Why I’m Doing 60 Challenges at 60

When I wrote my last post saying that I’d do 12 monthly challenges plus 48 adventures to mark my 60th year, the idea was forming in my head as I wrote, so I hadn’t really thought it through. After hitting publish and getting feedback from people, I started to get more excited about the idea. Ray and my sister had been asking me for months how I wanted to celebrate my 60th birthday, and I hadn’t been able to think of anything that felt right. Now I’m loving the idea of sharing new adventures and challenges with the people I care about throughout the year. I think of an idea and then ask myself which of my friends or family would be up for joining me on that type of adventure.

People also asked me how I’m defining ‘adventure’ and I couldn’t really answer that, so I thought about what my motivations are and those will define what counts.

Overcome Fears

One of the reasons people like to stay in their comfort zone is to avoid rejection, judgment, failure or ridicule. It’s easier to stick to things we’re good at than to experience the discomfort that might come with doing something new that we might not be good at. In some ways our comfort zone gets smaller as we age, because we tend to become more set in our ways and less willing to take risks, but it can also be a time when we become acutely aware that life is short, and that gives us a different perspective (i.e., “I’ll be gone in 50 years so who cares what anyone thinks of me?”).

When we lived in England, I decided to get out of my comfort zone by taking a solo holiday to Spain. I remember eating lunch on an outdoor patio in a tiny village in the countryside, feeling self-conscious at first, but also with a sense of accomplishment – Look at me, sitting in the sun in a Spanish village on my own! After lunch, I walked back to where I’d parked the rental car, still feeling rather proud of myself, and discovered it had been towed away. I got to ride in a police car with a couple of nice policemen who spoke no English (I did not speak Spanish).

That wasn’t the only thing that went wrong. I almost got in a car accident, I fell and hurt myself, I got lost, I knocked the rearview mirror off the car. Many times, I wanted to go home, I wished Ray was there, and I asked myself what the hell I’d been thinking coming on my own, but I figured things out, and despite all the unfortunate incidents, I had a pretty amazing time, seeing the Courtyard Flower Festival in Cordoba, horseback riding in Andalusia, and visiting the Alhambra.

Some of the items in my 60-at-60 list will be in the ‘do something that scares you’ category, ideally with no police involvement.

Avoid Complacency

Comfort zones are, by definition, comfortable, and we like being comfortable. We like the safety of the familiar, but familiar can easily transition to being stuck in a rut. We go through our days on auto-pilot. Days become weeks and months and years until, before we know it, our turn at life is over.

It’s good to shake up our routine once in a while, even if it’s just ordering something different at a restaurant, reading a different genre of book, or trying a new activity. Part of my motivation for this challenge is to get out of my routine and add a bit of spice to my life. This will be the trickiest one to decide if something feels like a big enough step outside my normal routine to count as one of the 60 (Oh, had strawberry jam instead of blueberry on my toast today. Add it to the list!). I’ll try to be fairly stringent.

Carpe Diem!

Seize the day, enjoy life, do exciting things, laugh. Some things I want to try purely for fun, but they only count in the 60 at 60 if they’re new to me. Our monthly games nights, for example, won’t count even if it’s a game I haven’t played before…unless it’s something really different.

Improve Memory & Cognitive Health

Another reason not to get too complacent, even when life if going great, is to make sure we’re keeping the brain active and opening up new neural pathways. Learning a new language or a musical instrument can help improve brain health and memory, which becomes increasingly important as we age.

I’ve already added a challenge in this category to my list. I want to memorize all the countries in the world and be able to identify them on a map. I’m using an app called Seterra to practice and test my knowledge. I thought I knew Europe pretty well but there are a couple of tiny countries in there I didn’t even know were countries – Andorra and San Marino, for example – and those Balkan countries are tricky to keep straight. Geography was easier before countries started getting all snippy with each other and splitting up. No idea how long it will take me to memorize 195 countries, but I’ll let you know!

Establish Healthy Habits

Thirty days is a good amount of time to build a new habit or replace one you want to get rid of, so most of my monthly challenges will probably fall in this category. I’m hoping some of them will stick around beyond the 30 days. If not, at least I’ll have had a healthy habit for a month.

After my last post, several people suggested I try Yoga with Adriene‘s 30-day Flow Challenge, so that’s what I’m doing as my January challenge. I’m on day four! I haven’t yet built it into my routine which may make it harder to maintain as a habit. So far, it’s more just at some point during the day I get around to it.

Deepen Connections

After deciding to do this, I started googling for ideas and a lot of the ‘get out of your comfort zone’ posts were about making connections with others – start a conversation with a stranger, reach out to an old friend you’ve lost touch with, initiate a coffee invite with a co-worker, etc. This is another area where fear and insecurity – often the fear of letting ourselves be vulnerable – hold us back from connecting with others.

The world feels like it’s become so much more divisive in recent years, so building deeper connections with both friends and strangers seems like an important goal. I’ll probably add a monthly challenge or two in this category.

Have Something Interesting to Blog About

And finally, I love writing this blog but, quite frankly, people won’t want to read about my life if I don’t keep it interesting. So I’m doing this for you, dear readers! (On that note, I’ve been having some site issues and may have accidentally deleted a bunch of followers…but if you’re reading this, you probably weren’t one of them.)

60 at 60 list:

1. January challenge: 30 days of Flow Yoga (yoga with Adriene)
2. Memory challenge: Identify all 195 countries in the world on a map (using Seterra app)

In other news, Karen and Tom have mostly recovered from their bout with covid and, despite spending at least 36 hours in their company, we all managed to avoid catching it. Nick and Meg stayed here in Brighton with us between Christmas and New Year’s which was wonderful. Megan worked remotely and Nick divided his time between climbing and painting.