Lu Ann Cahn remembers January 1, 2010, with crystal clarity. Running headlong into the frigid Atlantic Ocean for a Polar Bear Plunge has a way of doing that.

"I realized as I ran screaming out of the water that I needed this," said the eight-time Emmy Award-winning journalist, who departed a 40-year career in broadcast news in December 2014 to become the Director of Career Services for Temple University's School of Media and Communication. "That was the start of my year of challenging myself to do something new every day. It was my way to refresh and reboot my life."

Cahn, a cancer survivor and author, took that year-long odyssey and what she learned from it and made it the basis for her book I Dare Me.

"Any time you do something for the first time it creates ripples, it creates energy. Reenergizing your life isn't as hard as you think, but it does take the willingness to face something new, to face your fears," said Cahn. "Women in particular need to remember how to do that. If you face your fears, you can take back the reigns of your life."

Cahn said her book shares "five simple ways to dare yourself."

"These are simple ways to get your life 'unstuck.' We make decisions every day, all day long but often we end up making the same decisions all of the time; we stop taking risk," she said. "This is a way of taking a reflective look at your decision-making. You don't have to leave home; you don't have to head to Europe and meditate on a mountaintop. Just make a decision to turn left instead of right and see where it takes you."

Cahn is certainly no stranger to anyone who watches the news in the Delaware Valley. She spent 27 years with WCAU-TV as, at varying times, a breaking news reporter, anchor, entertainment host and investigative reporter for NBC10 News in Philadelphia.

In 1991 Cahn made local and national news when she publicly shared her story of battling breast cancer after a missed diagnosis when she was 35.

"There was no history of breast cancer in my family. I was a terrified young mom and just the year before I was dealing with ulcerative colitis," she said. "By the time I was 35, I had lost two major body parts. Ten years later, I would lose part of my right kidney to cancer. These experiences certainly informed my journey."

As the broadcast industry was changing dramatically and recourses were being slashes across the board during a tanking economy, Cahn said she felt "very stuck and angry even though I knew I should be grateful."

"I beat breast cancer, I beat kidney cancer and I was still walking around," she said. "I understood the value of a day, but I was still unhappy. I knew I had to do something new."

At the suggestion of her daughter Alexa, she started a blog to help her become "unstuck."

"I was very slow to adopt new technology, but that blog led to my year of firsts. Surprisingly, people started following me on this crazy year-long dare," she said. "I was still working full-time at NBC10 so there were a lot of silly things to begin with — my first tweet, the first time I used a hula hoop, my first attempt at making a cake from scratch. And it just built from there."

Other daily firsts ranged from the simple — drinking a Red Bull for the first time — to the quite serious — helping an accused murderer turn himself in.

"When I was approached about turning these experiences into a book, I knew this was another path to talk about and share my journey. It's a page per day divided into categories — Dare Yourself, Face Your Fears, Kid Again and Give Back," she said. "There are scientific studies that have explored why trying something new, challenging yourself, is so important to revitalizing your life. It certainly was for me."