Category: Voluntary Discomfort

Continuing my log of voluntary discomfort ideas. The month we will be meditating every day. Meditation is something, much like yoga, where after I complete it I think to myself “why don’t I do this every day?? It makes me feel so good”.

Sleeping with only 1 pillow the previous month was definitely a success. I did it every night, ultimately I’ve gone back to my multiple pillow setup but it was definitely a good voluntary discomfort to go through.

For November I will be doing no artificial lights past 8:30 p.m. This includes everything – No TV, No house lights, no phones/computers ect…. basically after 8:30 p.m. the only light I can have is fire or candle… I’m very excited for this one!

Last months 0 clutter was a mixed bag. We definitely had the house much more organized and clutter free but with such a “vague” goal last month really did not feel like much of a challenge. Towards the end of the month we also had a few items laying around on the floor cluttering the space up so ultimately I’d give us a 60% grade on last months challenge…. but its a new month and time for a new challenge!

I will be sleeping with only 1 pillow for the month and Ellen will be giving up coffee for the entire month.

The low information diet we went on last month was a huge success. Ellen was able to abstain from all social media and I was able to completely break my habit of wasting too much time on news sites like CNN.

For this upcoming month we are going to live for 30 days “without any clutter”. This is admittedly somewhat vague, but for us this means keeping our house a lot more tidy than we typically do. The thought process here is that with less clutter it should be a more relaxing and soothing atmosphere to live it…. Hopefully that is the case!

For this months discomfort Ellen and I have decided on a “low information diet”. This is slightly different for both of us. For me this will mean that I can’t read any news websites, and I can’t check on any stock market investments for 30 days. For Ellen this will mean she is going to delete her Facebook/Instagram and Twitter accounts. Since I technically don’t have any of these accounts I felt like it was too easy for me to simply say that I wouldn’t do any social media haha

I’m really excited about this challenge because its one that I have been wanting to try for a long time. I’ve also been really excited about Ellen trying this out because I really believe that I’m much happier since I quit all social media ~2 years ago, so I’m really interested to see if she gains any of the same benefits that I feel during this 30 day hiatus.

For this months voluntary discomfort we are going to be exercising every day. I’ll post the results of the monthly here once we complete:

Ellen:
Sam: