I haven’t finished coming up with all of my challenges yet, but I have all next week to complete them so I’m not stressing. Another one I came up with yesterday was

3. To give someone I know a genuine hug.

Seems easy, but I have been feeling super tense and on edge lately… so showing a genuine expression of love for another human being felt like something that would be very difficult to do yesterday as I walked towards the skytrain. I would describe this tenseness like a block of cement. I felt physically blocked and emotionally sterile. The root of this tenseness came to me during a half hour meditation during my movement class at Vancouver Acting School. The tenseness was coming from a continuous experience of anger and over-protectiveness towards my work and study as an actor. Now that I’ve taken a few big chunks off that block of cement, I can step back and see that I was operating from a warped belief that it was me against the world, and that I didn’t need help from anyone. I shouldn’t be doing all of this work from a center of resentment, I should be doing it because it’s fun and because I love it. Who am I angry at anyway? The people who bullied me in middle school? The people I lost roles to throughout my very short life? I honestly don’t have a reason to be angry at all, everything in my life is going really well right now. I’m surrounded by support at my acting school, at home with my boyfriend, and from friends and family back home in the Maritimes. Well, I am calling myself out on my absolute ridiculousness.

Now, I challenge you to call yourself out on something that you experience in daily life that’s not only holding you back, but that makes absolutely no logical sense. Do it. I’m sure, if you are brutally honest with yourself, that there is something.

How am I going to continue to chip away at this block of cement? By being proactive. I have decided to incorporate 20 minutes of meditation into my everyday life. I’ve also decided to make a promise to laugh every single day, especially when I don’t feel like laughing. When it comes to overcoming negative emotions like anger, the biggest struggle is to quit being stubborn. I consider myself a pretty stubborn person who has grown mildly comfortable behind this cement block of anger. To chip away the cement would leave an unknown… an overwhelming experience of love and gratitude maybe? It’s scary because it’s different, but I think that it’s definitely worth the labor.