It's great when people engage in them take part and do something they may never have done.
However there are two things that aren't great about challenges.
The first is when people don't really take up your challenge. You can have a great idea, set it out in nice format but for some reason people don't take it on. There can be a whole host of reasons and there are certainly ways to get an idea to stick more but for sometimes even good challenges fail.
The second is when you accept a challenge and fail it. It can really hit hard and take the wind out of you. Sometimes you may not want to try another challenge again because the risk of failure can seam too greate and not worth the energy to try it.
This has happened to me, I have completely failed the writing an E-book in a month challenge.
To be fair I only decided really to go for it a few nights before and then didn't properly plan when I would actually write anything. Not the best way to start or plan to go on. I did somehow actually manage to start writing and at a fair pace. I really enjoyed the experience.
However then I came down with a cold. A silly stupid little cold. Well that was it. My energy went and every evening when I wasn't spending hours struggling to plan lessons I was asleep or simply blowing my nose. After about 2 weeks of this I realised how far behind I was...and I left it at that relisation. I took no action as I had other things I needed to do.
And so now there are under 7 days left in the month and to write some 10,000 words, edit them and publish them [and do my day job] would be neigh on impossible. [unless i find a way to not need sleep]. Am I upset about this? Yes However I'm still glad I accepted the challenge. I would never have thought about writing an e-book and what I needed to do if I hadn't.
I would never have learnt these lessons for next time. And I will now know how much effort is involved and more critically approach such a challenge next time.
One of the biggest lies we tell ourselves is "I'll probably fail/do a half attempt so why bother?" when really it stops us doing anything. Sure it may be very poor but everyone need to produce poor things to produce something good.
So you can expect a new challenge from me soon and I do hope you accept it, suggest it to other people and aren't afraid to give it a go, possibly fail, But Possible Succeed!
