Well, well, well, welcome back to the pursuit of purpose podcast. My name is Melissa Barham. And if you are new here, welcome to the podcast. I am a purpose and business coach helping women who are seeking deep fulfillment. To find and follow their soul's purpose, be it through life coaching or through business, if you're an entrepreneur.

And I am so excited to have you here with us for all those of you who have been with me for a while now and are popping back into the podcast. I'm so sorry. I left you hanging. I was like, okay, great. We're making weekly episodes. And I highly underestimated. how occupied I would be since quitting my job.

So if you listened to last, I was about to say last week's episode, holy moly, last episode, which I think I recorded in July. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I was back in Paris then and I was there for a couple of weeks. I was also there for the Olympics, which, Maybe I should do a recap on the Olympics or just on Paris, but that was so exciting.

So, so, so fun. I saw 13 different events. I was with my mom and that kind of just snowballed because I literally went right from being in Paris to I came home dropped my bags. I think I had like eight hours. So I just left my And then, you know, was on camping things and I was in Vancouver and Washington and everything for all of August and September.

in the Rockies out here where I live in Western Canada is like prime time to, you know, be outside and be camping and me and my friends are all really gung ho about that. So I basically spent September in a tent outside or on some trail. So it's now October. Holy freaking, holy freaking. I cannot believe that it's October already but I've missed you guys and I hope you're doing really, really good.

That was a really, really fast. Bullet fire recap of my life in the last little bit. I think I've just been traveling like crazy and it kind of hit me. I think we don't think we have a wall sometimes. I definitely hit the wall cause I was starting to get like migraines. So I definitely knew that like I needed to slow down, slow down the pace of life and it's the beginning of October.

And I'm really excited about it being slow. I say slow and nothing ever is really slow in my life, to be quite honest. But, I'm just, I'm home, I have some routines again. You know, I wake up and I make matcha in the morning. And I have like my desk to sit and work at. And you know, it's the little things sometimes.

The little things that you don't realize give you, like, grounding. And when you don't have them, you feel like a tornado. For you know. too long. So I am very excited about this grounding and just, yeah, just like day to day routines. The weather's getting cooler. There's leaves. It's crunchy. You can have pumpkin spice stuff.

If that's your thing, it's a whole vibe. I'm here for it. But anyways, I am back guys. Holy moly. And I have so much to share with you. So you're, you're, I promise you this time you're going to have episodes coming at you every week here. And yeah, I had a lot of just different experiences that have been super fun in the last little bit, even just being home for the past.

Um, I don't know, like for the last month, uh, a lot of outdoor stuff. And one of the reason for making like the title for this episode is actually I had an experience in September that kind of brought jog my memory back on this experiment that I set out to do. I would say a year ago, it might've been longer than that because you know, it's been so, it's just now so ingrained in my life, but I wanted to share a little bit about it.

And that's why I titled it the one year experiment. That completely changed my life because it has and I didn't realize it till I was having this experience a couple weeks ago on this backpacking trip and so One of the things I set out to do are kind of declared for myself I don't know if it was a New Year's resolution or like where it came from But I took on this experiment a year ago and I said, you know what?

I'm gonna you know, do this thing for and see how it changes me. I didn't actually say a year, but I kind of gave myself that timeline. And so I don't know if you guys, well, you probably know Lululemon if you're Canadian American, or I don't know. I don't know if they're, I think they're in other places in the world too, but Lululemon the company.

Okay. Canadian brand. So when they first started obviously we had their stores and stuff out here in Western Canada except for Vancouver. And when they first started, they had these reusable bags that they give you your stuff in. And everyone uses them for like their lunch box or whatever. You always just see Lulu bags.

Like they're a great reusable bag. And one of the first designs they ever had was like this word collage. And it's the first time I saw this quote, I suppose. And it read, do one thing a day that scares you. And I don't really, I don't remember the other quotes on it. I think one was about flossing, but this one always stuck with me.

Do one thing a day that scares you. And I'm always up for a challenge. If you, if you want to have fun with me, you challenge me to something, you know, dare versus truth and truth and truth and error. Okay. And I kind of just, I don't know where it came from. I think I was like reflecting maybe at the start of a new year, you know, like last year, maybe it was two years ago.

I don't know. But I wanted to take this on as a life motto for a couple of reasons. One, because I thought it would be interesting to see what that exposed me to, you know, doing stuff that scares you. It's, that's always a, that inherently means you're pushing your comfort zone. Right. Uh, two, I really just wanted to build up more confidence in myself by sticking to something like that.

Like having that kind of commitment and actively thinking about it every day. You know, not like first thing I do when I wake up, you know, but at some point in the day thinking, okay, how can I do something today that pushes that comfort zone? And three, I just thought it would be a cool thing to do.

You know, I thought it would be interesting. I was curious to see what would come out of it, if I would get some new experiences, but I had no idea how much it would change my life. To the point that like, I don't recognize, I think the person that I used to be even like a couple of years ago, because this is just so ingrained in my mindset now.

It's honestly just the way I live now. Not perfectly every day, of course, but it's ingrained in how I make decisions. When I say it, I mean like looking at my day or an experience or something and going like, Hmm, how can I incorporate something that, you know, scares me or intimidates me or challenges me.

And puts me in my comfort zone. So it doesn't always have to scare me. It doesn't always have to incite fear. But kind of one of those three things it was like, does it scare me? Doesn't intimidate me or does it challenge me in a way that makes me feel uncomfortable and chasing that and pursuing that rather than running away from that discomfort.