The most important lesson I learnt from split challenge. It can be applied reaching any goal!

2021 commitment

On January 1st I made a commitment to myself to go every month on a challenge. 

My January month challenge was waking up every day at 6AM. I shared the experiences and achievement in my previous article. You can check it here. 

My February month challenge was doing a full split (yes, that one what ballerinas and gymnasts are doing). 

If at this point you think of quitting reading further as this is not of your interest, actually the learning I got from this challenge might surprise you (it surprised me as well) and it can be applied to any other goal that you want to achieve.

A little bit of history. 

In general, I am a flexible person, and very often I laugh out of myself that the most pleasurable pain for me is a stretch pain.

Furthermore, I am with a dancer’s background: I graduated choreography school in my childhood, then continued to dance Lithuanian folk dances and for the past 10 years I’ve been into ballet practise.

Don't hurry to judge!

Thinking that:

Ah, it’s easy for you then, I cannot compete!

I’ll tell you that I’ve never ever did a full split in my life!

Yes, NEVER!

Even when I was a kid and a student at a choreography school, when I was doing yoga while living in India and even when I joined ballet classes at the most famous choreographers in Lithuania. 

It never went more than this:

So the first lesson from my split challenge is

1. Never underestimate yourself! 

Even if you have never done it before, even if you are far away from your target. Just accept where you are and go with it if you really want it, the unexpected paths with open themselves on the way.

AND! Important to mention.

I had this goal for the past 3 years in my yearly resolution list.

Never achieved...

Never fully immersed and tried... 

What was different this time?

I set a very clear goal, timeframe and discipline towards achieving it. 

Yep, that’s my lesson #2:

2. Set a clear goal, timeframe and routine. 

I said to myself I’ll do my best to do a full split by the end of February. 

Not only that I decided to practice every day but I committed to sharing my journey openly. Everyday I recorded my progress and shared it on Instagram (if you are interested to see, you can find me @miglekapoor). 

Even on those days when I felt miserable and didn’t feel any progress, I kept on doing as I fell accountable for people who track this journey along with me. 

Lesson #3 summarises to this:

3. Make yourself accountable in front of others officially

The worst thing was that from the middle of the month I hit the plateau. 

(By the way, this is what happens and it demotivates like crazy if your starting point is already good. It’s the same when you are loosing the weight, it’s easy to loose in the beginning if you are a lot overweight. It’s the same with learning a new language, you progress so fast as everyday you learn so much new. While the transition from good to better is way more challenging. And this is what happened to me).

As my starting point was already just a few centimetres above the ground, it was very difficult

a) to see the progress

b) keep myself motivated 

c) not to quit as anyways it was ok!

The problem, which I realised on time, lied in concentrating on one single goal - achieve the full split. 

AND IT WAS WRONG!

Here comes the 4th lesson:

4. Find all the possible triggers for seeing for progress and realising how it benefits you.

In this journey I learnt to find other triggers that would motivate me to move forward and I started learning more about it. 

It appeared that we tend to keep lots of tension in our hips and having it loose can help to release the tension in our mind. 

I felt this very deeply, not once I found myself in tears while breathing through the push down. The tears were not from the pain, the tears were from the tension, which was releasing from the body. 

Since the day I realised this, I quit thinking that I need to do a full split by the end of the month, I was just enjoying the process of daily practise.

It became my constant routine to do it after a hard working day to release all the tension. 

Getting into the last week of the challenge I still was a few centimetres above the ground. I felt the success is just around the corner, I just need a few millimetres to reach the ground…

But I couldn’t.

You know what I did then?

And that’s the most important lesson from all that I learnt during this challenge. 

I wrote to ballerinas and flexibility coaches asking for their suggestions, tips and tricks: what to do when just a few millimetres are left to get into a full split.

That was the best thing I could have done at that time. 

To my surprise I got very detailed responses to my call for help with words of appreciation saying how well I’m already doing and the exact action I need to take to achieve the full split. 

One of the suggestion was to ask somebody gently push you down…

You can imagine my immediate reaction:

What??? No no no! It’s already so painful, I won’t be able to handle it.

But on the 27th of February (my bad luck the month of February has only 28 days, so I knew I have only 2 days left) I warmed up very well, just as one of the coaches suggested and when I was in a regular deep breathing session to go slowly down, my husband entered the room and I asked with doubt:

Can you push me very gently from the shoulders down???

It was scary, but worth it!

I managed to hit the ground!!!

Yes, that was The Day for the first time in my life I did a full split after trying to do it for more than 20 years, probably.

So my last and most important lesson that can be applied to any goal you are trying to achieve:

5. Ask for help!

Both: indirect and direct.

It was not easy but I’m proud of myself I was brave enough to consult the professionals asking for a theoretical knowledge that helped me move forward when nothing did. 

And

It was super scary to ask my husband literally to push me towards my final goal. 

So if you are having a dream to achieve a very specific goal in your life, don’t forget these 5 lessons:

1. Don’t underestimate yourself
2. Set a clear goal, timeframe and routine
3. Make yourself accountable in front of others
4. Find all the possible triggers for seeing the progress and realising how it benefits you
5. Ask for help!

Check out my journey on Instagram @miglekapoor and connect with me to follow my 2021 challenge journey! 10 more to come!