Book Challenge 2022: Introducing “Grow with Maria” (The Year of Self Growth)

For this year, I have set an unusual (for me) challenge, and it is something I have never done before, which in itself seems a bit daunting and quite ambitious.  It is part of my New Year “resolutions”.  Or the way I prefer to call them: goals, as it sounds more like an action plan, and less like what we usually do with our resolutions a few months in 🙂 I learned about New Year’s resolutions the hard way, over years of repeated failure.  We even turned it into a joke with my friend Yiota, where we have this tradition at the end of the year to meet and write our New Year Resolutions, already knowing that we will mostly forget about them soon! Don’t get me wrong, we do set actual goals too, but writing our New year resolutions became a ritual, and something we do for fun every year.

Setting a quantifiable, more structured  goal for the year 2022 will definitely help me push myself to achieve it, as I will have “deadlines” that I need to meet.  One of my typical New Year’s resolution would otherwise be a vague phrase, for example “Read more books”. But this is not quantifiable and you can easily fall into the trap of postponing for later. 

My goal/challenge is in fact book-related.  I love reading and I don’t have a certain preference when it comes to books.  I will pick up anything depending on my mood, from science fiction, YA, to non-fiction, contemporary, literally anything that draws my attention.  This is why this particular task I am undertaking will be a real challenge, but something I am actually looking forward to.

I named this challenge: “Grow with Maria”, I know, not very original haha! I assume now you get the hint and what the challenge is about, and more specifically it goes like this:

For the whole year of 2022, I will read two personal growth books per month. This includes all sub-categories in this genre, from financial, personal, to spirituality, psychology, parenting, and so on.   By the end of 2022 I would have (hopefully!) finished 24 books in any of these categories. 

I could have made it  bit more challenging if I chose to read four personal development books per month instead of two (averaging one per week instead of one every two weeks) but that would make it extremely stressful and leave no time at all for me to also read fiction books. I love fiction, it is my escape and my way to relax and rest my mind, and I cannot imagine going for a whole year without reading fiction too. So I am making it a bit more realistic for me, and a goal that will not be too daunting and make me quit thinking I cannot accomplish it. 

Every week I will come back to write my thoughts and review each book. At the end of the year I will reflect back and give you an overview of how this reading challenge has affected me (hopefully for the better, they are all self-help books after all!).    I will be brutally honest and tell you about my struggles as well as my wins during this challenge.  The reason I called this challenge “Grow with Maria” is because I hope that you jump on board with me, so that we can grow together.  If one year is too much, then join me whenever you can, throughout the year, even if it’s for one specific book that you might be interested in.  Then we can share our thoughts on it.  I would really love that! In order to do that, I will announce the books that I plan to read at the beginning of each month, so that you know what I am planning to read during that month.  Then you can join along whenever you wish! 

Personal development and growth is  an area that I always felt passionate about.  But now I realise that for this year, I am inspired more than ever to really focus on a few areas that I need to work on so that I can achieve my goals, and that includes both my personal life and business goals.  In addition, we never stop learning and we never stop growing.  And this is what makes it even more fascinating for all human beings, that we are continuously evolving.  So I thought why not focus a whole year delving deeper, discovering even more about myself? In addition I did eliminate my social media usage, so the timing feels even more right.  

Who is with me on this challenge? Whether you are here to share your thoughts, go on this journey with me, or you are just interested in my feedback during this challenge: Welcome, dear friend! It is an honour to have you on board.  Please wish me luck! 😀