Week 1: Working on Myself

Life is a journey. Like every journey you find yourself having to choose paths to go down. Sometimes those paths lead you to wonderful things. Your dream job, traveling the world, marriage, children, and many other things that bring you joy. Other paths take you down heartache, regret, pain, and loss. But that’s life. We go down through our own journey and hope we choose the correct path that will lead us more often down that of happiness, than that of sadness.

However, a lot of the paths we choose are done because they are easy. Right or wrong doesn’t play a factor. It’s just the simplest straightforward route. The path of least resistance. It’s the hard paths that we avoid. The paths that you look down but can’t see the light at the end of the path to even know if it exists.

The thing is, there’s always a light at the end of the path, even the hard ones. It’s just a matter of how much work you want to put in to reach it.

The last year hasn’t been the easiest for me, mentally and emotionally. This has also caused my physical health to decline, and issues where I should have been putting in the effort to take care of myself, fell to the wayside because it wasn’t a priority.

However, after watching a old childhood friend of mine dedicate herself to bettering her mind and body, and cheering her on along the way. She challenged me to do the same thing.

75 Hard is as much a mental challenge as it is a physical challenge. 75 days devoted to working n your mind and body. Physical exercise, mental exercise, and keeping a routine of both for 75 days straight.

Rules are simple:

Two 45-minute workouts a day. One is required to be outdoors.
10 pages of reading a non-fiction self help book.
1 gallon of water a day.
No Alcohol
Follow a diet and no cheat meals.

That’s it. 75 Days in a row, of just simply taking care of yourself. But it’s not that simple if you really think about it. Jobs, kids, school, friends, family, and life in general all find a way to interject themselves in ways that can derail those days.

I got to watch from the outside as someone I care about made the changes and fought those obstacles and came out on the other end a better person than when she went in. So when she asked me to do her second round of it with her, I had to say yes.

In theory I kind of had a head start. I’d been walking two miles every day for about 3 weeks. And for about a a week, drinking a gallon of water a day. It was the second workout, and diet that would be the challenging aspects to fit into my every day plan.

Today, August 22, 2025 marks one week. One week of hitting the goals set before me. With the support of my family, my good friend who challenged me to do this, and many positive comments to my daily Instagram/Facebook posts, I’ve been able to push through the first week with really no struggles.

But 1 week is only 1 week. I know that every day moving forward will be harder than the day before. I’m hoping that over the next 68 days, I’ll be able to work through some of the physical and mental roadblocks I’ve created for myself, but also learn to travel the paths forward in my life, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.