to-do lists daily, this challenge enabled me to list out my main priorities as building blocks to creating new habits. I struggled most with remembering to update on my results in time as I found 7:00 pm too early to be able to finish off everything. I guess this could be because I work most efficiently during evenings and midnights. To sum it up, this definitely has to be my personal favorite project because it taught me the importance of being responsible with skills that can help me grow in terms of time management for setting habits. Thank you for reading and I'm hoping to see you in the next one!

Signing off,

Meral