I’ve heard back from a number of participants and the trend was – success! People are getting busy and doing their activities. I was even a bit surprised (maybe I shouldn’t have been) when someone at my workplace asked the group what everyone was doing for the challenge. . . and they started answering enthusiastically!

If you asked me for my impressions of the fitness challenge from all the people I have spoken with, the word would be enthusiasm. What particularly impresses me about this is the enthusiasm I can hear when I talk with people who did the challenge last year. Enthusiasm, the Cambridge Dictionary says, is, “a feeling of energetic interest in a particular subject or activity and an eagerness to be involved in it.” I think it’s worth underlining energetic interest, and eager involvement. I can hear the energy in peoples’ descriptions of how they are going to do such-and-such on day one, then add so much to that each day. . . and so on. And I still marvel and the eagerness of a few participants who have had to scale back their activities due to injury, yet they were talking about the challenge even before it started up again.

Enthusiasm cannot really be imposed on someone else; when you see it, it is coming from within the person. Well, it is probably gushing out of them. My encouragement, as you go through the challenge, is to purposefully take as much interest as you can in whatever fitness activities you are doing. And try to get involved, even if it is not always “eagerly” at first. If being active is a change for you (or if you have ramped up your usual activity – that itself is a change), it will be a challenge to keep at it. I’m confident of that. But challenges allow us to test ourselves, to work and get better at things, even to risk failing. If we band together, such as in a fitness challenge like this one, we encourage one another and collectively stand better chance of reaching our goals.