Bold Moves October [One Month Challenge]

By Alexandra Gehringer

As most of you know (I hope!), we run a weekly advice column written by the lovely and brilliant DateByNumbers, who in turn has her own blog wherein she dispenses enough wisdom to fill the Grand Canyon.

For those of you not in the know, each October Miss DBN encourages her followers to participate in this super simple, yet potentially revolutionary concept she’s come up with: Bold Moves October. Whether you set out to meet new friends, get that promotion or snag the hot guy in your English Lit class, BMO means there’s no time like the present! For the entire month (shhh…I’m getting a late start), you dedicate yourself to making bold moves each day.

You can read all the fine print on her blog if you want to follow along and participate, but here are the four core concepts:

1. Above anything else, remember it’s only 31 days.  If you asked me to be bold the rest of my life, I’d call that exhausting and annoying (ignoring that a similar mantra is tattooed on my back).  But I can sure as hell guarantee 31 days – especially knowing the 31st day will be spent strutting around in questionable clothes when my boldness is at its peak.

2. Be ready.  Get dressed every morning like you’re going to run into your ex.  That ex.  You can’t have back-up excuses.  And just so we’re clear, “I look like shit today” is a total back-up excuse.  Plus, there may be some mirror pep talks involved. Gotta be ready to face your fear.

3. Get a Bold Moves friend.  You’re going to need support and you’re going to need to be held accountable when you chicken out, coward. Report your failures.  Reward each other’s successes.

4. Recognize that the first week of this will be harrowing and the last week will be spiritually enlightening. Deal with it.

Pretty cool, right? Well, yours truly has decided to take the plunge and dive head first into a month of bold moves. As a self-professed “super easy going” person, it won’t always be easy to speak out and shake things up, but I’m going to do my best! CC Beauty Blogger (and my roommate), Caitlin, will be holding me accountable and making sure I go balls out this month.

Speaking my mind has always been, oddly enough, both extremely easy and extremely difficult for me. While I’ll tell you exactly what I thought of the horrible book I read last weekend, I bite my tongue when it comes to getting in people’s faces.

I think it comes from wanting to give people the benefit of the doubt. Having opinions on material things is one thing. Having opinions on someone else’s actions is a horse of a different color. Was it shitty of you not to call when you said you would? Sure. Did it suck when you stole my idea and claimed it as your own? You bet. In situations like these, I have the tendency to get mad immediately after something happens, and then rationalize the situation in my head to the point where there may have never been an incident at all. I say “whatever,” forget about the person and carry on with life. And it’s something I need to stop doing. Minding my own business and watching my own back sounds good in theory, but think about how many opportunities I’ve probably cost myself.

So that brings me to my goal this Bold Moves October: To speak up, speak out and be totally unapologetic while doing so.

Are any of you also taking part in BMO? Do you have any tips for me? I’m going to need all the help and Bold Moves friends I can get! Cheers to an exciting and unexpected October!