We’re about to enter what has undoubtedly become my favourite time of the year. It’s just four weeks until October, which means – more importantly – it’s four weeks until LandAid’s Steptober challenge, powered by M7 Real Estate!
Last year’s challenge saw heated competition between more than 500 property industry steppers to see who could rack up the most steps. As a very enthusiastic competitor – I decided it was only fair I look part…
Team LandAid did our very best (we were walking to and from work, having walking meetings, pacing in circles around the house in the evening – you name it, we walked it) but even our best efforts were no match for most of you, our amazing participants. In fact, you took an incredible 166,691,897 steps overall during last year’s challenge, enough to walk around the world more than three times!
While we may have lost the battle (and the war) in terms of the all-important final leaderboard ranking, what we at Team LandAid really did regard as a victory was an unexpected and overwhelming sense of wellbeing that the walking encouraged amongst our team members.
As the challenge wore on last year, I found my busy brain slowing down to a more peaceful, reflective pace when walking home from work.
No longer was I spending my journeys to and from work fruitlessly stressing about things beyond my control – instead, the more often I replaced my cramped tube journey home with a leisurely stroll through the park, I found myself becoming calmer throughout the day as Steptober went on.
It wasn’t just me who noticed this – all of Team LandAid, and other teams we spoke to during and after the challenge, said that they had felt mentally refreshed and that they were aiming to continue this newly-discovered mindfulness into the busy months ahead.
Whilst we won’t all be able to walk to work every day, or have walking meetings whenever we need to discuss something – what we can do is try to take some time out of our busy schedules to have a breather, slow down and step back from the hustle and bustle of our working worlds.
This is one of the main reasons I am SO excited for this year’s Steptober challenge – not to battle to come top of the leaderboard again (no pressure), but to use this step-crazy month to practice getting to that calmer headspace once again.
I can’t wait to compete with all of you to see who can take the most steps to end youth homelessness, I really hope you notice the effects the challenge is having on your mental wellbeing as much as myself and others did last year. Let the step wars begin…!
Sign up to Steptober here!