1 Week Yoga Challenge. (My Results)

I wanted to start this blog by saying that yoga is not my strong point.  I have tried it a few times in the last year and every time I try to do yoga I either get bored or discouraged because I have trouble doing whatever the person is doing that I'm watching.  This even happens if I search for "yoga for beginners".  The point of this post is going to be for me to do it for the next 7 days and report each day how it went.  The first day (today) I am going to start small, with a 5 minute yoga session,  I have tried 20 minute sessions before but thats usually when I give up, because I will go straight to 20 minutes and feel discouraged if I can't do it.  So the point of this is to start small with something I feel will help improve my life, and build up my yoga practice, and then tell you guys if I recommend it or not.

At the end of each day I will have a question or challenge to help you take steps to improve as well, so be sure to follow them, and only do one a day so you aren't overworking yourself.

OK so here are the results!

Day 1
Today I tried a yoga session for 5 minutes.  Overall it helped relax my back, but gave me a headache.  I could barely do any of the stretches or anything right but I did the best I could.  Although it was a pain in the ass and got me kind of aggravated, I started this journey today and it can only get better from here!  I do feel good about myself that I started even though doing it was nearly impossible for me, I know for me to become the best I can I need to go through stages of starting something new that may be hard right now to achieve greatness, and in a year from now thank myself for starting.  
How can you start a challenge for a week on something you want to do and stay committed?
Remember to commit to at least a week of something and start the journey you want for life today before reading my Day 2 so you can follow along each day!
Day 2
After the first day yoga is a little easier for me, even though I found a different video, so that could be why.  I had trouble with a couple of the stretches but wasn't as aggravating as yesterday.  I am learning my body isn't as flexible as it should be, and that is something I need to work on to become my greatest version.  I have never been super flexible or done stretches really that much.  This whole yoga thing is making me see how much I need to improve my body.  I have spent 19 years of my life never stretching that much and its catching up with me, I see the guy in the video able to plant his feet straight while in downward dog (thats what she said) and he makes it look easy, but when I do it I have trouble placing my feet the same way, so I do the best I can today and know with commitment soon I will be able to stretch easily and have less tension in my muscles while doing so.
When was the last time you did stretching of anywhere in your body?  After the 5 minutes of yoga today I did 3 minutes of stretching.  If you aren't up for trying yoga for 5 minutes a day for at least 7 days then take the challenge for today and do 3 minutes of stretching, you body will thank you!
Day 3
Today I tried a new video that I really loved!  Yes I loved it and I usually hate yoga and get aggravated but this one was useful for me.  It is called "Men's 30 Day Yoga Challenge - Day 1" by DOYOUYOGA.com on Youtube.  The instructor Raghunath was very helpful and gave alternatives for each movement if you couldn't do them quite yet instead of only showing one way to do them then me having trouble doing something beyond my ability.  Luckily most of the stretches I could do easier than I expected, and I am going to watch his day 2 video tomorrow because I found his day one very helpful and calming compared to others!
How has your experience with yoga been so far?  Good or bad?
Day 4
Whoa I can't believe its already day 4!  Today during my yoga session I had something very weird happen, I wanted to do another session.  I know this is very weird, from where I was 3 days ago I wouldn't have every wanted to do more than 10 minutes of yoga but now I'm stopping myself from doing 10 more minutes, and starting the next days video lesson.  It's amazing how much my muscles hurt and are tense from work and how much yoga is helping relax the muscles.  My back is probably the most tense and always is, especially my upper and middle back, but doing yoga is such a benefit not only to my back but also the rest of my body.  As I do yoga I feel a lot of tension in my legs but also saw a slight improvement in my flexibility yesterday, although I'm nowhere near flexible right now, I feel that if I keep this up I will be more flexible and have less tension on my muscles!  Oh, also at work today I noticed something else, my knees are usually always bothering me if I stand for long periods like I do at work.  But today they weren't bothering me as bad and I had an extremely easy time cracking them, when before I would struggle at time to crack my knees.
If you are noticing a change in your body by now I would love to hear what it is in the comment section!
Anyways guys, see you tomorrow!
Day 5
This morning I started my day with a shower then moved right into yoga.  Usually I would wait till after work to do it but I decided to start this morning with yoga instead of meditation.  My upper back was in pain when I woke up and decided I need to do yoga before work to get rid of the pain.  And I'm happy to say it actually worked.  Although there is one thing, over the last 3 days this was probably the hardest session for me.  I don't know if its just harder for me to do in the morning or if the stretches today we actually harder, but I didn't give up even though my arm started to shake from holding myself up on some of the positions.  I am glad I pushed through it because it really did help my back pain go down this morning.
Do you have pain somewhere in your body?  Find a yoga video on easing pain in that place and do it!
See you guys tomorrow!
Day 6
Today I did the hardest yoga since I started the challenge.  I had to do legs which is the weakest part of my body.  I had to do mostly easy versions of every yoga position, but thats ok because I'm growing and developing strength and flexibility and thats what this week long challenge is about for all of us because we all have things we need to grow and improve on!
What has been the hardest part of your 7 Day Challenge so far?
See you guys on the final day tomorrow!
Day 7
It's day 7 and I'm happy to announce I completed the my week long Yoga Challenge!  Believe it or not it wasn't as hard as I thought.  Throughout this blog post I hope you have done a challenge for yourself and loved it as much as I came to love yoga this week.  I will definitely be continuing to do yoga to improve myself and to hopefully some day be making videos of my own to share with you guys when I become better at it, but I know it will take me months or years to become as good as I want to be at it and to help you guys with the videos I want to be able to make.
Anyways guys, I hope you enjoyed this week of your challenge you committed to, it's the start of a journey for you and your life and I would love to hear what you accomplished throughout the week in the comment section!

How I am Overcoming Social Anxiety.

I have been talking about my struggle with social situations for a while on here and on my youtube channel.  On the channel I have shown how I came from talking alone in the house, to talking on the porch, to in front of my girlfriend, to in public in the mall.

I remember the first time talking with Brittany by me,  I would keep laughing while making the video and it took me a few tries and like 10 minutes of procrastination to actually make the video without criticizing myself.  And now last week I was able to record a video in public and the mall twice, and once was on the same topic as this blog post.

Sure people were probably staring which does terrify me, but from where I started it is amazing and I know you guys can learn from me talking in public if you have the same type of social anxiety as I do.

I do still have trouble talking with people, but I do feel as if the videos make it easier to communicate in real life with people, even if I only communicate a little bit more with them at the time I am writing this blog post.

How can you use this to start a journey of your own?

I can not describe how hard it was for me to put myself of camera for the first time without anyone around.  I was afraid of people watching my videos and making fun of the way I talk, if I pause or think for a second, or stutter.  But I realized I would never be able to share my message without putting myself out there.  And people weren't, going to watch me to troll on my videos and hate, but  instead to learn something or try improving their life in some way.  

If you have trouble talking on camera I have some ways to help!   Now in no way am I close to the best at speaking on camera but I keep improving.  From the start I said this blog was going to be to help you guys improve by watching me share my journey, as watching people who are already where you want to be can get discouraging.

In no way is speaking on camera easy for someone who deals with social anxiety, and maybe even an outgoing person may have trouble doing it, because you are just talking in to a lens.  But what has worked for me is saying a few things to myself.  "I am talking to people who really do enjoy watching my videos and do want to grow, the video isn't about me but about the viewers."  and something I say for a lot of things I need to do, "If I were to die today would I regret not doing whatever it is."  In this case a video. Even though I won't live forever my videos will always be there to help someone, and life can end at any moment, so why not try and hep someone if I am still breathing?

In short, take small steps in doing small things that scare you, and before you know it what seemed hard before will be easy to do.  Just like how I talked about it being hard to make videos with Brittany around me in the beginning of the blog, and how that was so hard for me to do but taking that small step lead me to be able to make that easy and encouraged me to talk around a bunch of people in public, and hopefully it encourages you to do the same with whatever you are trying to take steps towards doing!