The Thirty Day Challenge Took Me Sixty Days

by James
(West Coast)

(Editor's note: This is a reader response from a past posting. To provide better context, we'll re-post that page in this spot tomorrow)

"I've written this letter to the editor twice. The first edition was exactly thirty days after reading your post about taking your '30 Day Challenge.' Every day for a full month I thought about one thing I could do to be of service to someone else. Every morning I set aside some quiet time to reflect. How could I help? What could I do?

After all that time, I had nothing. So I did as you suggested and fired off a reply as to how you didn't know what you were writing about. I'll state right here that I felt great about writing that response. Your column with it's challenge was written 60 days ago. I never hit the 'send' button.

During that first month, while I truly did spend quiet time every morning mulling over how I could be of service, I also immediately pivoted to all the things wrong in my life. Most, in my mind were of someone else's making.

I'm not sure why I didn't hit the send button. I know as I flip-flopped between thirty minutes of wondering how I could serve, to eight hours of wondering why my life was empty, I kept a sentence from your column back in my mind. 'You'll get more out of it than you'll ever put into it.'

Over the second month, a curious thing happened. I took a leap of faith and tried one of those service ideas I had considered and then rejected. It was the easiest, least labor intensive, lowest commitment level I had considered. But when I got home from performing my minimal effort, I didn't think so much about my own woes.

So I tried something bigger. Not really big as you wrote about your high school team. That was too big of a leap. But still bigger that the initial effort. And when I got home, I only had a brief lapse into my woe period. It made me feel better to think about my half day of service.

I'm glad I didn't send that first reply. Put me in the positive category as you tabulate this 30 day challenge."

Something to Think About

"I’m not a politician. I don’t want to be a politician, because politicians do what is politically expedient. I want to do what’s right."

Ben Carson