My Year of Fear 2019!
Back in 2019 I designed and completed a Year of Fear for myself, to raise money for charity! Below, I have put the two blogs I wrote on this challenge during that year below for you to read…! You can also read a blog article I wrote for Alcohol Change UK on my Year of Fear here!
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BLOG 1 -
My ‘Year of Fear’; how and why I’m taking my ‘thriving’ up a level in 2019!
I recently announced that I wanted to do a ‘Year of Fear’ on my Thrive with Lisa social media pages… Now, after finalising some of the details, I wanted to explain why exactly I’ve chosen each challenge, and what I’m planning (!), including the charities I want to use these challenges to fundraise for.
As many people know, I first found The Thrive Programme® (TTP) myself after a period of extremely poor mental health and ineffective treatments. I remember feeling absolutely desperate, overwhelmed by my own mind, not good enough, highly anxious, miserable, and struggled a lot with eating/drinking issues. TTP helped to get me back on track and to transform my life and my potential for the future, so much so that I decided to become a Consultant for the organisation myself!
I always tell clients that a big part of continuing to thrive and build new skills and achievements is about pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone and taking on new challenges. Nobody is born with skills; every skill we have has been learned at some point or other, and the better the skills the more we have practised and honed them. Our mental skills are exactly the same, and the more we practise the new mental skills we learn in TTP the better we get at them! Thrive Consultant®s are no different, and in fact should probably practice them even more so that we are in the absolute BEST state of mind to help our clients to change their own mental health too.
So, with a lot of excitement but of course a fair bit of trepidation too (I’ve picked some biggies on purpose to really stretch myself!), I’ve been compiling all my ideas and now have the (mostly) confirmed list which I’ve put into the picture above! They are, essentially, a list of all the things that used to really frighten me or that I had a bad experience with when I was younger. So… it’s about time I face them and conquer the hell out them! So what’s the reasons behind the choices?
January and February – anxiety-related!
January was a personal goal for me – I was a guest on a podcast for The Mental Health Revolution(episode 012), talking about alcohol and my own journey to changing my drinking habits. I wanted to prove to myself that however distressing and difficult parts of my journey before Thrive had been, I could talk about them publicly and not feel embarrassed (and could cope if anyone criticised it), and that I could focus on using it to help others.
February is an obvious one – I’ve never liked spiders/creepy crawlies and have always avoided going anywhere near them because I used to be so anxious! My challenge is to hold some of them and expose myself to the discomfort, and the bigger the better so I’m told…!! So I’ve organised a VIP Creature Handling Workshop (care of the wonderful team at Crazy Creatures in Christchurch) for a group of us on 2nd March, with spiders, snakes, cockroaches and much more… Keep your eyes peeled to see how I get on!
March, April, May and June – conquering personal demons
March is a particularly personal one for me. I’ve always had a fear of heights (so goodness knows how I managed a Skydive and Bungee jump when I was 19 – peer pressure and stubbornness I seem to remember!) and I recall going to Paris for my brother’s 18th birthday and having a bit of a meltdown walking up the Eiffel Tower ending up feeling frozen to the spot – my Dad literally had to coax me down. And there was absolutely no way I would go in the lift… So this is a ‘ghost of Lisa’s past’ I’m going to put firmly to bed by getting ALL the way to the top (well, as high as you can go as a visitor!), and to do it on my 2 year sobriety date on March 14th so that it’s a double achievement!
April is a similar idea – I was thrown off a horse when I was very young and became terrified of going on them again; any time I did I would panic any time the horse sped up or I couldn’t keep control of them, so this is my way of not letting that memory hold me back anymore!
May – well, I’ve lost count of how many times as a child I would queue at Thorpe Park and then duck out last minute because I’d got myself in such an anxious state! So my challenge is to do some of those rides I backed out of! Particularly Derren Brown’s ghost ride which sounds…unappealing!!
June is, once again, going back in my past – this time to a Year 8 ‘team building’ school activity trip where one of the activities was to abseil and I totally fell apart. It’s a mark of how long ago it was that I don’t even remember whether I completed the abseil or not, I just remember utter terror (and clinging terrified to a cliff wall whilst trying to decide what to do!).
July and August – challenging physical activities
Well, last year was Tough Mudder, this year… open water swimming! I’ve never been frightened of water, always been quite a water baby actually, but I’ve usually avoided racing in open water because I didn’t like the idea of having to accommodate unpredictable waves or being surrounded my other swimmers. Plus 1.4 miles is pretty hefty, so that’s my next challenge!
August is another physical one (these are probably the most challenging for me as I’m not a huge fitness junkie and really hate being pushed to my physical limit, so it takes an awful lot more mental toughness to not allow myself to quit!) – this time a gruelling military-style fitness weekend to push my body to its absolute limit…
September and October – relinquishing control and coping without an escape!
September will see me take on Scuba Diving. I always refused to do this despite being a water lover, because I hated the idea of relying on an air canister and not being able to escape quickly if I found it uncomfortable.
October is on a similar theme – the idea of dining at an entirely pitch black restaurant has historically freaked me out because a) I couldn’t see/check what I was eating, and b) I couldn’t get up and escape if I needed to! So these two months are all about tolerating not being able to run away/escape from certain situations and staying calm through it!
November – social confidence
November is going to be a different kind of challenge… Can I get up on a stage in front of an audience and either sing or do stand-up comedy, having never ever done it before, and tolerate whatever happens?!
December – the full fear immersion!!
This is the ultimate removal of control… I have picked four new and terrifying ‘adrenaline’ type activities (choices to be revealed soon, but suffice to say, they’re biggies…!). And it’s down to everybody to vote for the one they want me to do…whether I like it or not!!!
The charities
I will be raising money for two different charities throughout the whole ‘Year of Fear’, so please do give generously!! It’s safe to say I will be scaring the life out of myself not just once but 12 TIMES, so I’d really love to raise some valuable funds for two amazing causes whilst I do so! Just think of your donation as contributing to the entertainment factor of watching me do all of these…! Have a look at my Virgin Money Giving page here to find out about each charity I’ve chosen and why, and of course to donate if you’d be so kind :)
If you’d like to follow my Year of Fear, I’ll be posting regular updates on my Facebook page (www.facebook.com/ThriveWithLisa), on my Instagram (@thrivelisauk) and on Twitter (@thrivewithlisa).
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BLOG 2 -
My Year of Fear blog, Part 2!! Pushing physical boundaries…
Earlier this year, I wrote a blog talking about why exactly I have been pushing myself to achieve a whole ‘Year of Fear’! The idea is to do one thing every month of 2019 that scares and/or challenges me, all in the name of raising money for charities including Alcohol Change UK! And now that I’ve completed another third of my challenges, I thought it was time for an update blog.
Something I noticed when I finished the first chunk of my challenges, January to April, was that I had found some of them a little easier than I expected! I had intentionally put some of the less extreme ones at the beginning, to get ‘warmed up’ I guess, and so I leapt into the next third of my challenges with a very confident spring in my step!! Around the corner though were a few challenges that were REALLY going to test me…
Because of some timing difficulties, I ended up doing my May and June challenges on the same weekend, which was therefore as you can probably imagine a pretty crazy weekend (I can assure you I slept VERY well at the end of it all…!). As a child, I’d always hated rollercoasters - I didn’t like heights, speed, the feeling of falling or not being in control, or how sick the ride could make me feel… So I mostly avoided them, and if I did go on them (never the worst rides either, only the tame ones!) I would end up wasting huge amounts of time queuing up, then ducking out, then queuing up, then getting in a state, and maybe (only maybe) eventually pushing myself to go on! So my May challenge was to go to Thorpe Park and go on EVERY SINGLE ONE of the worst rides! My brother came along with me and, in true brotherly fashion, bought us the more expensive ‘Fast Queue’ tickets so that I couldn’t skip any rides because we ‘didn’t have time’…! I can’t decide if that was top brother marks or just his desire to see me scream as much as possible… ;)
I was genuinely quite surprised that I managed to do all of the worst rides! Some required a little more mental coaxing than others, but as I tackled them one by one I started to realise that the same thing happened for every single one; I’d get really nervous beforehand, want to run away once I was strapped into my seat and the ride was about to start, scream a lot during the whole thing (sorry passengers), and then get to the end going ‘that wasn’t so bad!’ (Except for Rush, which was every bit as bad as it looked because you actually felt like you were going to fall out of your seat at the top of the ride…). Stealth was the last ride we did because it REALLY pushed me - it goes from 0 - 80mph in around 1.8 seconds, so every time I stood watching the WHOOSH of the carriage go past I almost turned green imagining sitting on it myself… But I DID and actually am so proud of myself for conquering the fear and realising that even the most intense rides are doable with the right mindset!!
Second on the weekend’s agenda, the next day, was a 4 hour, underground, adrenaline caving experience! Again, my brother volunteered to accompany (unlike me, he just loves stuff like this so this weekend was his idea of FUN!), but I have to say that although I was nervous about this one (I used to be hugely claustrophobic; I refused to go into Cheddar Gorge caves as a child and even had a panic attack on a school trip in secondary school when we went to an old mine, and that was only in the initial entrance tunnel!), it has actually become my favourite challenge of them all! The experience included squeezing through tight, narrow gaps in the cave, sitting in total underground darkness with head torches turned off, abseiling off the edge of a huge drop in the cave, and climbing up rickety climbing routes within the cave (some hanging precariously over a dark, ominous-looking lake below…!). Thing is though, because I’d never pushed myself to go in caves, I’d never seen that they’re actually a) quite peaceful, and b) beautiful inside, almost magical in parts. So I came out of that one absolutely BUZZING and now I’ve conquered that fear (the first 10 minutes of adjusting to it and calming my thinking down was the worst, after that I felt completely calm) I’d even love to do another one!
July’s challenge was a little longer in the planning, because it was the Bournemouth Pier to Pier Swim, a 1.4 mile open water swim in Bournemouth’s fairly nippy seas! I’ve always wanted to do it, but don’t like committing to physical training goals and was nervous about the open water element… To add to that, I sustained a shoulder injury whilst paddleboarding 6 weeks beforehand, and then an ankle injury 4 weeks beforehand too, which messed up both my carefully-constructed training plan and also my physical capabilities for race day itself. At one point I was in so much pain training that I almost pulled out, but a friend of mine who used to be a swimming coach came and helped me train, giving me techniques and slower swimming strokes to lessen the impact, and advising me on ankle supports to help me with training! On race day itself though, that new training plan then ALSO went out the window as we then faced choppy seas, and a current that we were swimming INTO, not ALONG WITH, so the less intrusive swimming strokes I was planning to use to minimise the ankle and shoulder impact were suddenly replaced with a whole 1.4 miles of solid front crawl, a real test for both my physical and mental strength… Amazingly though, I finished it in 1:17:44, a respectable time considering all the obstacles I had faced, and I actually really enjoyed it - I may even give it another go next year to beat my time ;)
My August challenge was something I actually changed last minute because after the previous 3 challenges thought I was ready to up my game a bit! So I went from planning a fitness bootcamp day, to instead resolving to undertake the fastest zipwire in the entire world, at Zip World in North West Wales…! The zipwire goes above a huge working quarry, and can reach speeds of up to 122mph, so I knew this would be a HUGE challenge for me, tolerating faster speeds than any of the rollercoasters, and this time lying horizontally like a speeding bullet across the landscape…! To make it even more challenging, the elements decided to throw us such windy weather that they had to take extra safety precautions, even reducing the weight limit to keep riders safe (for a nervous person in the queue, this was not news that exactly helped me to feel calm and prepared…!). But I dug into my mental coping skills box and, after a slight ‘what on earth am I doing’ moment lying face-down on the launch mats right at the top of the quarry, I braced myself and went for it! (Screaming the whole way, true to form, of course…!). Although I found it challenging I am SO PROUD of myself for achieving it, and all the other challenges I’ve done so far - each one has tested me in different ways, but I’m keeping focused on the goal at the end of it all, and reminding myself with every one that I achieve that I am much stronger than I ever realised, and that I can conquer anything I put my mind to :)
The fun thing with doing a whole Year of Fear is that you start getting ‘in the mindset’ and even outside of the set monthly challenges I’ve taken other personal challenges on too in the spirit of it, including going to a Muse gig at the Olympic Stadium in Stratford (London) and forcing myself to stand right in the middle of the huge standing crowd of thousands and thousands of fans! I would never have done this years ago (hugely claustrophobic so I always needed to be right near the exits), but this time I tolerated being squeezed in like sardines and actually realised that the view (and the atmosphere) right from the centre of it all was completely worth challenging myself for :)
I’m learning with every challenge I complete that our mental and physical boundaries are not always as rigid as we think, and that with the right mindset and motivation, pushing yourself to challenge your limits and expand your comfort zone brings with it huge, huge rewards for your sense of self! The final 4 challenges are going to test me again in different areas, including scuba diving, dining at a pitch black restaurant where you can’t even see the food (let alone anything or anyone else), a public social confidence challenge, and a mystery December challenge for when I hit my fundraising target…!! My younger brother has also challenged me to a night of watching horror movies that HE picks for me (I won’t watch horror movies at all as I find them hugely unsettling!), so that’s another unexpected challenge to tack on ;) If you’d like to donate to these hugely worthy causes, please head to my fundraising page HERE! Please note that I can’t reply to any comments left there by donors, so if you want me to get in touch with you please email me directly instead at lisa@thrivewithlisa.co.uk